Centaur
SEN-tor
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesHalf man, half horse, and in nearly every story a warning about drink. Homer has Odysseus tell the tale of Eurytion, who got drunk in a Lapith house and started the war between the two races.
They stand for what happens when appetite is put in a strong body without the discipline to govern it, which is the exact thing the agoge exists to prevent.
One stands rearing in the hoard with every vein and tendon rendered in metal.
Sources
- Hom. Od. 21.295-304
- Hom. Il. 1.262-268
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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