Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
Theseus thought no more of their quarrel, and invited him to become his friend and comrade; and they ratified their compact of friendship by an oath. Hereupon, Peirithous, who was about to marry Deidameia, begged Theseus to come and visit his country and meet the Lapithae.
Herodorus is of opinion, that though there were many famous expeditions undertaken by the bravest men of his time, yet Theseus never joined in any of them, once only excepted, with the Lapithae, in their war against the Centaurs; but others say that he accompanied Jason to Colchis and Meleager to the slaying of the Calydonian boar, and that hence it came to be a proverb, Not without Theseus; that he himself, however, without aid of any one, performed many glorious exploits, and that from him began the saying, He is a second Hercules.
Neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroic Lapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continued war, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance their hardy and martial character.
So long as Lucian merely furnishes absurdity, as in his "Wishes," in the "Lapithae," in "Jupiter Tragoedus," etc., he is only a humorist, and gratifies us by his sportive humor; but he changes character in many passages in his "Nigrinus," his "Timon," and his "Alexander," when his satire directs its shafts against moral depravity.
But, though many adventures were undertaken by the heroes of those times, Herodorus is of opinion that Theseus took no part in any of them, except with the Lapithae in their fight with the Centaurs; though other writers say that he went to Kolchis with Jason and took part with Meleager in the hunt of the Kalydonian boar.
It was at the wedding of Pirithous, and not Theseus, that the Centaurs and Lapithae quarrelled.
The fifth slab presents a more cheerful view of the battle for the Lapithae; here two Centaurs are being overcome by two of their enemies in revenge for their brutal conduct at the bridal banquet. The sixth tablet again illustrates the hazards of war.
Here a female is between two of the brutal Centaurs, one of whom has felled a Lapitha to the ground; but the left hand part of the slab is so mutilated that the merits of the sculpture are here hardly appreciable. The seventh slab also represents the Lapithae losing ground. Here, it has been shrewdly conjectured the chief personages of the battle are represented.
The subjects represented by these sculptures are, the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae, and the war between the Amazons and Athenians mythical struggles upon which Greek sculptors were fond of exercising their imagination. The origin of this myth is thus described by Sir Henry Ellis: "The story of the Centaurs, it is remarked, is of Thessalian origin.
The house contains more collateral curiosities, as they might be called, than those in the direct line; but there are architectural drawings from the wonderful hand, colour drawings of a Madonna, a few studies, and two early pieces of sculpture the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs, a relief marked by tremendous vigour and full of movement, and a Madonna and Child, also in relief, with many marks of greatness upon it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking