Lapiths- Greek RaceRace"People of Thessaly"

Kin to the Centaurs

The Lapiths inhabited the valley of the Peneus River and the slopes of Mount Pelion in Thessaly. Their king Ixion was a guest of Zeus on Olympus when he tried to seduce Hera. Zeus shaped a cloud into Hera's likeness, and Ixion lay with the phantom. From this union the centaurs were born. The Lapiths and centaurs were therefore kin by blood.

The Centauromachy

At the wedding feast of King Pirithous and his bride Hippodamia, the centaurs, invited as kinsmen, were unaccustomed to wine and grew violently drunk. The centaur Eurytion seized Hippodamia and tried to carry her off. The Lapiths rose to defend her, and the battle raged through the hall and out into the countryside. Ovid describes centaurs tearing flaming logs from the hearth and hurling bronze mixing bowls. Among the Lapiths, Caeneus fought without receiving a wound. Once a woman named Caenis, she had been assaulted by Poseidon, who granted her wish to become a man with impenetrable skin. The centaurs, unable to pierce him, buried Caeneus alive under a heap of tree trunks. Theseus, attending as Pirithous's friend, fought alongside the Lapiths and helped drive the centaurs from Thessaly. The battle was carved on the south metopes of the Parthenon and the west pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia.

In the Iliad

The aged Nestor recalls the Lapiths to shame Achilles and Agamemnon into ending their quarrel. He tells them that in his youth he traveled from Pylos to Thessaly, where he fought alongside Pirithous, Dryas, Caeneus, and Exadius against the centaurs in the mountain forests. These men, Nestor says, were so strong that no warriors alive could match them — and even they listened to his counsel.