LAPITHAE

This article appears in Volume V16, Page 200 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: KRO-LAP

LAPITHAE , a mythical race, whose

home

was in Thessaly in the valley of the Peneus. The genealogies make them a kindred race with the Centaurs, their king Peirithoiis being the son, and the Centaurs the grandchildren (or sons) of Ixion. The best-known legends with which they are connected are those of Ixion (q.v.) and the battle with the Centaurs (q.v.). A well-known Lapith was Caeneus, said to have been originally a girl named Caenis, the favourite of Poseidon, who changed her into a man and made her invulnerable (Ovid, Metam. xii. 146 ff). In the Centaur battle, having been crushed by rocks and trunks of trees, he was changed into a bird; or he disappeared into the depths of the earth unharmed. According to some, the Lapithae are representatives of the giants of fable, or spirits of the

storm

; according to others, they are a semi-legendary; semi-historical race, like the Myrmidons and other Thessalian tribes. The Greek sculptors of the school of Pheidias conceived of the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs as a struggle between mankindand mischievous monsters, and symbolical of the

great

GREAT

conflict between the Greeks and Persians. Sidney Colvin (Journ. Hellen. Stud. i. 64) explains it as a contest of the physical powers of nature, and the mythical expression of the terrible effects of swollen waters.
LA PLACE (Lat. Placaeus), JOSUE DE (16o6 ?1665), French

Protestant

PROTESTANT

divine, was born in Brittany. He studied and after-wards taught philosophy at Saumur. In 1625 he became pastor of the Reformed Church at Nantes, and in 1632 was appointed professor of theology at Saumur, where he had as his colleagues, appointed at the same time, Moses

Amyraut

AMYRAUT, MOSES (1506-1664)

and Louis Cappell. In 164o he published a

work

WORK

, Theses theologicae de state hominis lapsi ante graham, which was looked upon with some suspicion as containing liberal ideas about the doctrine of

original

ORIGINAL

sin. The view that the

original

ORIGINAL

sin of

Adam

was not imputed to his descendants was condemned at the synod of Charenton (1645), without

special

SPECIAL

reference being made to La Place, whose position perhaps was not quite clear. As a matter of fact La Place distinguished between a direct and indirect imputation, and after his death his views, as well as those of

Amyraut

AMYRAUT, MOSES (1506-1664)

, were rejected in the

Formula

consensus of 1675. He died on the 17th of August 1665.
La Place's defence was published with the title Disputaliones academicae (3 vols., 16491651; and again in 1665); his

work

WORK

De imputatione primi peccati Adami in 1655. A collected edition of his works appeared at Franeker in 1699, and at Aubencit in 17o2.

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