Everything is larger for them. Their days are our years. So, while Hera did not forget Hercules, she had other grudges to settle. And when she turned her attention to him again a few weeks later—in her time—he was almost sixteen years old, an enormous youth, bigger and stronger than any man in Thebes and still growing. He did not live at home with his parents and his brother but in the wild hills of Thessaly where he was being tutored by a very wise creature named Chiron, who was only half man, the other half being horse. That is, he had a horse’s body up to the neck, but from that body sprouted the chest, head, and arms of a man. The tribe he belonged to was called the centaurs. They too were hated by Hera, who, indeed, had made them become the way they were. Long before, Zeus had happened to admire a beautiful maiden of Thessaly and had been unwise enough to let Hera know. “Look at her,” he said one day. “Down there in Thessaly—that girl running through the fields. Isn’t she lovely?
