Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Caeneus was born Caenis, a daughter of the Lapith Elatus (or of Atrax). Poseidon loved her; when he offered a gift in return for her favor, she asked to become a man and to be invulnerable to wounds. The god transformed her: Caenis became Caeneus, a Lapith warrior whom no spear or sword could pierce, and who thereafter counted himself among the foremost of Pirithous’s people. At Pirithous’s wedding battle against the Centaurs, Caeneus slaughtered many of the horse-men. Unable to wound him with weapons, the Centaurs piled pine trunks and stones upon him until they drove him into the earth (or smothered him upright). In some strands he vanishes into the ground and becomes a bird (Ovid: a unique bird with tawny wings rising from the mound). The myth joins erotic gift, gender transformation, and the paradox of invulnerability defeated only by burial—an extreme Lapith hero whose end at the Centauromachy proves that even Poseidon’s boon has a limit when the whole forest is heaped on one man.