Characters
- Artemis — object of Ixion’s lust; her honor defended by Zeus’s ruse
- Centaurs — race sprung from Centaurus and the mares of Magnesia
- Centaurus — offspring of Ixion and Nephele; sire of the Centaurs
- Deioneus — father-in-law murdered by Ixion (prelude)
- Ixion — Lapith king; murderer; violates hospitality and desires Hera; bound on the wheel
- Nephele — the cloud-image of Hera; mother of Centaurus
Places
- Mount Pelion — where Centaurus sires the Centaur race
- Thessaly — Ixion’s kingdom
- Underworld — scene of the crime against hospitality
Themes
Narrative
Ixion, king of the Lapiths in Thessaly (son of Phlegyas or Ares in varying genealogies), murdered his father-in-law Deioneus by treachery after inviting him to collect bridal gifts, then could find no one on earth willing to purify him. Zeus took pity, purified Ixion, and brought him to share the gods’ table on Olympus—an extraordinary honor for a mortal.
There Ixion desired Hera. Zeus formed a cloud (*Nephele*) in Hera’s likeness and laid it where Ixion would seize it. Ixion lay with the cloud and thus proved his lust and ingratitude. From that union was born Centaurus (Kentauros), a being who later mated with Magnesian mares on Pelion and fathered the race of Centaurs—horse-human hybrids of the Thessalian mountains. (Some strands treat the Centaurs as born more directly from the cloud; the handbook line through Centaurus is the clearest etiology.)
Zeus bound Ixion on a winged (or fiery) wheel that turns forever in the air or in the underworld, a warning against guests who violate the host and against desire for the wife of Zeus. Pindar uses the tale as a moral exemplum: repay benefactors; do not reach for what belongs to the gods.