The Centauromachy

The wedding feast

The Centauromachy is the battle between the Lapiths, a people of Thessaly, and the Centaurs, beings who lived in the mountains. It begins at a feast in the hall of Peirithous, a hero of the Lapiths.

In the version told by the ancient writer Apollodorus, the feast is the wedding of Peirithous. He invites all the Centaurs, because they are kin to his bride. The Centaurs are not used to wine. They become drunk and try to violate her. The hero Theseus fights beside Peirithous and kills many of them.

The poet Ovid gives the fullest surviving account of the scene. His Centaur Eurytus seizes the bride, Hippodame, while the guests are still in their places. The other Centaurs follow his example and grab women around the hall. The wedding turns into a battle.

The fight in the hall

Ovid spends more than 300 lines on the fighting. Cups, antlers, stones and burning wood become weapons. Then the battle breaks into single combats, and Ovid names death after death as the Lapiths and their allies fight back. Caeneus, whom no weapon can pierce, is buried beneath trees.

Ovid’s account supplies the joined bodies familiar from later art. But it also keeps in view the people who were attacked at the feast, among the long list of wounds.

The Centauromachy is the action between these two peoples. An offence inside the household of Peirithous widens into a war. Ancient poets and sculptors could rearrange that war without ever settling on one version.

Homer’s older version

Ovid’s account is late. The Odyssey, the much earlier epic poem of Homer, tells a smaller story. One Centaur named Eurytion enters the hall of Peirithous, drinks too much and commits an act of violence. The heroes gathered there cut off his ears and nose and drag him out through the doorway.

Homer says the feud between Centaurs and humans begins there. He mentions no bride and does not call the gathering a wedding. In his version, the offence of Eurytion alone is the cause.

The difference changes the size of the story. In Homer, one guest commits one crime. In Apollodorus and Ovid, every Centaur at the wedding joins the attack.

Pelion after the feud

The Iliad, the other epic poem of Homer, ties the result of the feud to Mount Pelion. On the day the hero Polypoetes is born, Peirithous punishes the beings who live on the mountain and drives them from Pelion towards the Aethices.

Apollodorus later explains why Chiron lived at Malea: the Lapiths drove him from the mountain.

Neither passage places the wedding of Peirithous on Pelion. The Odyssey names only the hall. The later accounts of the wedding do not set it in any destination this collection covers. Pelion belongs to the stories of the Lapiths, the Centaurs and Chiron. The battle itself survives in stone at Olympia.

The battle on the Temple of Zeus

The Temple of Zeus at Olympia was built around 476 to 457 BC. A pediment is the triangular space under the roof at each end of a temple. The west pediment, carved in Parian marble, showed the Centauromachy. The east pediment showed the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos. The whole west group measured about 26 metres across, with figures larger than life filling the triangle.

The ancient traveller Pausanias says Peirithous stands at the centre. On one side, Eurytion has seized the wife of Peirithous and Caeneus protects him. On the other side, Theseus fights with an axe.

The surviving sculpture does not fit that reading easily. The central figure is larger and calmer than the fighters, and modern scholars generally identify him as the god Apollo. How the bride, the Centaurs and the two heroes were arranged is still disputed.

What survives at Olympia

The fragments were dug up at Olympia from 1875 onwards. They preserve parts of 19 original figures, broken and worn by weather. Two more figures were added to the pediment later. The Archaeological Museum of Olympia now holds the pediments and the metopes, or carved panels, from the Temple of Zeus.

The sculpture ties the Centauromachy to Olympia, but it does not claim that the wedding happened there. Its most striking figure also shows where the account of Pausanias falls short. Pausanias calls him Peirithous, but the surviving figure stands apart from the battle as a god.