The archer
Sagittarius is usually drawn as a centaur with a bow. Hyginus disagrees: centaurs did not use bows, he says, and the archer is Crotus, a satyr who lived with the Muses.
In the tradition
Hyginus reports that most people call the figure a centaur, then argues it is Crotus, son of Pan and of the Muses’ nurse, who invented archery and applause. The Muses asked Zeus to place him in the sky.
The wise centaur Chiron, often named as the archer, has his own constellation, Centaurus. The Babylonians drew a winged centaur archer here, and that picture is the one that lasted.
Sources
- Hyginus, De Astronomia (1st century BCE or later). The Latin handbook of constellation myths, often giving several versions side by side.
- Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi (Hellenistic, surviving in an epitome). A collection of the myths told about how each constellation came to be in the sky.
Updated October 9, 2026.
See it in your own profile
Caelumia reads your whole birth chart and your numbers together, and shows where they agree. Your profile is free to start, and your first results appear while you answer.