FABULOUS ANIMALS. 523 
brute and human form, exhibiting the body of a man 
united to that of a horse, the former rising from the chest 
of the latter. Absurd as such a combination must appear 
to the anatomist, and ill adapted as it seems for agility, 
it is not wholly devoid of grace, and is very frequently 
to be met with in antique sculpture. According to Gre- 
cian mythology, these creatures inhabited Thessaly ; and 
poetry has celebrated their combats with Hercules, 
Theseus, and Pirithous, the latter of whom was the leader 
of the Lapithae, a people who vanquished the Centaurs. 
Their fabulous existence had its origin in that love of the 
marvellous, which is always found to exist in the earlier 
stages of society, and which induces men to interpret 
metaphorical descriptions in a literal sense. Hence the 
natives of Thessaly being distinguished by their skill in 
horsemanship, at a time when their neighbours were un- 
acquainted with the art of riding, they would be de- 
scribed as combining the powers both of the human and 
the equine race ; in like manner as some of the American 
tribes, when they first beheld the Spaniards mounted on 
horses, mistook them for a different race of beings from 
themselves, supposing them to be half men and half qua- 
drupeds. It is by availing itself of such errors, that fic- 
tion, whether it employs poetry or painting for its 
vehicle, creates thoso fanciful beings and shapes with 
which it delights to excite curiosity and gratify the ima- 
gination. 
THE SATYR. 
ALTHOUGH the Satyr of the ancient poets can hardly be 
termed an animal, as the human form predominates, he 
may be introduced here as our final example of these 
fabulous creatures. Satyrs and Fauns are represented as 
men with goats' legs and horns, and were supposed to be 
the attendants of Bacchus. The idea of such beings was 
