On Representations of Centaurs in Greek Vase-Painting

Abstract

Before coming to the discussion of the three unpublished vase-paintings which illustrate this article, and of the questions which they suggest (Plates I., II., III.), it will be proper to give some account of the Centaurs in general, as figured on the painted vases of the Greeks. The passages or episodes of the Centaur myth habitually illustrated in this form of art are five in number, viz.:—1. The battle of the Centaurs and Lapithae at the wedding feast of Peirithoos and Hippodameia, or Deidameia, on Mount Pelion; when the Centaurs, being present as guests, maddened themselves with wine, and one of them seized the bride; whereupon a general conflict ensued, ending in the rout of the monsters and their expulsion from Thessaly.This battle is said by Aelian to have been made the subject of a separate poem by an early epic writer, Melisandros of Miletus; but neither of Melisandros nor his work have we any other record. In our extant writings, allusion is made to the battle twice in the Iliad: once where Nestor extols the Lapith warriors, whom he had known in his youth, as having been the mightiest of earthly heroes, and having quelled the mightiest foes, to wit the Centaurs; and again in the catalogue of ships, where the Thessalian leader Polypoites is commemorated as the son begotten of Hippodameia by the Lapith king Peirithoos on the day when he chastised the monsters and drove them from Pelion.