Everything about Lapith totally explained
In
Greek mythology, the
Lapiths were a legendary people, whose home was in
Thessaly, in the valley of the
Peneus and on the mountain
Pelion. Like the
Myrmidons and other Thessalian tribes, the Lapiths were pre-Hellenic in their origins. The genealogies make them a kindred people with the
Centaurs: in one version,
Lapithes and
Centaurus 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 half-man, half-horse
Centaurs sprang. Lapithes was the
eponymous ancestor of the Lapith people, and his descendants include Lapith warriors and kings, such as
Ixion,
Pirithous,
Caeneus, and
Coronus, and the seers
Idmon and
Mopsus.
In the
Iliad the Lapiths sent forty manned ships, commanded by
Polypoetes (son of Pirithous) and
Leonteus (son of Coronus, son of Caeneus). The mother of Pirithous, the Lapith king 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. 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. The Lapiths were credited with inventing the
bridle's bit. In fact, the Lapith king Pirithous was marrying the horsewoman
Hippodameia, "tamer of horses", at the wedding feast that a battle, the Centauromachy, made famous.
Centauromachy
The best-known legend with which the Lapiths are connected is their battle with the Centaurs at the wedding feast of Pirithous, the
Centauromachy. The Centaurs had been invited, but, unused to wine, their wild nature came to the fore. When the bride was presented to greet the guests, the centaur
Eurytion leapt up and attempted to rape 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. In the battle the Lapith Caeneus was killed, and the defeated Centaurs were expelled from Thessaly to the northwest.
Caeneus was a well-known Lapith, originally a girl named Caenis and the favourite of
Poseidon, who changed her into a man at her request and made her an invulnerable warrior. Such warrior women, indistinguishable from men, were familiar among the
Scythian horsemen too (see the entry "
Amazons") .In the Centaur battle, Caeneus proved invulnerable, until the Centaurs simply 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.
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
Persian "
barbarians". Battles between Lapiths and Centaurs were depicted in the sculptured friezes on the
Parthenon, recalling Athenian
Theseus' treaty of mutual admiration with Pirithous the Lapith, leader of the
Magnetes, and on Zeus' temple at
Olympia (
Pausanias, v.10.8). 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. 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.
Piero di Cosimo's panel (
illustration) now at the
National Gallery, London, 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.
Further Information
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