Centauromachy

Half-men, half-horses, the Centaurs were a wild race who lived in the mountains of Thessaly. Nearby lived the Lapiths, whose leader Pirithous was a son of Ixion, the man who was also the ancestor of the Centaurs. At the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia the Centaurs got drunk and tried to carry off the women, and a fight broke out between the two peoples. It is remembered as the Centauromachy, the battle of the Centaurs, and it is one of the most often told fights in Greek myth.

The Centaurs

Most of the Centaurs were wild and lawless; Chiron, the teacher of heroes, and Pholus, the host of Heracles, are the famous exceptions. Their origin was told in two ways. In the first, Ixion tried to seduce Hera, and Zeus fashioned a cloud in her likeness, Nephele; Ixion lay with it and the Centaurs were born (Diodorus Siculus 4.69.5). Pindar tells it more precisely: Nephele bore a monstrous son, Centaurus, and Centaurus mated with the mares of Magnesia in the valleys of Pelion, and the offspring were a tribe that took their lower parts from their mothers and their upper parts from their father (Pindar, Pythian 2.42–48). In the second, which Diodorus also records, the Centaurs were raised by nymphs on Mount Pelion and, when grown, mated with mares, producing the Hippocentaurs (Diodorus Siculus 4.70.1).

The Lapiths

The Lapiths were the people of Thessaly who took their name from Lapithes, a son of Apollo and Stilbe, daughter of the river Peneius, according to Diodorus (4.69.1–2). Ixion was Lapithes’ descendant through Periphas and Antion, and he married Dia, daughter of Eioneus; she bore Pirithous (Diodorus Siculus 4.69.3). Homer, however, calls Pirithous a son of Zeus: Polypoetes, “son of Pirithous whom immortal Zeus begot,” led the Thessalian forces at Troy (Iliad 2.741), while Zeus himself speaks of having loved Ixion’s wife, “who bore Pirithous, the counsellor equal to the gods” (Iliad 14.317–318). Ixion is therefore the grandfather of the Centaurs in Pindar’s version, where Centaurus is his son, and their father in Diodorus’s.

The Events Preceding the Battle

The Question of the Rightful Ruler

Diodorus preserves a tradition of an earlier quarrel. The Centaurs, he says, demanded of Pirithous their share of their father’s kingdom on the grounds of kinship, and when he refused they made war on him and the Lapiths. Later the two sides made peace (Diodorus Siculus 4.70.2–3). Homer also remembers a war: on the day Hippodamia bore Pirithous his son Polypoetes, Pirithous “took vengeance on the shaggy beasts,” drove them from Pelion and pressed them toward the Aethices (Iliad 2.742–744).

The Wedding of Pirithous and Hippodamia

When Pirithous married Hippodamia, daughter of Butes in Diodorus’s account (Deidameia in Plutarch, Theseus 30), he invited Theseus and the Centaurs to the wedding (Diodorus Siculus 4.70.3; Plutarch, Theseus 30.3). The oldest account of the quarrel, in the Odyssey, does not mention the wedding: the wine blinded the Centaur Eurytion in the hall of Pirithous when he came among the Lapiths; maddened, he did evil in the house, the heroes dragged him out through the doorway and cut off his ears and nose, “and from that time there was strife between the Centaurs and men” (Odyssey 21.295–304).

Ovid, whose version is the fullest, sets the feast in a shaded cave, with the Centaurs and the Thessalian chiefs at tables, and has Nestor, who was present, tell the story. The bride is led in, and Eurytus (Homer’s Eurytion), “wildest of the wild Centaurs,” hot with wine and desire, seizes Hippodamia by the hair; the other Centaurs take the women they like, and the house sounds with women’s cries, “like a captured town” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.210–225).

The Battle (Centauromachy)

Theseus vs. Eurytion

Theseus, the friend of Pirithous, is the first to answer. In Ovid he asks Eurytus what madness drives him to wrong two men at once while Theseus lives, pushes back the attackers and takes the bride from them. Eurytus answers by striking Theseus in the face, and Theseus snatches up a huge ancient mixing-bowl decorated with raised figures and hurls it into the Centaur’s face. Eurytus dies on the wet ground, spewing blood, brains and wine, and the other Centaurs cry “to arms” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.226–241). The first cups and jars of the feast become the first missiles (12.242–244). Plutarch confirms that Theseus fought with them both at the banquet and in the war that followed (Theseus 30.3).

Latreus vs. Caeneus

The most famous Lapith in the fight was Caeneus. He had been born the girl Caenis, daughter of Elatus; Poseidon lay with her, and in return she asked to be made a man who could not be wounded by iron, and he granted it (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.189–209; Apollodorus, Epitome 1.22). In the battle Caeneus had already killed five Centaurs (Ovid 12.459–461). Then the huge Centaur Latreus came out wearing armor taken from a man he had killed and jeered at him: for Latreus he was still Caenis, and should go back to the wool basket and leave war to men. Caeneus caught him in the side with a thrown spear. Furious, Latreus struck Caeneus in the face, but the blow bounced off like hail from a roof; his sword could not enter the Lapith’s flank and broke against it, and Caeneus then drove his own sword into the Centaur to the hilt (Ovid 12.462–493). Homer already lists Caeneus among the heroes who fought “the mountain-dwelling beasts” (Iliad 1.264–268), and Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles names him on the shield with Pirithous, Dryas, Mopsus and Theseus (Shield 178–190).

The Death of Caeneus

The Centaurs hurled their spears at him all at once, but the weapons bounced off and he stood unwounded. Monychus then cried out that they were being beaten by one man, who was barely a man, and ordered them to bury him under rocks and tree trunks. Ovid says Othrys was stripped bare of trees and Pelion left without shade (Ovid 12.494–513). Under the pile Caeneus struggled, gasping for air. Some, Nestor says, believed he was driven down to Tartarus; but Mopsus, the seer, saw a bird with tawny wings fly out of the heap into the air and hailed it: “Hail, glory of the Lapith race, once the greatest of men, now a unique bird, Caeneus” (Ovid 12.514–531). In another version, Apollodorus says the Centaurs struck him with fir trees and drove him into the earth (Epitome 1.22).

The Outcome

Ovid’s Nestor says that grief made the Lapiths angry, and they did not stop until part of the Centaurs were dead and the rest were scattered by flight and night (Ovid 12.532–535). Homer says Pirithous drove them from Pelion to the Aethices (Iliad 2.743–744), and Plutarch says the Lapiths expelled them from the country (Theseus 30.3). The survivors later met Heracles. Apollodorus tells that Chiron had been driven from Mount Pelion by the Lapiths and lived at Malea, where the Centaurs fled after Heracles fought them at Pholus’s cave; Eurytion fled to Pholoe, and Nessus to the river Evenus (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.4). Nessus, who ferried travellers across the Evenus, was later killed there by Heracles (Apollodorus, Library 2.7.6).

The battle also became a subject for sculptors. Pausanias describes it on the back pediment at Olympia: Pirithous in the middle, Eurytion seizing his bride, Caeneus helping, Theseus defending himself with an axe, and Centaurs holding a maid and a boy (Pausanias 5.10.8).