Half-Horseing Around with Centaurs!

0:00The stories featured in Greak'ing Out are original adaptations of classic Greek myths. This week's story features impressive cloud impersonations, really rude wedding guests, poisoned arrows, wild behavior, and lots of animal legs. Welcome back to Greak'ing Out! Now, today's episode is all about some of our favorite furry friends, particularly the ones with human characteristics. Now, there are a few different kinds of half-person, half-animal creatures in Greek mythology, and sometimes sorting them out can be complicated, so feel free to take notes, because this is going to get a little confusing. It is not confusing. It is just unfamiliar. Or unfamiliar, whatever.

1:01Now, you may or may not know what a centaur is, but that is where we start. A centaur is a half-horse, half-human creature. They have the torso of a person, but the bottom half of their body resembles a horse. Pretty simple, right? Right. Okay, a satyr is just like a centaur, except they only have two horse legs instead of four. And a fawn is just like a satyr, except they have goat legs instead of horse legs, right? And an Iqthio centaur is an underwater centaur that is human from the waist up, but also part horse and part fish. Yeah, well, hold on, wait a second. How is that even possible? They had horse hooves and a fish tail. So the top was a... And I, okay, all right, I was having a hard time picturing you, but I think I get it now. Okay, top half person, bottom half of the horse front and the fish back. Okay, anyway, thankfully for right now,

2:01we're just going to stick with centars. The majority of the centars that were in the world were descended from Ixion, one of the few mortals who managed to talk their way onto Mount Olympus. Now, King Ixion wasn't exactly a nice guy. Ixion murdered his own father-in-law and was therefore shunned by both humans and gods. Okay, he was definitely not a nice guy, but he prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed to Zeus and somehow was granted forgiveness from the King of the Gods. Probably because Zeus was flattered, he could never resist a good compliment, you know? Eventually, Zeus even invited Ixion up to Mount Olympus to dine with the Olympians. So you would think that Ixion would be aware that he had gotten really lucky and he would be on his best behavior, right? Well, Ixion wasn't that kind of guy.

3:02While he was on Olympus, Ixion fell madly in love with a beautiful goddess. Unfortunately, that goddess wasn't exactly on the market. She was married to Zeus. Yeah, Ixion was crushing on Zeus' wife, Hera, big mistake. In addition to being married to Zeus, Hera is also known for being the goddess of family, marriage and childbirth, but she's mostly known for her quick temper and taste for vengeance. That's true, and Hera would have probably been very annoyed by this unwanted attention, but she didn't even have a chance to react to this little crush of Ixion's. Zeus was the one who noticed it first. And of course, he wasn't going to let someone try to romance his wife, especially not some arrogant King who didn't even understand how to be a good house guest. Cushing on your host's wife is against the laws of hospitality.

4:06Yes, it is. Now Zeus could have just disintegrated Ixion with a thunderbolt or exiled him to Hades or something, but instead, he decided to lay a trap for the love struck mortal. Anything she can try to steal, Hera, away from me? Who does he think he is? His head must be in the clouds. Speaking of clouds? And Zeus followed that line of thinking, grabbing a cloud from the skies and scoping it and molding it into the perfect idolon of Hera. Long time listeners will remember that in idolon is a spectral version of someone, a duplicate that is hard to tell apart from the real thing. Then Zeus breathed life into the idolon and allowed it to walk around Olympus just like the real Hera. Scientists estimate that in average cumulus, cloud weighs about 1.1 million pounds.

5:09Really? Wow, that's a lot of water in those clouds. Anyway, Ixion took the bait and immediately began to follow cloud Hera all over Olympus. Wow, Hera's looking extra fluffy today. She's practically floating on air. Yep, he fell for the trap, hook, line, and sinker. He cornered the fake goddess and professed his love for her. He told cloud Hera how he wanted to run away with her and get married. They could live together in a faraway kingdom and have a big fluffy family. Of course, the cloud goddess said nothing in return because, well, she was just a ball of condensed water. So Ixion took her silence for a yes. Silence is not a yes. Only a yes is a yes. A hundred percent correct oracle you are very right. And Ixion should have known that because he was an adult, but apparently he didn't. Because he ran away with cloud Hera anyway without her ever having to say a word.

