166 On tJie Animals represented 



stantly assigned to them the solid paws which characterize this 

 class of animals. 



On the other hand, when they have represented their bu-cen- 

 taurs or their tauro-centaurs — monsters, half men and half oxen 

 or bulls, they have given them the head of those animals with 

 the trunk of a man. But, in accordance with the rule they had 

 imposed on themselves, the ancients have bestowed on them ex- 

 tremities in keeping with the conformation of their heads, viz. 

 cloven feet, resembling those of the ruminating animals which 

 have horns. 



The same principles have directed them in the formation of 

 their minotaurus, which, with the head of man, presents the 

 body of a bull. This head would have required human feet ; 

 but as they had imposed on themselves the law never to give 

 such feet to these symbolical beings, not even when they exhi- 

 bited a human head, it was necessary, along with the body, 

 which represented the minotaurus, to depict the feet of a rumi- 

 nating animal : this, accordingly, is what the painters of ancient 

 Greece and Rome have invariably done. It is scarcely necessary 

 here to repeat, that as the artists of Egypt have observed no rule 

 in the invention of their mythological beings, no advantage would 

 accrue from our studying them in the point of view that now 

 engages us. 



There is, however, an exception to these principles, or, at ail 

 events, the appearance of one. It is supplied in the centaur, 

 which, according to the statement of Pausanias, had been repre- 

 sented on the famous coffer of Cypselus, whose anterior extre- 

 mities resembled the feet of man, and were therein in conformity 

 with the trunk which supported the head of the centaur. Many 

 antiquarians have likewise remarked, that similar centaurs, with 

 atlanter extremities, like human feet, have been represented on 

 some monuments. As, however, they have not pointed out these 

 monuments, we have not hitherto been able to satisfy ourselves 

 whether their assertion be correct. Supposing it true, it perhaps 

 makes an exception to the general rule, since these fabulous be- 

 ings in a manner exhibit two trunks. 



We shall also find the same attention bestowed in harmonising 

 the whole of the frame of the other symbolical beings, the pro- 

 ducts of the brilliant imaginations of the poets and artists of an- 



