Chiron
Teacher of Heroes
KY-ron
The one civilised centaur, immortal son of Cronus, physician, and tutor to half the heroes in this atlas.
The Story
The other centaurs are drunks and brawlers; Chiron is their opposite, and his parentage explains it, he is Cronus's son, not of the same stock as the rest, which makes him half-brother to Zeus and his siblings. He lived in a cave on Pelion and taught medicine, hunting, music, and prophecy to Asclepius, Jason, Actaeon, and Achilles.
The end of him is the cruellest accident in the mythology. Heracles, visiting during the boar labour, loosed an arrow into a scuffle and caught Chiron with Hydra venom, a wound that could not kill him, because he was immortal, and could not be healed either. He gave his immortality away to free Prometheus and was allowed to die, and Zeus set him in the sky as Sagittarius.
Did You Know?
- The first object discovered in the belt between Saturn and Uranus was named 2060 Chiron, and the entire class of bodies out there is now called centaurs.
- He is the standard illustration of the wounded healer, the physician whose own injury cannot be cured, a phrase Jung borrowed and analysts still use.
- Some traditions set him in the sky as Sagittarius; others insist Sagittarius is a different centaur entirely and give Chiron the Centaurus constellation.