Caenis of Thessaly, violated by Poseidon, asked to become an invulnerable man and was granted the change to Caeneus — who killed many centaurs at Peirithous' wedding before the survivors buried him under massy pines; Apollodorus tells the transformation and end, Ovid the full tale Nestor heard at Troy.1
Caenis
Ovid's Nestor tells how Caenis, a maiden of Thessaly famed for beauty, was seized by Neptune on the lonely shore. When the god offered any gift in recompense, she prayed that she might never suffer such outrage again — and asked to be changed into a man. Neptune granted it, and Caenis became Caeneus, invulnerable to steel.2
The invulnerable man
Apollodorus states the change plainly: Caeneus was formerly a woman, but after Poseidon had intercourse with her she asked to become an invulnerable man. Thereafter in battle with the centaurs he thought scorn of wounds and killed many of them — one of the mightiest men Nestor ever saw beside Peirithous and Theseus.3
Buried under the pines
The centaurs could not pierce him with sword or spear. Apollodorus says the survivors surrounded him and by striking with fir trees buried him in the earth. Ovid names five centaurs he slew before Latreus mocked him and the whole brood drove their living pillar down — the end that ties him to Peirithous' wedding war.4
· EXEUNT ·
How the centuries saw it
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Book XII: Caenis asks Poseidon for manhood and invulnerability, becomes Caeneus, and is buried by centaurs at Peirithous' wedding — Ovid's gender metamorphosis.
Caeneus
The Lapith once called Caenis — transformed, unpierceable, crushed under trees — a figure modern readers keep for the change itself.
Lapiths
Caeneus dies among the Lapiths at the centauromachy — the wedding brawl that frames his last stand.