Talk:Chiron

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Comments[edit]

Chiron appears in Goethes Faust as well, where he showns Faust the route to Helena

You should tell us researchers at least where its located: that makes us feel very bad: (anonymous)

As you wish: done! --Wetman 06:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please, provide pronunciation help for words that are foreign or new to many..

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Saltlakejohn (talk • contribs) 16:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Chiron is the alias of the founder and copyright holder of "Chiron's Forex Trading Strategy""

Is there a reference for this statement? --Gar2chan 02:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"He had the gift of guiding his pupils to uncovering their highest potential..." Uh-oh. This doesn't have the authentic ring of mythological thinking. In fact it bears the distinct stamp of career counselling in an American high school. Some text that echoed or at least directly reflected Greek and Roman sources would make a start towards improvement. Ruck and Staples? J.E. Harrison? Anyone? --Wetman 09:23, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Telamon has been added to the list of Chiron's pupils by an anonymous editor. Can anyone provide the text that links Chiron and Telamon? --Wetman 08:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Centaur of Delta Lambda Phi has no name; he is based upon Chiron, but it not Chiron. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 22warrior (talk • contribs) 02:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2060_Chiron -rudyard (talk) 06:55, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced essay[edit]

I have moved the following unsourced personal essay here: there seems no need to counter it point by point--Wetman (talk) 00:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC):[reply]

A likely prototype of the figure of Chiron was the mythic hero Enkidu who appears in both the Sumerian and Akkadian versions of the Gilgamesh Epic as a a mentor of the hero Gilgamesh (see A. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic p. 143). Enkidu, like Chiron, was a mixed being, part man and part bull. He can be identified on the basis of a representation on a gold beaker from the site of modern Hasanlu in western Iran with the constellation of Centaurus, His role as a figure in the realm of the dead fits well with the location of Centaurus in the extreme southern sky from a Mesopotamian perspective.

Insignificant Trivia[edit]

Wikipedia is a tertiary source. This means that Wikipedia is a catalogue of secondary sources and is not a venue for original search. This means that - in principle - everything included in Wikipedia should be tied to a secondary source and sourced. Everything without a source is subject to deletion without cause. No factoid is innocent until proven guilty. If it doesn't have a source it should be gone. This allows us the luxury of having less stuff with more confidence it is right rather than more stuff where we have no idea what is right or what is wrong. Some things may be allowed to remain unsourced as a courtesy. On top of this, the requirement of the existence of a secondary source ensures significance. If no writer of any secondary source out there has bothered to mention a factoid, it is probably insignificant and not worthy of inclusion. The more insignificant nonsense that gets included, the harder a reader has to work to get significant information out of an article.

In fact, you will notice that truth is not a sufficient condition for inclusion. It is truth as evidence by a secondary source. Typically truth not evidenced by a secondary source is original research, and thus does not merit inclusion. It may be true that in some book the character Joe Bob was nicknamed "Grendel", and you know this is true because you read the book, but this is original research since you are not using a secondary source.Ekwos (talk) 03:38, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dates needed for photographs[edit]

The photographs of amphorae need a date for the object depicted in order to give it a proper time period. If the editor who included the photographs could help with this, then it would be much appreciated. Thanks 78.146.132.102 Classics (talk) 08:28, 6 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced legends[edit]

The articles says "In other legends, it was Proteus who helped Peleus". Which legends are those?

ICE77 (talk) 06:03, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Constellation[edit]

LSJ has an entry for "Χείρων", but does not say it was also the name of a constellation. Latin Chiro or Chiron is a poetic name for a constellation. Source: Lewis & Short, entry "Chīron", quote: "As a constellation, Luc. 9, 536.". But the dictionary as well as other dictionaries do not identify it with any constellation. In Luc. it is: "par Geminis Chiron, et idem, quod Carcinos ardens, / umidus Aegoceros nec plus Leo tollitur Vrna." I don't know if one can identify Chiro/Chiron with any constellation here.
This work states: "We have already noticed the confusion in the myths and titles of this zodiacal Centaur with those of the southern Centaur, some thinking Sagittarius the Χείρων of the Greeks,--Chiron with Hyginus and the Romans; although Eratosthenes and others, as did the modern Ideler, understood this name to refer to the Centaur proper. Ovid's Centaurus, however, and Milton's Centaur are the zodiac figure, as had been the case with sme later poets[.]"
So the article should include some more information and sources than just as "Chiron [...] was honored with a place in the sky, identified by the Greeks as the constellation Centaurus". -Poskim (talk) 21:12, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Immortality and death[edit]

If Chiron was immortal, how could he die because from an arrow poisoned with the blood of the Hydra? It's not clear if the poison was so powerful to even kill immortals, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, or if Chiron gave up his immortality first to save Prometheus and then got hit by the arrow and died poisoned as a result.

