Ipotane

A painting of a drunken ipotane

In Greek mythology, an ipotane was a member of a race of half-horse, half-humans. The ipotanes are considered the original version of the centaur.

Description

The typical ipotane looked overall human, but had the legs, hindquarters, tail, and ears of a horse. However, some had human-like rather than horse-like legs (compare with early Satyrs, whose front legs were often human-like). The Greek suggested by "ipotane" is ιππότης (hippotes). It means knight. which is reasonable since Knights are typically thought of as being on horseback. It is also used as an adjective as in ιππότης λεώς (hippotes leos) — horse knights that rode people. The definition given above would fit ιππότης λεώς — "horse-people".

See also

• Faun - Italian
• Glaistig - Scottish
• Hippopodes - Greek myth
• Pan - early Greek myth
• Silenus - early Greek mythology

References

• Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon.