Pholus was the hospitable centaur of Arcadian Pholoe, a son of Silenus by a Melian nymph, who entertained Heracles on the quest for the Erymanthian boar and died when one of Heracles' own poisoned arrows, slipping from his hand, fell upon his foot.1
Passing through Pholoe on his way to take the Erymanthian boar, Heracles was received as a guest by the centaur Pholus, son of Silenus by a Melian nymph. Pholus set roast meat before his guest while eating his own raw, but when Heracles called for wine he feared to open the jar that belonged to the centaurs in common. At Heracles' bidding he opened it nonetheless, and the scent drew the wild centaurs, armed with rocks and firs, to his cave.2
Heracles beat back the first attackers with brands and shot the rest, pursuing them as far as Malea, where they took refuge with Chiron. As the centaurs cowered about him, an arrow passed through the arm of Elatus and stuck in the knee of Chiron, who was wounded by accident; the others scattered, Eurytion to Pholoe, Nessus to the river Evenus, while Poseidon hid the rest at Eleusis. The fight done, Pholus drew an arrow from a corpse and marvelled that so small a thing could kill such great creatures; the shaft slipped from his hand, fell upon his foot, and killed him on the spot. Returning, Heracles found Pholus dead, buried him, and went on to the boar hunt.3
An alternate tradition makes Pholus a figure of the stars. Hyginus reports that some identify the constellation Centaurus not with Chiron but with Pholus, who was more skilled in augury than the rest, and who by the will of Jupiter is shown bringing a victim to the altar.4
Pholus belonged to the wider centaur tradition beyond his own famous tale. In Ovid's account of the brawl against the Lapiths, a different battle of the same centaur-war cycle, Pholus and Melaneus run for their lives, and with them Abas the hunter of boars, a passing notice that fixes him as a recognized figure of the centaur war.5
His name stayed anchored to the land and to art. Among the reliefs on the throne of Apollo at Amyclae, Pausanias records the battle of the Centaurs at the cave of Pholus, proof that the episode at his Arcadian cavern was a depicted, cult-anchored scene and not a literary detail alone.6
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