Unveiling Aktor: The Heroic Lapith Caught in the Centauromachy

Mosaic, 2nd century BC, Centaur attacking a Lapith.

Actor is a Lapith in Greek mythology^[1], who is harassed by the centaur Clanis with a burning log during the battle of the centaurs. The only source is the first book of the Argonautica by the Roman author Gaius Valerius Flaccus (1st century AD).

His name comes from the Greek Ἄκτωρ, Áktōr, Latin Áctor, and means colloquially “leader”^[2], a “heroic” name that had many bearers in antiquity, see Actor.

V. Flaccus describes a pictorial representation of the centaur battle on the hull of the Argo. The Argonaut heroes Peleus, Nestor, and Aeson are caught in the fray with the centaurs Rhoetus, Monychus, Nessus, and Hippasus. Additionally, there is the combat pair Actor and Clanis:

„Ardenti peragit Clanis Actora quercu.“^[3]
„Clanis attacks Actor with a blazing oak log.“^[4]

The term “attacks” is rather more like a “driving forward,” as noted by Wagner in his commentary on the text: “Actor is to be counted among the Lapiths, whom … his adversary (Clanis) drives before him, not kills.”^[5] It remains open how the story ends. Hederich has him dying: “One who was slain by Clanis in the turmoil between the Lapiths and centaurs at Pirithous’s banquet.”^[6]

1. ↑ „Unus ex Lapithis = one of the Lapiths“, Wagner, Index, page 213, see literature.
2. ↑ Wilhelm Pape: Dictionary of the Greek Language, Braunschweig 1914, Volume 1, page 87, zeno.org.
3. ↑ Argonautica 1, 146.
4. ↑ Translation by Suchier, see sources.
5. ↑ „Actor is to be considered among the Lapiths, whom … the adversary drives, does not kill.“ Wagner, page 18.
6. ↑ Benjamin Hederich: Thorough Mythological Lexicon (1770), zeno.org.