Bellerophon

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Bellerophon and Pegasus
(relief from the Sebasteion in Aphrodisias )

Bellerophon ( Greek  Βελλεροφῶν ) or Bellerophontes ( Βελλεροφόντης "slayer of Belleros") is a hero of Greek mythology . With the help of the flying horse Pegasus , he killed the Chimera . The legend of Bellerophon is already described in detail by Homer in the Iliad . However, Pegasus is not mentioned there.

ancestry

According to Hesiod , Bellerophon came from Ephyra, later Corinth , and was the son of Poseidon and the Eurynomial . The earthly father is the Corinthian king Glaucus , son of Sisyphus and grandson of Aiolus . Its original name was Hipponoos ("horse understanding").

legend

Bellerophon in exile

Bellerophon was banished from Corinth for accidentally slaying his brother, who was either Deliades, Peiren, or Alkimenes , or for killing a fellow citizen named Belleros . He hoped that King Proitus would cleanse him of Tiryns , but after he had settled at court, he was coveted by the queen (by Homer Anteia , post-Homeric Stheneboia ). Offended by Bellerophon's rejection, she told her husband that Bellerophon had violated her. Proitos believed his wife, but did not dare to punish Bellerophon because he was his host . So Proitus sent Bellerophon to Lycia with a writing tablet to his father-in-law King Iobates . Proitos' wife killed herself after Bellerophon's departure.

Iobates fraternized with him when Bellerophon arrived and held a nine-day feast in his honor; Only then did he open the letter, which contained the following message: "The owner of this letter is to be removed from the world: he tried to desecrate my wife, your daughter." But even Iobates did not dare to murder Bellerophon because he was afraid the Erinyes . Instead, he gave the guest the supposedly fatal order to put down the fire-breathing Chimera , which devastated the neighboring landscape of Caria .

The taming of Pegasus

Bellerophon on Pegasus
( Attic - red-figure pelike , around 440 BC)

The Lycian seer Polyidus announced to Bellerophon that he needed Pegasus for his excursion . In order to get possession of the winged and untamed horse, he should sleep in the temple of Athena . In a dream the goddess appeared to him, put a golden bridle next to him and said: “What are you sleeping, Prince of the House of Aiolos? Come and take this amulet for the horse and show it to the horse tamer, your father (meaning Poseidon ) while you sacrifice a white bull to him. ”Bellerophon took the bridle. Polyeidus told him that Pegasus usually drank at the inexhaustible spring of the Peirene near the citadel of Corinth, Bellerophon's birthplace, and there the hero could surprise and bridle the horse.

Other authors say that Bellerophon was able to receive Pegasus tamed and bridled from Athene. Pausanias reports that the horse tamer Poseidon gave the animal to his son. Bellerophon mounted his horse and flew with him to Caria.

Battle against the Chimera

Bellerophon fights the Chimera
( Attic - red-figure Epinetron , around 425 BC)

Although Bellerophon managed to find the Chimera with the help of his winged horse Pegasus, it withstood his hail of arrows. When he got so close to the fire-breathing beast that he could feel the heat of its breath, he had a flash of thought. He obtained a lump of lead and put it on the tip of his spear. Then he attacked the chimera head-on, and while he turned away at the last moment he put the lump in the hissing jaws of the animal. The beast's fiery breath melted the lead and clogged her airways, causing her to suffocate. Bellerophon then returned to King Iobates.

Bellerophon's triumph, however, was not in the spirit of Iobates, and the latter therefore entrusted him with further dangerous assignments. First he had to take to the field against the neighboring people, the Solymer . He defeated them as well as the Amazons afterwards . On his way back from fighting the Amazons, he escaped an ambush that the best men of Lycia had set up on Iobate's orders.

wedding

After all attempts to let Bellerophon perish had failed, Iobates believed that Bellerophon was a darling of the gods, no longer sought after him, gave him his daughter Philonoe (also Antikleia or Kassandra, depending on tradition) as a wife and gave her to him Half of his kingdom of Lycia. Philonoe bore Bellerophon the sons Isandros and Hippolochus and the daughter Laodameia .

Bellerophon's end

Yes, there he is, on the back of a winged horse!
(Children's book illustration, 1914)

Bellerophon is said to have become cocky and tried to fly to Olympus with Pegasus . This hubris angered Zeus and he sent a horsefly that stung the horse so that it threw off its rider. Bellerophon fell into a thorn bush and was crippled and blind for the rest of his life; Avoiding people he wandered lonely and gloomy. In a rock tomb in the ancient city of Tlos in Lycia, near today's Turkish city of Fethiye , which is called Bellerophon tomb , depictions of the hero and Pegasus can be seen.

Bellerophon's grandson Glaucos

Bellerophon stayed with Oineus for twenty days and exchanged gifts with him. This friendship caused a grandson of Bellerophon, Glaukos , the son of Hippolochus, when he faced Diomedes in the Trojan War , to exchange armor with him.

Artistic representations

The Bellerophon myth, especially the fight against the Chimera, is a popular subject in ancient and modern art.

Visual arts

poetry

music

swell

literature

Web links

Commons : Bellerophon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pronunciation: [bɛˈleːrofɔn].
  2. ↑ Hesiod , Fragments , 7; Hyginus Mythographus , Fabulae 157
  3. ↑ Homer , Iliad 6: 155-203.
  4. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 2, 30-33.
  5. ↑ Homer Scholion Z 155.
  6. ↑ Homer, Iliad 6: 155-203.
  7. ↑ Pindar Olympic Oden 13, 60ff.
  8. ^ Pausanias , Description of Greece 1, 4, 6.
  9. ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 319ff; Apollodor, Libraries 2, 3, 2; Pindar , Olympic Odes 13, 63ff .; Hyginus, Fabulae 157.
  10. ↑ Pindar, Olympic Odes 13, 87–90 and Isthmische Odes 7, 44; Apollodor, Libraries 2, 3, 2; Homer, Iliad 6: 155-203; 16, 328; Ovid , Metamorphoses 11, 646.
  11. ↑ Homer, Iliad 6, 219ff.
predecessor Office successor
Glaucoma King of Corinth
13th century BC Chr.
(Fictional chronology) 		Ornytion