6:15He made a hasty escape from Olympus running as far away as he could. He was foolish enough to think that he could actually hide from the king of the gods. Rookie mistake. He was also foolish enough to think that a cloud was the queen of the gods. So I'm not surprised. Okay, fair. So for a few months Zeus toyed with Ixion. He and the other Olympians watched from above and laughed at this foolish king who actually thought he had managed to run away with Hera and lived to tell the tale. Ixion even went ahead and married his cloud wife and soon babies were born. This is not biologically possible. We will have to suspend this belief, which is when you temporarily allow yourself to believe something is true in order to enjoy a work of fiction. Yeah, we do that a lot here on Griggyn out. But anyway, Ixion was shocked when he saw that his

7:19children were not human or demigods. Instead, they were born as half animal, which doesn't really make a lot of sense, but we are suspending disbelief, as the oracle said. So these children of Ixion and cloud Hera were the first centars. And sadly, they were sort of cursed from the get-go. Later on, when he was tired of toying with Ixion, Zeus hunted down the king and trapped him in Tartarus. Right, and we won't go into details, but it involves a wheel of fire spinning for all eternity. So let's just say it wasn't exactly a happy ending for Ixion. I will point out that cloud Hera didn't just disperse after this. She became her own person. And was considered a cloud nymph. She took on the name Nepheli. Yeah, and we actually mentioned her again later on this season, but this episode is all about the centars. Now, centars weren't popular creatures at all, simply because their father was a really bad

8:26dude. Most people thought that centars were simply wild beasts. They represented everything that was wild and untamed in nature, but that was only half true. Literally, I mean, they were still half human after all. All things considered, they were definitely more advanced than your average animal, but people still judged them pretty harshly. And to make matters worse, Ixion had some mortal, fully human children living in similar lands, and to no one's surprise, they didn't exactly care for their half animal, half human, half siblings. Before Ixion fell in love with Nepheli, he had mortal descendants who lived in the kingdom of Thessaly. Over time, these descendants were known as the Lepetai. Exactly. And the Lepetai hated the centars. So for years and years, there was fighting between the two groups. Slowly, but surely, things began to change. A feeling of peace finally developed between the centars and the Lepetai. And a lot of that was because of a young

9:31king named Perithewis. Perithewis is the son of Ixion and took over as ruler of the Lepetai. Exactly. And he was ready to make some changes. He had spent his whole life watching their constant fighting between the centars and his people, and he wanted nothing more than to put an end to it. When he ascended the throne, he worked to develop a good relationship with the king of the centars, and slowly, the two tribes began to accept each other. Things were going along so well, in fact, that King Perithewis even invited the centars to his wedding. But unfortunately, that turned out to be a big mistake. You know, I'm feeling a commercial break right now. I think this is a good place to take a moment. We'll get a break. We'll come back with more agreeing out in just a little bit. What if the fairy tales you thought you knew weren't the real stories? What if I told you that the

10:33real grim fairy tales were often dark and scary and gross, and that I was telling them on grim, grim, grimaced, to a classroom full of kids who liked and erupt me and make jokes and annoy me and basically make my life miserable. Season 6 of grim, grim, grim, grimaced is now releasing exclusively on the Pinnah app. So do you want to hear a real grim fairy tale? And now we continue greaking out with National Geographic Kids. I don't know if you've ever been to a wedding, but sometimes the guests can get a little unruly. And centars were already a little unruly to begin with. I'm not even sure they made it through the father-daughter dance before everything went south. The centars kind of went nuts at the wedding. They started eating the wedding cake, dancing with the bridesmaids, throwing the bouquet, eating the bouquet. There are many violations of the laws of hospitality happening here, making it clear that centars in general don't

11:40follow those rules and can't be trusted in the light company. It was madness that eventually turned into an all-out battle. Swords, shields, fists and hooves pounded at each other, and when all was said and done, the lapetai prevailed. The few remaining centars limped back into the woods and stayed away from Fessele for a long time, leaving the lapetai catering company with a lot of cleaning up to do. Perithewis also features in our episode Helen of Sparta. Yeah, right, when he tries to kidnap Persephone, the queen of the underworld for his bride. Seems like he survives the attempt, but man, this guy does not have the best judgment. Good judgment is not required to be a king. It just requires the previous king to die and leave you the kingdom. This is true, yes. Thankfully, not all centars were wedding crashes. Some of them were respected members of

12:43Ancient Greece, and the most famous of all the centars was named Kairan. Now, if that name sounds familiar to you, it's because you've probably heard it before in a bunch of other stories and episodes here on Greaking Out. Kairan was the most famous hero trainer in all of Greek mythology. But while we talk about him a lot, you might not know that Kairan was more than your average centar. He was also a demigod. This is because he has a completely different genetic history. That's right. His mother was a sea nymph named Feliara, and his father was Kronos, King of the Titans. Zeus and the other Olympians are Kairan's half siblings. Exactly, and this made Kairan immortal, just like Zeus and the other Olympians. So apparently, there's more than one way to make a centar. But none of the Olympians were horses or had any horse body parts.

