Fourthly, and consequently on the last-named condition, the word κάντζαρος, whether alone or in composition with either καλός or λύκος, must possess a meaning adequate to denote the monsters who have been described.
All these conditions are satisfied in the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient word κένταυρος.
The phonetic change herein involved will, to any who are not familiar with the pronunciation of modern Greek, appear more considerable than it really is. In that pronunciation it must be remembered that the accent, which indicates the syllable on which stress is laid, is everything, and ancient quantity is nothing; and further that the ancient diphthongs au and eu have come to be pronounced respectively as av or af and ev or ef. The change of sound in this case may therefore be fairly measured by the difference between kéndăvrŏs and kándzărŏs in British pronunciation[615]. The phonetic modifications therefore which require notice are the substitution of α for ε in the first syllable, the introduction of a ζ after the τ, and the loss of the v-sound before the ρ.
The change from ε to α is very common in Greek, especially (by assimilation it would seem) where the following syllable, as in the word before us, has an α for its vowel. Thus ἀλαφρός is constantly to be heard instead of ἐλαφρός (light), ἀργαλει̯ός for ἐργαλειός (a loom), ματα- for μετα- in compound verbs. The insertion of ζ (or σ) after τ is certainly a less common change, but parallels can be found for this also. The ancient word τέττιγες (grasshoppers) appears in modern Greek as τζίτζικες. A word of Latin origin[616] τεντόνω (I stretch) has an equally common by-form τσιτόνω. The classical word τύκανον (a chisel) has passed, through a diminutive form τυκάνιον, into the modern τσουκάνι. The word κεντήματα (embroideries) has a dialectic form κεντζήματα[617]. From the adjective μουντός (grey, brown, dusky) are formed substantives μουντζοῦρα and μουντζαλι̯ά (a stain or daub). The substantive κατσοῦφα (sulkiness, sullenness) is probably to be identified with the ancient κατήφεια. The two most frequently employed equivalents for ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’—τρελλός and ζουρλός—are probably of kindred origin—an insertion of ζ in the former having produced first τζερλός and thence (τ)ζουρλός. Finally there is some likelihood that the word κάντζαρος, in a botanical sense in which it is now used, is to be identified with the ancient plant-name κενταυρεῖον or κενταύριον. The former indeed now denotes a kind of juniper, while the later is of course our ‘centaury’; but this difference in meaning is not, I think, fatal to the identification of the words. At the present day the common-folk are extraordinarily vague in their nomenclature of natural objects. In travelling about I made a practice of asking my guides and others the names of flowers and birds and suchlike; and my general experience might fairly be summed up by saying that the average peasant divides all birds which he does not eat into two classes; the larger ones are hawks, and the smaller are—‘little birds, God knows what’; and an accompanying shrug of the shoulders indicates that the man does not care; while most flowers can be called either violets or gilly-flowers at pleasure. Even therefore when a peasant of superior intelligence knows that κάντζαρος is now the name of a kind of juniper, it does not follow that that name has always belonged to it, and has not been transferred to it from some plant formerly used, let us say, for a like purpose. In this case it is known that both juniper and some kind of centaury were formerly used for medicating wine[618], and the wine treated with either was prescribed as ‘good for the stomach[619].’ Hence a confusion of the two plants is intelligible enough among a peasantry not distinguished by a love of botanical accuracy. But I place no reliance upon this possible identification; the cases previously cited furnish sufficient analogies.
Further it may be noted that in the first two examples of this insertion of ζ or σ a certain change in the consonants of the next syllable accompanies it. The γ in τέττιγες becomes κ, the ντ in τεντόνω is reduced to τ. In the same way, it seems, when ζ was inserted after the τ of κένταυρος, the sound of vr was reduced to r only, though certainly the loss of the v-sound might have occurred, apart from any such predisposing modification, as in the common word ξέρω (I know) for ἠξεύρω.
Since then the etymological conditions of the problem are satisfied by the identification of the word κάντζαρος with the ancient κένταυρος, it remains only to show that the name of ‘Centaurs’ fitly belongs to the monsters whom I have described; and my contention will be that the simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur,’ surviving now only in the dialectic diminutive form σκατζάρι, adequately expresses every sort and condition of Callicantzaros that has been depicted; that καλλικάντζαρος, the general word, of which so many dialectic varieties occur, being simply an euphemistic compound of κάντζαρος with καλός such as we have previously seen in the title καλλικυρᾶδες given to the Nereids, expresses precisely the same meaning as the simple word κάντζαρος, ‘Centaur’; and that λυκοκάντζαρος originally denoted one species only of the genus Centaur, namely a Callicantzaros whose animal traits were those of a wolf.
What then did the ancients mean by the word ‘centaur’?
The mention of the name is apt to carry away our minds to famous frieze or pediment, where in one splendidly impossible creation of art the excellences of man, his head and his hands, are wed with the horse’s strength and speed. This was the species of Centaur which the great sculptors and painters in the best period of Greek Art chose to depict, and these among educated men became the Centaurs par excellence. Yet even so it was not forgotten that they formed only one species, and were strictly to be called ἱπποκένταυροι, ‘horse-centaurs.’ Moreover two other species of Centaur are named in the ancient language, ἰχθυοκένταυροι or fish-centaurs, and ὀνοκένταυροι or ass-centaurs. Of the former nothing seems to be known beyond the mere name, but this matters little inasmuch as they can assuredly have contributed nothing to the popular conception of the wholly terrestrial Callicantzari. The ass-centaurs will prove of more interest.
But the list of ancient species of Centaur does not really stop here. No other compounds of the word Centaur may exist, but none the less there were other Centaurs—other creatures, that is, of mixed human and animal form. Chief among these were the Satyrs, who as pourtrayed by early Greek art might equally well have been called ‘hippocentaurs,’ and in the presentations of Greco-Roman art deserved the name, if I may coin it, of ‘tragocentaurs.’ And the Greeks themselves recognised this fact. ‘The evidence of the coins of Macedonia,’ says Miss Jane Harrison[620], ‘is instructive. On the coins of Orreskii, a centaur, a horse-man, bears off a woman in his arms. At Lete close at hand, with a coinage closely resembling in style, fabric, weight the money of the Orreskii and other Pangaean tribes, the type is the same in content, though with an instructive difference of form—a naked Satyr or Seilenos with the hooves, ears and tail of a horse seizes a woman round the waist.... This interchange of types, Satyr and Centaur, is evidence about which there can be no mistake. Satyr and Centaur, slightly diverse types of the horse-man, are in essence one and the same.’ Nor was the recognition of this fact confined to Macedonia. A famous picture by Zeuxis, representing the domestic life of Centaurs, with a female Centaur (a creature about as rare as a female Callicantzaros) suckling her young, pourtrayed her in most respects, apart from her sex, conventionally, but gave her the ears of a Satyr[621]. And reversely Nonnus ventured to describe the ‘shaggy Satyrs’ as being, ‘by blood, of Centaur-stock[622].’ In view then of this close bond between the two types of half-human half-animal creatures, it would be natural that, when the specific name Satyr was lost, as it has been lost, from the popular language, while the generic term Centaur survived in the form Callicantzaros, the Satyrs should have been amalgamated with those who from of old had professed and called themselves Centaurs; and with the Satyrs, I suppose, went also the Sileni.
Thus the word Centaur, in spite of the narrowing tendencies of Greek art which selected the hippocentaur as the ideal type, was always comprehensive in popular use, and perhaps became even wider in scope as time went on and the distinctive appellations of Satyrs and suchlike were forgotten; but it is also possible that from the very earliest times the distinction between Satyrs and Centaurs was merely an artistic and literary convention, and that in popular speech the name Centaur was applied to both without discrimination. But it does not really concern us to argue at length the question whether the common-folk in antiquity never distinguished, or, having once distinguished, subsequently confused the Satyrs and the Centaurs. It is just worth noticing that it was in art of the Greco-Roman period, so far as I can discover, that horse-centaurs first began to be represented along with Satyrs and Sileni in the entourage of Dionysus; and if this addition to the conventional treatment of such scenes was made, as seems likely, in deference to popular beliefs, the date by which the close association of the two classes was an accomplished fact and confusion of them therefore likely to ensue is approximately determined.