View source for Ipotane

{{Short description|Mythical Creature}}
[[File:Melville ipotane.png|thumb|An ipotane as depicted in ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'']]
'''Ipotanes''' or '''hippotaynes''' are mythical creatures. They are usually depicted as being half-human half-horse creatures much different from the [[centaur]]s. Although sometimes attributed to [[Greek mythology]], the term appears to have originated at a much later date, and without a definite description; they are first mentioned in [[John de Mandeville]]'s fourteenth-century ''Travels''.  Ipotanes appear in modern works of the [[fantasy genre]].

==John de Mandeville==
In his 1356 travelogue, ''The Travels of Sir John Mandeville'',<ref>Charles Knight, ''Charles Knight's Popular History of England'', vol. 2, p. 13, London: Bradbury, Evans, & Company, 1862–67 {{oclc|942643783}}.</ref> the author reports the existence of a violent race of ''ipotanes'', found in Bacharie ([[Bactria]]).
{{quote|...ben many Ipotanes that dwellen sometime in the water and sometime on the land; and thei ben half men and half hors and thei eten men when thei may take him|Wyken and Worde, 1499.<ref name="Vinycomb">John Vinycomb, ''Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art'', p. 144, Gale Research Company, 1906 {{ISBN|0810331470}}.</ref>}}  More recent editions of Mandeville's work use various spellings; ''hippotaynes'' (Macmillan, 1900),<ref>Sir John Mandeville, A.W. Pollard (ed), ''The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville'', p. 177, London: Macmillan & Co., 1900 {{oclc|1268064505}}</ref> ''hippopotami'' (Penguin, 1983).<ref>Sir John Mandeville, C.W.R.D. Pollard (trans), ''The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville'', p. 167, Penguin, 1983 {{oclc|1261243004}}.</ref>

==Description==
The word "ipotane" appears to be derived from the Greek {{lang|grc|ιππότης}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|hippotes}}), "a knight", which itself is derived from {{lang|grc|ίππος}} ({{lang|grc-Latn|hippos}}), "a horse".<ref>Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', [https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.02412/page/707/mode/2up p. 708], Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890 {{oclc|493157397}}.</ref> Mandeville's description is not clearly distinguishable from that of a [[centaur]], and some depictions use the term synonymously.<ref name="Vinycomb"/> Some depictions show ipotanes with a [[human]] body and a [[horse]]'s head. Other depictions have them as humans with the hindquarters of a horse.

==Modern literature==
Despite their similarity to centaurs, ipotanes are not mentioned in the corpus of Greek and Roman literature.  However, they appear in modern works of fantasy literature, in which they are depicted with various combinations of horse-like and human features.<ref>{{multiref|For example,|Nancy A. Collins, ''Right Hand Magic: A Novel of Golgotham'', Penguin, 2010 {{ISBN|1101445777}}|Amanda Bouchet, ''A Promise of Fire'', Hachette UK, 2016 {{ISBN|0349412537}}.}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Glaistig]], Scottish folklore
* [[Hippopodes]], Greek myth
* [[BoJack Horseman (character)|BoJack Horseman]], fictional character

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:Horses in mythology]]
[[Category:Mythological human–animal hybrids]]