13:43Correct. You see, Kairan's mother Feliara loved horses, and when her baby was born, she was thrilled to see that as a gift from Kronos, the baby was also part horse. Most mothers would not be thrilled about this, but Feliara was built differently, I guess. The point is that other centars were less divine. Kairan wasn't anything like the wedding crash or centars we just described, and not solely because he avoided weddings at all costs. It was clear from the very beginning that Kairan was a bright individual. As a student, he excelled in his studies at just about every subject, music, medicine, hunting, fishing, Kairan could do it all, and he loved learning. Some say his quest for knowledge was so great that he was tutored directly by Artemis and Apollo themselves. Well, once he was old enough, Kairan took up residence on Mount Pilian and did what a

14:44lot of very smart and caring humans do. He became a teacher, but not just any teacher. Kairan became one of the greatest teachers of heroes in all of Greek mythology. Heroes like Jason, Ajax, Eskipius, Achilles, and Heracles all learned from Kairan. And he didn't just teach him how to fight and ride a horse and stuff like that. Kairan taught them reading and writing and history and art and medicine, even how to play musical instruments. These heroes didn't just come to school and learn from Kairan, they actually lived with him. He was like a teacher slash coach slash parent rolled into one. He lived an amazing life and was quite literally a hero of heroes. All of the great warriors remembered and loved Kairan fondly. He was an important part of some of the greatest heroic journeys in all of ancient Greece.

15:46But unfortunately, Kairan's life ended in tragedy. Now as a demigod, Kairan was supposed to be immortal, but things didn't exactly work out that way. His life was cut short because of a tragic accident. And just like the letting, it involved some unruly centaur party guests. It all began when the great warrior Heracles was in the neighborhood and decided to visit his old friend and teacher. Kairan was really excited to see his student again and welcomed him with a lovely dinner party that included another remarkably well-behaved centaur fallus. They had a delightful meal and were just sitting down for drinks and dessert when a group of wild centars decided to crash the party. What is it with these guys in party crashing? I don't know, but regardless, a great battle in suit in poor fallus was an early victim. The wild centars either didn't know or didn't care that

16:47they were challenging the great Heracles and they came at him relentlessly. Of course, Heracles was able to fight them off with ease and eventually used his bow and poison arrows to take them out one by one. In addition to having way too many heads, the evil Hydra monster had poisonous blood running through its veins. After he defeated it in battle, Heracles dipped his arrows in the blood of the Hydra, making them instantly deadly. In one last ditch effort, a wild centarnamed elitist charged at Heracles swinging his club madly. The hero turned quickly and shot elitists through the arm with a poisoned arrow causing the centaur to drop his weapon. But Heracles was so strong that the arrow continued its flight, passing all the way through the centaur's arm and into the knee of Kairan standing behind him. The poison from these arrows was so

17:48toxic that elitists died within seconds, but Kairan was immortal. He wasn't able to die, even though he was in a state of constant and imbarable pain from the poison. Yeah, this is definitely a downside. Anyway, for nine days Heracles and Kairan tried to find a way to stop the poison and heal the centaur, but it was impossible. Night after night, Kairan was racked with pain from the poison. It was so intense that he eventually prayed to Zeus, begging him to remove his immortality so that he could pass away and have the pain stop. Reluctantly, Zeus agreed, and shortly thereafter, Kairan passed away. But not wanting to lose him forever,

18:49the king of the gods placed Kairan among the stars as the constellation that we call Sagittarius, or centaurus. Like a lot of these myths, there are a few different versions. Yeah, that's exactly right. Other versions of this story say that Kairan's prayers to Zeus were not enough, so Heracles went to his father himself to arrange for Kairan to give up his immortality. The deal was this, in exchange for Kairan's sacrifice, Heracles made a deal with Zeus to have the Titan Prometheus released from his eternal torture and imprisonment. So while it's not exactly a happy ending, there is a bit of a silver lining to this cloud. And this is not a cloud in the shape of a goddess. No, it is not. It's just like a normal cloud, like white fluffy, with a little silver lining in the middle that you can, well, you know, whatever, never mind. You get the idea. That's it for this episode. Join us next week for the start of some

19:51Pyractical nonsense. This episode of National Geographic Kids Greaking Out is written by Gillian Hughes and Kenny Curtis, and hosted by Kenny Curtis, with Tori Kerr as the Oracle of Wi-Fi, audio production and sound designed by Scotty Beam, and our theme song was composed by Perry Grip. Dr. Meredith Safron is our subject matter expert, Emily Burkett and Laurie Brota are our producers, and Emily Everhart is our senior producer.