Creatures of myth first described by the ancient Greeks, having the body of a horse with four legs, but also the upper body of a man where the horse's neck would be.
In Greek mythology, a centaur or hippocentaur is a member of a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse. In early Attic and Boeotian vase-paintings, they are depicted with the hindquarters of a horse attached to them; in later renderings centaurs are given the torso of a human joined at the waist to the horse's withers, where the horse's neck would be.
This half-human and half-animal composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, both as the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths, or conversely as teachers, like Chiron.
