Two weeks ago, I described the ancient identification of the constellation Sagittarius, the Archer, with the beloved centaur Chiron.
The centaurs were ignoble beasts with human upper torsos and horses’ bodies. They had human intelligence but animalistic wildness and viciousness.
Chiron was the notable exception. He was a gentle teacher and scholar, tutor to Heracles, Jason of Golden-Fleece fame, Achilles, and the twins Castor and Pollux, some of whom got their own constellations.
The ancient mythographers differ in their descriptions of Chiron’s demise. In two related cases, Chiron receives his vaunted place in the sky because of his love for Orion, the Hunter, who also rose to constellational status.
Orion boasted that he could slay any animal on Earth. Unfortunately for Orion, the Earth goddess Gaia took umbrage.
She sent a scorpion, one of the tiniest, but most deadly of her creatures, to prey on the unsuspecting hunter.
The scorpion stung Orion on the heel, and he quickly died. Jupiter, the king of the gods, placed Orion in the sky to honor his skill as a hunter. Jupiter also put the scorpion in the sky as Scorpius to remind humans that great skill is no excuse for boastful vanity.
However, much-chastened Orion insisted that the Scorpius be placed at the opposite end of the sky so that he would never again face his deadly nemesis. To this day, just as the winter constellation Orion is setting, the summer constellation Scorpius rises. Sagittarius rises just after Scorpius. The two constellations are next to each other in the sky.
Chiron was Orion’s favored hunting companion. In one version of the story, as Sagittarius, Chiron uses his bow and arrow to exact revenge on the scorpion. However, such revenge seems out of character for the gentle centaur.
In a more-plausible version, Chiron is placed next to Scorpius as a guardian, lest the Scorpion attempt to scuttle across the sky and harass Orion.
Pseudo-Eratosthenes attributes the centaur’s death to an encounter with the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules to the Romans), who had just previously slain all the other centaurs. As the two engaged in deep and prolonged conversation, a poisoned arrow fell from Heracles’s quiver into Chiron’s foot, and Chiron died.
Hyginus, a first-century CE mythographer, writes that Chiron “expressed amazement that Hercules could fell the bodies of the great centaurs with such short arrows and tried to shoot one with his bow.”
Chiron was a scholar, not a warrior. The poisoned arrow fell out of his inept hand and into his foot. Jupiter (Zeus to the Greeks) “pitied him” and placed him among the stars.
Neither version accounts for Chiron’s immortality.
The most fully formed version of Chiron’s death occurs in Heracles’s fourth labor, the capture of the Erymanthian Boar.
On his way to hunt the boar, Hercules stopped to see the centaur Pholus, who lived with all the other centaurs near the boar.
Hercules opened a wine jar and began to drink, despite the warning that the wine was owned collectively by all the centaurs.
The centaurs ran into Pholus’s cave and attacked Heracles, but the tide of battle soon turned in the Greek hero’s favor.
The centaurs fled in terror. Heracles chased them for many miles, firing poisoned arrows as he went. The fearful centaurs sought the protection of Chiron by hiding behind him. They were confident that no one, even the headstrong hero, would harm the gentle and beloved scholar.
They were woefully mistaken. Heracles killed all the centaurs except Chiron, who was immortal and could not die.
One of Heracles’ poisoned arrows did pierce Chiron, leaving him in agonizing pain from a wound that would never heal. Heracles had dipped his arrows in the poisonous blood of the Lernaean Hydra, the hideous monster he had dispatched during a previous labor.
As Ovid writes in his Fasti,
“… the gnawing poison defied all remedies, and the bane soaked into the bones and the whole body. The blood of the Lernaean Hydra, mingled with the Centaur’s blood, left no time for rescue.”
The immortal centaur would live forever in torturous pain.
Jupiter took pity on Chiron and rescinded his gift of immortality. He placed the centaur in the sky as the constellation Sagittarius — where he still shines as a beacon of kindness and teacherly wisdom.
Tom Burns is the former director of the Perkins Observatory in Delaware.
