Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art Part 11

_Argent a chevron engrailed gules between three unicorns' heads, erased azure._--_Horne._

Religious emblems were in great favour with the early printers; some of them for this reason adopted the unicorn as their sign. Thus John Harrison lived at the Unicorn and Bible in Paternoster Row, 1603.

Again, _the reputed power of the horn_ caused the animal to be taken as a supporter for the Apothecaries' arms, and as a constant signboard by chemists.

The great value set upon unicorn's horn caused the Goldsmiths of London to adopt this animal as their sign.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pegasus or Pegasos.]

The Pegasus

"_The cheval volant--the pegasus-- He bounds from the earth; he treads the air._"

A poetic creation of the ancients, a winged horse captured by Bellerophon, the great hero of Corinthian legend. In this he was a.s.sisted by the G.o.ddess Minerva, who also taught him how to tame and use it. At Corinth there was a temple erected to ????a?a????t?? (Minerva the Bridler), in allusion to that part of the myth which describes Minerva as instructing Bellerophon in the mode of placing the bridle on the winged steed. The legend states that the hero caught this wonderful animal as it descended at the Acro-Corinthus to drink of the spring of Pirene. Mounted on his winged steed Pegasus, Bellerophon engaged the dire Chimera, and succeeded in destroying the monster by rising in the air and shooting it with arrows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Coins of Corinth and Syracuse.]

Pegasus is the steed of the Muses, and cla.s.sic story ascribes to it the origin of the Castalian fountain "Hippocrene," situated on Mount Helicon, part of Parna.s.sus, a mountain range in Greece. When the Muses contended with the daughters of Pieros, "Helicon rose heavenward with delight"; but Pegasus gave it a kick, stopped its rise, and there gushed out of the mountain "the soul-inspiring waters of Hippocrene."

The Standard of Corinth was a winged horse, in consequence of the tradition connecting the fountain called Pirene, near the city, with Pegasus, the fiery winged steed of Apollo and the Muses. The same device was the leading type upon the ancient coins of the city of Corinth. The Corinthians founded the colony of Syracuse, in Sicily, which city likewise adopted the winged horse and the head of Athena upon its coinage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pegasus salient.]

Pindar, who grandly relates the feat of the hero Bellerophon, says that he incurred the enmity of the G.o.ds by attempting to fly to heaven on his winged horse. Zeus sent a gadfly to sting the horse, who thereupon cast its rider and flew of his own accord to the stables of Zeus, whose thunder-chariot he has ever since drawn.

The pegasus is of frequent occurrence in heraldry. In its cla.s.sic allusions it denotes fame, eloquence, poetic study, contemplation.

Some modern heraldic writers, however, discarding its cla.s.sic references, regard it merely in the matter-of-fact light as an emblem of swiftness.

But it is impossible to disa.s.sociate the old and well-known ideas respecting the horse of Apollo and the Muses. In fancy the poet mounts his winged steed to bear his soaring spirit in its wayward flight through the realms of fancy.

As a type of the perfect horseman, Shakespeare pictures Prince Henry as able to--

"Turn and wind a fiery pegasus And witch the world with n.o.ble horsemanship."

_1 King Henry IV._, Act 4, sc. 1.

Elsewhere he takes up the later interpretation of the myth, which connects it with Perseus:

"The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut Like Perseus' horse."

_Troilus and Cressida_, Act i. sc. 3.

Cardinal Bembo, poet and historian, secretary to Pope Leo X., used as his impress a pegasus and a hand issuing from a cloud holding a wreath of laurel and palm, with the motto, "Si te fata vocant" ("If the fates call thee").

_Azure, a pegasus salient, the wings expanded argent_, is borne as the arms of the Society of the Inner Temple, London.

A very early seal of the Knights Templars exhibits two knights riding upon one horse.

A recent writer remarks upon this strange device that "it is exceedingly probable that some rude and partially defaced representation of this device was mistaken by the lawyers of the reign of Queen Elizabeth for a pegasus. The fact that the Middle Temple adopted the device which appears upon the other seal of the ancient Knights strongly confirms this view."

One of the supporters of the arms of Oliver Cromwell is a horse having the wings and tail of a dragon.

Sagittary, Centaur, Sagittarius, Centaurus, Hippocentaur

"_... the dreadful sagittary Appals our numbers._"

"Troilus and Cressida," Act v. sc. 5.

"_Feasts that Thessalian centaurs never knew._"

THOMSON, "Autumn."

Under these names is blazoned a fabled monster of cla.s.sic origin, half man, half horse, holding an arrow upon a bended bow. It is one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, commonly called Sagittarius, otherwise Arcitenens, and marked by the hieroglyph ?. In its signification in arms it may properly be applied to those who are eminent in the field.

The arms traditionally a.s.signed to King Stephen are thus described by Nicholas Upton: "_Scutum rubeum, in quo habuit trium leonum peditantium corpora, usque ad collum c.u.m corporibus humanis superius, ad modum signi Sagittarii, de auro_." In this, as in some other early examples, it is represented as half man, half lion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Sagittary--Centaur.]

