ABSTRACT
Daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, whom the god Cronos found in Thessaly as he looked for the infant Zeus whom his wife Rhea had concealed. Cronos took on the appearance of a horse, either to escape Rhea’s notice or because Philyra, in order to avoid him, had assumed the form of a mare. When her baby was born, Philyra was so shocked to see a creature in the form of a Centaur that she prayed the gods to change her shape: Zeus then turned her into a lime tree-which is what her name means. Her son was Chiron, the first and best of the Centaurs. In another version of the myth Philyra did not become a tree but eventually took up her dwelling in Chiron’s cave on Mount Pelion and helped him to educate the Greek heroes.
