Cheiron

This article deals with the mythological person Cheiron, son of Kronos, for other meanings of Cheiron or Chiron see Chiron .

Cheiron teaches the young Achilles to play the kithara . Ancient Roman fresco from the Augusteum (the so-called basilica) in Herculaneum . National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Cheiron ( Greek  Χείρων "hand", Latin Chiron ) is the son of Kronos and Philyra , half-brother of Zeus and one of the Centaurs in Greek mythology .

Physically he resembles the wild hybrid creatures of horse and human, who descended from Ixion , but he himself has a different origin: in order not to be discovered by his wife Rhea , Kronos is said to have fathered him in the form of a horse with Philyra. Already in the Iliad he was placed high above the rest of the Centaurs: he is considered the fairest of the Centaurs. He is a friend of the gods, educator of the heroes Jason , Aktaion , Aristaios , Achilles , Cephalos , Meilanion , Nestor , Amphiaraos , Peleus , Telamon , Meleagros , Theseus , Hippolytos , Palamedes , Menestheus , Odysseus , Diomedes , Kastor , Polydeukes , Machaon , Podaleirios , Antilochos and Aineias , has knowledge of pharmacology , was occasionally considered the founder of " surgery " and took over Asklepios' training as a doctor.

Cheiron lived in a cave at the foot of Mount Pelion in Thessaly and was married to the naiad Chariklo . They had a centaur daughter named Okyroe .

During the fourth task of Heracles (catching the Erymanthian boar ) the Centaur Pholos granted Herakles the right of hospitality, but then got into a dispute with other Centaurs, who were against Pholos serving a jug of wine that had been donated by Dionysus and that was intended for all Centaurs . During the subsequent pursuit of the Centaurs by Heracles, Cheiron is hit in the knee by an arrow poisoned with the blood of the Hydra - either out of his own inattention or through an accident of Heracles . Because he has to endure unspeakable agony from the wound, the centaur renounces his immortality in favor of Prometheus . Because according to Zeus' will, Prometheus should only be free again when an immortal has given his life for him.

After his death, Cheiron was transferred to the night sky by Zeus as the constellation Centaur .

literature

• Marie Luise Kaschnitz : Chiron. In: (dies.): Greek myths. Insel, Frankfurt a. M. & Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-458-17071-5 , pp. 21-29 (poetic retelling of the myth)
• Martin Vogel : Chiron, the centaur with the kithara. 2 volumes (Orpheus series of publications on basic issues in music, volumes 25 and 26) Verlag für systematic Musikwissenschaft, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1978
• Ludwig von Sybel : Cheiron . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 888-892 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Cheiron  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Chiron in the Theoi Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Libraries of Apollodor 1,2,4; Hyginus , Fabulae 138.
2. ↑ Homer , Iliad 11,831
3. ↑ A list of his students can be found in Xenophon , Kynegetikos 1.
4. ↑ Hyginus, Fabulae 274; Ferdinand Peter Moog: Cheiron (Chiron). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 240.
5. ↑ Pindar, Pythias 9.30.
6. ↑ Pindar , Pythian 4.103.
7. ↑ Ovid , Metamorphoses 2,636–638.
8. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 2,5,4.
9. ↑ Werner Perrey: Constellations and their legends . Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-8251-7172-8 .