210The son of bold Ixion had married Hippodame, and had bidden the wild cloud-born ones to recline at tables set out in order in a tree-roofed cave. 213The Haemonian chieftains were there, I myself was there too, and the festive palace rang with the jumbled crowd. 215Look, they sing the wedding hymn, and the halls smoke with fires, and the maiden is present, surrounded by a throng of matrons and young wives; 217outstanding in beauty. 217We called Pirithous fortunate in that bride: an omen we almost proved false. 219For your breast, Eurytus, most savage of the savage Centaurs, burns as much at the sight of the maiden as with wine, and drunkenness, doubled by lust, holds sway.
222At once the overturned tables throw the feast into confusion, and the new bride is dragged off by force, seized by the hair. 224Eurytus snatches Hippodame, the others whichever woman each fancied or could, and it was the picture of a captured city. 226The house rings with women's screams: swiftly we all rise, and Theseus first says: 'What madness, Eurytus, drives you, that while I live you provoke Pirithous and, in your ignorance, outrage two in one?' 232He says nothing in reply (for he cannot defend such deeds with words), but assails the face of the avenger with insolent hands and strikes his noble chest. 235It happened that there was nearby an ancient mixing-bowl, rough with projecting figures; 236this, huge as it was, the son of Aegeus, huger still, lifted and hurled full in his face.
238Vomiting from wound and mouth alike gobs of blood, brains and wine, he lies on his back on the soaked sand and kicks. 240His double-bodied brothers blaze at the slaughter, and all vie with one voice in crying: 'Arms, arms!' 242Wine gave them courage, and in the first fighting cups fly through the air, hurled, and fragile jars and curved cauldrons, things once fit for feasts, then for war and slaughter. 245First Amycus, son of Ophion, did not fear to strip the shrine of its gifts, and first snatched from the sanctuary a chandelier thick with gleaming lamps, and, raising it high, like one who strives to break the white neck of a bull with the sacrificial axe, dashed it against the forehead of the Lapith Celadon, and leaves his bones crushed past recognition in his face.
252His eyes leapt out, and, the bones of his face shattered, his nose was driven back and fixed in the middle of his palate. 254Pelates of Pella, with the wrenched-off leg of a maple table, laid him on the ground, his chin forced down onto his chest, and, as he spat out teeth mixed with black blood, with a second wound sends him to the shades of Tartarus. 258Standing next, eyeing the smoking altars with a terrible look, he said: 'Why do we not use these?' 260and Gryneus lifted the huge altar with its fires and hurled it into the midst of the Lapiths' column and crushed two, Broteas and Orios: Orios' mother was Mycale, who, it was well known, had often by her chanting drawn down the horns of the struggling moon.
265'You shall not go unpunished, if only I am given a supply of weapons!' 266Exadius had said, and has, for a weapon, the antlers of a stag that had been hung as an offering on a tall pine. 268With its double branch Gryneus is pierced in the eyes and has them gouged out; part of them sticks to the antlers, part flows down into his beard and hangs there, clotted with blood. 271Look, Rhoetus snatches a blazing brand of plum-wood from the middle of the altars, and on the right side grazes the temples of Charaxus, covered with tawny hair. 274Seized by the swift flame, the hair blazed like a dry cornfield, and the blood seared in the wound gave a terrible hissing sound, such as iron red-hot from the fire usually gives when the smith has drawn it out with curved tongs and plunges it into a trough: it hisses and, sunk in the warmish water, whistles.
280Wounded, he shakes the greedy fire from his shaggy hair, and lifts on to his shoulders a threshold torn from the ground, a wagon's load, which its very weight prevents him from hurling at the enemy: the stony mass also crushed his comrade Cometes, standing at a nearer distance. 285Nor does Rhoetus hold back his joy: 'So, I pray,' he says, 'may the rest of the throng of your camp be brave!' 287and with the half-burnt stake he renews the wound, striking again, and three and four times with heavy blows he broke the joints of his skull, and the bones settled in the liquid brain. 290The victor passes on to Euagrus and Corythus and Dryas; 291and when, of these, Corythus, his cheeks covered with the first down, fell forward, 'What glory have you won from felling a boy?' 293says Euagrus; and Rhoetus does not let him say more, but fiercely thrust the ruddy flames into the man's open mouth as he spoke, and through his mouth into his chest.
296You too, savage Dryas, he pursues, whirling the fire around his head; 297but the same end did not await you too: as he exulted in the success of his unbroken slaughter, you pierce him with a charred stake where the neck joins the shoulder. 300Rhoetus groaned, and barely wrenched the stake from the hard bone, and, soaked in his own blood, flees himself. 302Orneus flees too, and Lycabas, and Medon, wounded in the right shoulder, and Thaumas with Pisenor, and Mermeros, who had lately beaten all in a foot-race (now, with the wound he had received, he went more slowly!), and Pholus and Melaneus and Abas, hunter of boars, and the augur who had in vain dissuaded his people from war, Astylos: he even says to Nessus, who feared wounds, 'Do not flee!
309you will be kept for the bow of Hercules.' 310But Eurynomus and Lycidas and Areos and Imbreus did not escape death: all of them the right hand of Dryas struck down face to face. 312You too, Crenaeus, though you had turned your back in flight, received a wound in front; 314for, looking back, you take the heavy iron between your two eyes, where the nose meets the base of the forehead.