The arms of Stephen are sometimes represented with but one sagittary, and is said to have been a.s.sumed by him in consequence of his having commenced his reign under the sign of Sagittarius. Others say because he gained a battle by the aid of his archers on entering the kingdom. Others, again, say that the City of Blois used the ensign of a sagittary as an emblem of the chase; and Stephen, son of the Compte de Blois, a.s.sumed that ensign in his contest with the Empress Maude or Matilda. There is no contemporary authority, however, it must be confessed, for any of these derivations. A sagittary is seen upon the seal of William de Mandeville (_temp._ Henry III.), but not as an heraldic bearing.

The crest of Lambart, Earl of Cavan, is: _On a mount vert, a centaur proper, drawing his bow gules, arrow or_. It also appears as the crest of Askelom, Bendlowes, Cromie, Cruell, Lambert, Petty, Petty-Fitzmaurice.

The term _Centaur_ is most probably derived from the words ?e?t?? (to hunt, or to pursue) and ta???? (a bull), the Thracians and Thessalians having been celebrated from the earliest times for their skill and daring in hunting wild bulls, which they pursued mounted on the n.o.ble horses of those districts, which were a celebrated breed even in the later times of the Roman Empire. A centaur carrying a female appears on a coin of Lete, which, according to Pliny and Ptolemy, was situated on the confines of Macedonia, and the fables of the centaurs, &c., in that and neighbouring districts abounding in a n.o.ble breed of horses, arose no doubt from the feats performed by those who first subjugated the horse to the will of man, and who mounted on one of these beautiful animals and guiding it at will, to approach or retreat with surprising rapidity, gave rise in the minds of the vulgar to the idea that the man and the horse were one being.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ipotane, from Mandeville's travels.]

Sir John de Mandeville in his travels (printed by Wynken de Worde, 1499), tells us that in Bacharie "ben many Ipotanes that dwellen sometime in the water and sometime on the land; and thei ben half men and half hors and thei eten men when thei may take him."

We have in modern history a singular and interesting example of a similar superst.i.tion. When the natives of South America--where the horse was unknown--first saw their invaders, the Spaniards, mounted on these animals and in complete armour, they imagined that the cavalier and steed formed but one being of supernatural powers and endowments.

Such groups as those exhibited on the rude money of Lete and other places were doubtless the first steps toward the treatment of similar subjects by Phidias, the celebrated Greek sculptor, whose works ill.u.s.trating the battle of the Lapithae and the Centaurs adorned the metopes of the Parthenon at Athens, to which they also bear a striking affinity in the simplicity of their conception.

A curious example of the compounded human and animal forms similar to the sagittary is represented upon a necklace found in the Isle of Rhodes, and now in the Musee Cluny, Paris. It is formed of a series of thin gold plates whereon is represented in relief the complete human figure conjoined to the hinder part of a stag (or horse). This is alternated with another compound figure, human and bird, holding up two animals by the tails, both subjects, each in their own way, suggestive of the fleet and dexterous hunter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Compound figures, gold necklace, Musee Cluny, Paris.]

In Homer's account the centaurs are obviously no monsters, but an old Thessalian mountain tribe, of great strength and savage ferocity. They are merely said to have inhabited the mountain districts of Thessaly, and to have been driven thence by the Lapithae into the higher mountains of Pindus. Their contest with the Lapithae is generally conceived as a symbol of the struggle of Greek civilisation with the still existing barbarism of the Early Pelasgian period. This may be the reason why Greek art in its prime directed itself so especially to this subject.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Centaur, Greek sculpture.]

The origin of this contest is referred to the marriage feast of Pirithous and Hippodamia, to which the princ.i.p.al centaurs were invited. The centaur Eurytion, heated with wine, attempted to carry off the bride. This gave rise to a struggle for supremacy which, after dreadful losses on both sides, ended in the complete defeat of the centaurs, who were driven out of the country. The custom of depicting the centaurs as half man, half horse arose in later times, and became a favourite subject of the Greek poets and artists.

Amongst the centaurs, Chiron, who was famous alike for his wisdom and his knowledge of medicine, deserves mention as the preceptor of many of the heroes of antiquity. Homer, who knew nothing of the equine shape of the centaurs, represents him as the most upright of the centaurs, makes him the friend of Achilles, whom he instructed in music, medicine and hunting.

He was also the friend of Heracles, who, by an unlucky accident, wounded him with a poisoned arrow. The wound being incurable, he voluntarily chose to die in the place of Prometheus. Jupiter placed him among the stars, where he is called Sagittarius.

_Bucentaur_, from Greek ???? (bous) an ox, and ???ta???? (kentauros) a centaur, was, in cla.s.sic mythology, a monster of double shape, half man, half ox. The state barge of the Doge of Venice was so termed.

The _Minotaur_ slain by Theseus had the body of a man and the head of a bull.