Lapiths

File:The Parthenon sculptures, British Museum (14063376069) (2) (cropped).jpg

Metope from the Elgin Marbles depicting a Centaur and a Lapith fighting.

The Lapiths (Template:IPAc-en; Template:Langx, Lapithai, sing. Λαπίθης) were a group of legendary people in Greek mythology, who lived in Thessaly in the valley of the Pineios<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and on the mountain Pelion. They were believed to have descended from the mythical Lapithes, brother of Centaurus, with the two heroes giving their names to the races of the Lapiths and the Centaurs respectively. The Lapiths are best known for their involvement in the Centauromachy (Template:Langx), a mythical fight that broke out between them and the Centaurs during Pirithous and Hippodamia's wedding.

Mythology

Origin

The Lapiths were an Aeolian tribe who, like the Myrmidons, were natives of Thessaly. The genealogies make them a kindred people with the centaurs: In one version, Lapithes (Λαπίθης) and Centaurus (Κένταυρος) were said to be twin sons of the god Apollo and the nymph Stilbe, daughter of the river god Peneus. Lapithes was a valiant warrior, but Centaurus was a deformed being who later mated with mares from whom the race of half-man, half-horse centaurs came. Lapithes was the eponymous ancestor of the Lapith people,<ref>Homer, Iliad xii.128.</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and his descendants include Lapith warriors and kings, such as Ixion, Pirithous, Caeneus, and Coronus, and the seers Ampycus and his son Mopsus.

In the Iliad the Lapiths send forty crewed ships to join the Greek fleet in the Trojan War, commanded by Polypoetes (son of Pirithous) and Leonteus (son of Coronus, son of Caeneus). The mother of Pirithous, the Lapith queen in the generation before the Trojan War, was Dia, daughter of Eioneus or Deioneus; Ixion was the father of Pirithous, but like many heroic figures, Pirithous had an immortal as well as a mortal father.Template:Efn Zeus was his immortal father, but the god had to assume a stallion's form to cover Dia for, like their half-horse cousins, the Lapiths were horsemen in the grasslands of Thessaly, famous for its horses.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Lapiths were credited with inventing the bridle's bit. The Lapith King Pirithous was marrying the horsewoman Hippodameia, whose name means "tamer of horses", at the wedding feast that made a war, the Centauromachy, famous.

Centauromachy

File:Sarcofago con centauromachia, II secolo, da procoio di pianabella, 01.JPG

A centauromachy relief on an ancient Roman sarcophagus, Template:Circa AD, Museo Archeologico Ostiense.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In the Centauromachy, the Lapiths battle with the Centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous. The Centaurs had been invited, but, unused to wine, their wild nature came to the fore. When the bride, Hippodamia, was presented to greet the guests, the centaur Eurytion leapt up and attempted to abduct her. All the other centaurs were up in a moment, straddling women and boys. In the battle that ensued, Theseus came to the Lapiths' aid. They cut off Eurytion's ears and nose and threw him out. After the battle the defeated Centaurs were expelled from Thessaly to the northwest.

The Lapith Caeneus was originally a young woman named Caenis and the favorite of Poseidon, who changed her into a man at her request, and made Caeneus into an invulnerable warrior. Such warrior women, indistinguishable from men, were familiar among the Scythian horsemen too. In the battle with the centaurs Caeneus proved invulnerable, until the Centaurs crushed him with rocks and trunks of trees. He disappeared into the depths of the earth unharmed and was released as a sandy-headed bird.

In later contests, the Centaurs were not so easily beaten. Mythic references explained the presence into historic times of primitive Lapiths in Malea and in the brigand stronghold of Pholoe in Elis as remnants of groups driven there by the centaurs. Some historic Greek cities bore names connected with Lapiths, and the Kypselides of Corinth claimed descent from Cæneus, while the Phylaides of Attica claimed for progenitor Koronus the Lapith.

In art

File:Piero di Cosimo 015.jpg

Battle of Centaurs and Lapiths, by Piero di Cosimo (notice the female centaur with a male centaur in the foreground).

As Greek myth became more mediated through philosophy, the battle between Lapiths and Centaurs took on aspects of the interior struggle between civilized and wild behavior, made concrete in the Lapiths' understanding of the right usage of God-given wine, which must be tempered with water and drunk not to excess. The Greek sculptors of the school of Pheidias conceived of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs as a struggle between mankind and mischievous monsters, and symbolical of the great conflict between the civilized Greeks and "barbarians". Battles between Lapiths and Centaurs were depicted in the sculptured metopes on the Parthenon, recalling Athenian Theseus' treaty of mutual admiration with Pirithous the Lapith, leader of the Magnetes, and on Zeus' temple at Olympia<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Battle of the Lapiths and centaurs was a familiar symposium theme for the vase-painters.

A sonnet vividly evoking the battle by the French poet José María de Heredia (1842–1905) was included in his volume Les Trophées.Template:Efn In the Renaissance, the battle became a favorite theme for artists: An excuse to display close-packed bodies in violent confrontation. The young Michelangelo executed a marble bas-relief of the subject in Florence about 1492.<ref>Template:Cite AV mediaTemplate:Deadlink</ref> Piero di Cosimo's panel Battle of Centaurs and Lapiths, now at the National Gallery, London,<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> was painted during the following decade. If it was originally part of a marriage chest, or cassone, it was perhaps an uneasy subject for a festive wedding commemoration. A frieze with a Centauromachy was also painted by Luca Signorelli in his Virgin Enthroned with Saints (1491), inspired by a Roman sarcophagus found at Cortona, in Tuscany, during the early 15th century.

List of Lapiths

Lapiths
Names	Sources			Centauromachy		Notes
	Hesiod	Ovid	Others	Participant	Killed by
Actor		✓	<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	✓	Centaur Clanis
Ampyx		✓		✓
Caeneus	✓	✓		✓	buried alive by centaurs, or killed himself	was formerly a woman called Caenis
Broteas		✓		✓	Centaur Gryneus
Celadon		✓		✓	Centaur Amycus
Charaxus		✓		✓	Rhoetus
Cometes		✓		✓	Charaxus, his friend, accidentally
Corythus		✓		✓	Centaur Rhoetus
Cymelus		✓		✓	Centaur Nessus
Dryas	✓			✓		son of Ares or Iapetus<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Euagrus		✓		✓	Centaur Rhoetus
Exadius	✓	✓		✓
Halesus		✓		✓	Centaur Latreus
Hopleus	✓			✓
Macareus		✓		✓
Mopsus	✓	✓	<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	✓		son of Ampycus and a seer
Orius		✓		✓	Centaur Gryneus	son of Mycale
Pelates		✓		✓		a Lapith from Pella (in Macedonia)
Periphas		✓	<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	✓
Phalereus	✓			✓
Phorbas			<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	✓		son of Triopas or of Lapithus, son of Apollo
Polyphemus						son of Eilatus.<ref>Listed as an Argonaut in Template:Cite book</ref>
Pirithous	✓			✓
Prolochus	✓			✓
Tectaphus		✓		✓	Centaur Phaecomes	son of Olenus
Other allies
Crantor		✓		✓	Centaur Demoleon	son of Amyntor
Nestor		✓		✓
Peleus		✓		✓
Theseus	✓	✓		✓

Sources

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External links

• Template:Commonscatinline
• The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database (images of Lapiths and Centaurs)