In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Pholus was a wise centaur

Centaur

In Greek mythology, a centaur or hippocentaur is a member of a composite race of creatures, part human and part horse...

 and friend of Heracles

Heracles

Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

 who lived in a cave on or near Mount Pelion

Pelion

Pelion or Pelium is a mountain at the southeastern part of Thessaly in central Greece, forming a hook-like peninsula between the Pagasetic Gulf and the Aegean Sea...

.

The differing accounts vary in details, but each story contains the following elements: Herakles visited his cave sometime before or after the completion of his fourth Labor, the capture of the Erymanthian Boar

Erymanthian Boar

In Greek mythology, the Erymanthian Boar is remembered in connection with The Twelve Labours, in which Heracles, the enemy of Hera, visited in turn "all the other sites of the Goddess throughout the world, to conquer every conceivable 'monster' of nature and rededicate the primordial world to its...

. When Herakles drank from a jar of wine in the possession of Pholus, the neighboring centaurs smelled its fragrant odor and, driven characteristically mad, charged into the cave. The majority were slain by Herakles, and the rest were chased to another location (in a work attributed to Apollodorus

Apollodorus

Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...

, Cape Meleia) where the peaceful centaur Chiron

Chiron

In Greek mythology, Chiron was held to be the superlative centaur among his brethren.-History:Like the satyrs, centaurs were notorious for being wild and lusty, overly indulgent drinkers and carousers, given to violence when intoxicated, and generally uncultured delinquents...

 was accidentally wounded by the arrows of Herakles which were soaked in the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra

Lernaean Hydra

In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic water beast, with reptilian traits, that possessed many heads — the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint, and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath so virulent even...

. In most accounts, Chiron surrendered his immortality to be free from the agony of the poison.

While this pursuit and second combat was occurring, Pholus, back in his cave, accidentally wounded himself with one of the venomous arrows while he was either marveling at how such a small thing could kill a centaur (Apollodorus) or preparing the corpses for burial (Diodoros). He died quickly as a result of the poison's outrageous virulence and was found by Herakles.

Much later, authors like Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...

 (in his De Astronomia) became confused with these details since Chiron and Pholus, both being the only civilized centaurs in Greek myth, died in the same story. Consequently, his writings in places exhibit a conflation of details as a result of his typical inaccuracy.

In the Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...

 Pholus is found with the other centaurs patrolling the banks of the river Phlegethon in the seventh circle of Hell.

Pholus, Chiron, and the other Centaurs

It is well known that Chiron, the famously civilized centaur, had origins which differed from those of the other centaurs. Chiron was the son of Cronus

Cronus

In Greek mythology, Cronus or Kronos was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants of Gaia, the earth, and Uranus, the sky...

 and a minor goddess Philyra

Philyra

- Oceanid :In Greek mythology, Philyra was an Oceanid, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Chiron was her son by Cronus. When she gave birth to her son, she was so disgusted by how he looked that she abandoned him at birth. She was the goddess of perfume, writing, healing, beauty and paper...

, which accounted for his exceptional intelligence and honor, whereas the other centaurs were bestial and brutal, being the descendants of the unholy rape of a minor cloud-goddess

Nephele

In Greek mythology, Nephele was a cloud nymph who figured prominently in the story of Phrixus and Helle.Greek myth also has it that Nephele is the cloud whom Zeus created in the image of Hera to trick Ixion to test his integrity after displaying his lust for Hera during a feast as a guest of Zeus...

 by the mortal king Ixion

Ixion

In Greek mythology, Ixion was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly, and a son of Ares, or Leonteus, or Antion and Perimele, or the notorious evildoer Phlegyas, whose name connotes "fiery". Peirithoös was his son...

. Where Chiron was immortal and could die only voluntarily, the other centaurs were mortal like men and animals.

Pholus, like Chiron, was civilized, and indeed in art sometimes shared the "human-centaur" form in which Chiron was usually depicted (that is, he was a man from head to toe, but with the center and hindparts of a horse attached to his buttocks). This form was of course used to differentiate Chiron and Pholus from all other centaurs, who were mostly represented as men only from the head to the waist, and therefore more animal-like.

To further account for the unusually civil behavior of Pholus, Apollodorus wrote that his parents were Silenus

Silenus

In Greek mythology, Silenus was a companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus.-Evolution of the character:The original Silenus resembled a folklore man of the forest with the ears of a horse and sometimes also the tail and legs of a horse...

 and one of the Meliae

Meliae

In Greek mythology, the Meliae or Meliai were nymphs of the ash tree, whose name they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when Cronus castrated Uranus, according to Hesiod, Theogony 187. From the same blood sprang the Erinyes, suggesting that the ash-tree nymphs represented the...

, thus differentiating him genealogically from the other centaurs, as Chiron was known to be. This different parentage apparently did not carry with it immortality, however, and Pholus died just as the other centaurs.

Sources

• Gantz, Timothy. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources.