• The Centaurs, born of Ixion and the Cloud, and having the “double breasts” of man and horse, became drunk with wine at the marriage of Hippodamia and Pirithous, and strove to carry off the bride and the other women by violence. Theseus and the rest of the Lapithae opposed them, and drove them from the feast. This famous battle is described at great length by Ovid, Metamorphoses XII , Dryden’s Tr. :⁠— “For one, most brutal of the brutal brood, Or whether wine or beauty fired his blood, Or both at once, beheld with lustful eyes The bride; at once resolved to make his prize. Down went the board; and fastening on her hair, He seized with sudden force the frighted fair. ’Twas Eurytus began: his bestial kind His crime pursued; and each, as pleased his mind, Or her whom chance presented, took: the feast An image of a taken town expressed. “The cave resounds with female shrieks; we rise Mad with revenge, to make a swift reprise: And Theseus first, ‘What frenzy has possessed, O Eurytus,’ he cried, ‘thy brutal breast, To wrong Pirithous, and not him alone, But, while I live, two friends conjoined in one?’ ” ↩