Editing Centaur (section)

===Classical literature===
Jerome's version of the ''Life'' of St [[Anthony the Great]], written by [[Athanasius of Alexandria]] about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in ''The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul the Hermit'' by the painter [[Stefano di Giovanni]], who was known as "Sassetta".<ref>[[National Gallery of Art]], Washington, DC: [http://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html illustration] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210109131636/https://www.wga.hu/support/viewer/z.html |date=January 9, 2021 }}.</ref> Of the two episodic depictions of the [[Anthony the Great|hermit Anthony]]'s travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood.

[[Lucretius]], in his first-century BC philosophical poem ''[[On the Nature of Things]],'' denied the existence of centaurs, based on the differing rates of growth of human and equine anatomies. Specifically, he states that at the age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible.<ref>Lucretius, ''On the Nature of Things'', book V, translated by William Ellery Leonard, 1916 ([https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Lucr.+5.878 The Perseus Project].) Retrieved July 27, 2008.</ref>