ICE77 (talk) 09:27, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Deleting "In popular culture" section[edit]

Unless someone objects to it within the next twelve hours or so, I will go ahead and delete the "In popular culture" section for this article. The following are my reasons for doing so:

1. It does not contain a single citation.

2. All of the information contained in it is completely irrelevant to the main subject of the article.

3. It very clearly qualifies as original research.

4. There seem to have been major complaints about it for quite a long time now, none of which have yet been sorted out. --Katolophyromai (talk) 19:59, 11 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Theseus[edit]

This article identifies, in two places, Theseus as one of the pupils of Chiron. In both places it is unsourced. Such an episode is not mentioned in our article Theseus and seems inconsistent with Theseus having been brought up by his grandfather Pittheus in Troezen until he went to Athens as a young man. It also makes it unlikely that he and Pirithous, who had been a pupil of Chiron, were strangers when they met as adults. I think the name of Theseus should be removed. Comments? -- MelanieN (talk) 18:26, 31 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology[edit]

According to the English Wiktionary, related to κακός (kakós, “bad, evil”). Does someone know a source for this? What could be the reason for this etymology or, more logically, does this indicate he wasn't originally a positive figure? According to the Greek Wiktionary, from χείρ (kheír, "hand"). --Espoo (talk) 15:52, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"kakós" is Latinized as Cacus, the name of enemy of Hercules from Roman mythology. Were the two figures confused? Dimadick (talk) 16:27, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Dimadick: I do not have a reference on hand at the moment, but the etymology given on the English Wiktionary claiming that Χείρων is derived from κακός sounds extremely implausible to me to say the least. The two words do not even have a single letter in common. The etymology from the Greek Wiktionary sounds much more plausible and it appears to be the etymology that is given in this article, although there is no source cited for it. —Katolophyromai (talk) 00:01, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The English Wiktionary entry has been updated, and a source added that speculates through evidence from comparative religion that it refers to the centaur having a healing hand. Arlo James Barnes 18:03, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Joke[edit]

I'm going to put this here even though I know it's off-topic: In Greek mythology, Chiron was a half-horse, half-man, known for his knowledge and skill with medicine. He was the Centaur for Disease Control. --Rpresser 18:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Category removal?[edit]

@Eric:, why were two of the categories removed? Both can be verified from sourced statements in the article itself. Deiadameian (talk) 21:59, 25 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I blundered and used rollback when I should have just done an undo on the LGBTQ cat. I restored Apollo. I did a quick skim of the article for something that could support the LGBTQ cat, but saw nothing, and presumed it was not a serious categorization. Eric ^talk 00:13, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Eric: For LGBT, in the "Students" paragraph:

According to Ptolemy Hephaestion (probably the same as Ptolemaeus Chennus), a writer and playwright whose works are now lost, Chiron was also the mentor of the god Dionysus (who became the centaur's eromenos, and learned from him chants and dances)

And it felt weird to me, because the "Consorts of Dionysus" category was not removed, which was based on the same statement. As for the "Deeds of Apollo" category which was also removed, I believe it is indisputable, as Apollo found and raised Chiron, so it definitely counts as a deed of Apollo. Deiadameian (talk) 08:47, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, eromenos was not in my vocabulary til this morning. But if we use this as a criterion for tagging the article for "LGBT themes--for something that is such a minor aspect of this article--would we not by the same token be compelled to tag all articles that mention or imply any heterosexual liaison with a "Heterosexual themes" cat? I must admit I probably tend to question many WP categorizations. Eric ^talk 13:28, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

All other LBGT characters of Greek myth have this category. So yes. Deiadameian (talk) 19:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I've never been one to perpetuate something here merely because it has become a habit among other editors. In cases like this, I tend to send up a flare and try to get other editors to re-think the habit. I'll stand back and you can re-add the cat if you really think it is appropriate and helpful. Eric ^talk 01:30, 27 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]