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Also known as Chiron, he was the gentle centaur who acted as mentor to many heroes. Cheiron was the offspring of Cronos who visited the Oceanid nymph Philyra in the form of a stallion. Cheiron lived in a cave on the slopes of Mount Pelion. He is frequently shown draped with a robe of stars, with an uprooted tree over his shoulder on which are the spoils of the hunt, and a dog by his side. He was looked to as the arbiter and bringer of education, law, medicine and prophecy, so that many of the Greek heroes were sent to be trained by him, including Aesculapius, Jason, Peleus and Theseus.

The gods did not disdain to consult Cheiron also. When Apollo was out hunting, he saw the virgin Kyrene guarding her father’s beasts and how she wrestled with a lion to protect them. Apollo asked Cheiron what he should do and the centaur counselled him to take her as his wife. On a swan-chariot, he bore her to Libya. Cheiron prophesied that her son would be divine. He would be raised by Hermes, the Horae and the goddess Gaia and become an immortal and perfect child who would love men. This child was the immortal Apollo made new, Apollo Aristaios or ‘the best Apollo’. His father took his namesake to Cheiron to be raised by wise centaurs. From them he learned how to keep bees, press olives and make cheese. He was the first to snare wolves and bears. The son of Apollo Aristaios was Aesculapius the great physician. Apollo took Aesculapius from his mother, Koronis’ womb, when the pregnant mother lay dead on her pyre and brought him to Cheiron, who taught him the art of healing.

When Hercules was seeking the Erymanthean Boar, he was offered wine by the centaur Pholos. Pholos did not know that the jar, a gift from Dionysus to Hercules, contained wine. Once the jar was opened, all the centaurs from miles around were drawn by its intoxicating and alluring scent. The centaurs fell into a drinking bout, growing wilder and more intoxicated on the wine, becoming combative and dangerous. The disruptive centaurs then came to disrupt the wedding of Perithous of the Lapith Greeks. Cheiron was accidentally wounded by one of Hercules’ poisoned arrows which had the venom of the Hydra upon them. Hercules tried in vain to save the wise centaur with healing herbs but Cheiron was pierced in the knee and could neither recover nor die, and so he retired with his incurable wound to his dark cave.

Finally, when Hercules was attempting to liberate Prometheus, who had stolen fire from heaven, from his eternal punishment, it was Cheiron who agreed to take Prometheus’ place, since he had been set there to suffer for the sake of all humanity who enjoyed the gifts of the gods. Prometheus had been bound to have his ever-regenerating liver pecked away daily by an eagle for eternity. Cheiron suffered this fate gladly since he could not die. But Zeus relented and set him in the sky as the constellation Centaurus, or Sagittarius, according to some sources.