Centaurs
Half Man, Half Horse
The centaur is a mythological creature. Its head, arms, and chest are those of a human and the rest of its body is like that of a horse. There are also deer centaurs, dog centaurs, and the man-headed horse. Both Greeks and Etruscans sometimes painted a centaur-like animal with the entire body of a human.
Centaurs lived in herds on Mt. Pelion in Thessaly, Greece, and were a plague to the people around them. They went about drunk, eating raw flesh, trampling crops, and raping female humans. The intellectual parts they inherited from humankind left them ignorant, yet cunning. The Centaurs were creatures that were sometimes very hostile towards humans. They were always involved in brawls and battles. Often Zeus would send the Centaurs to punish gods and humans who had offended him.
The wicked centaurs are the opposites of the knight and the horseman. Instead of mastering or taming their instincts, these centaurs are ruled by them. They symbolize violent lust, adultery, brutality, vengefulness, heretics, and the Devil. They represent the struggle within each heart between good and evil, moderation and excess, passion and propriety, forgiveness and retaliation, belief and unbelief, god and beast.