Bellerophon
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
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
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
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
- The Etruscan Chimera of Arezzo
poetry
- Astydamas , Bellerophon ( tragedy )
- Euripides , Bellerophon (tragedy)
- Theodectes of Phaselis , Bellerophon ( drama )
music
- Jean-Baptiste Lully composed the opera Bellérophon in 1679 . A choreography by Raoul-Auger Feuillet for nine dancers has existed for the final ballet since 1700 .
- Josef Mysliveček composed the baroque Italian opera Il Bellerofonte (first performed in 1767).
swell
- Library of Apollodorus , 1.85; 2, 30-33; 3, 3.
- Clement of Alexandria , mentions , 10, 21.
- Diodor , library , 6, 3.
- Fabius Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius , Mythologies , 3, 1.
- Hesiod , Eoien , 43a.
- Hesiod, fragments , 7th century.
- Hesiod, Theogony , 325.
- Homer , Iliad , 6, 155-220.
- Ovid , Ibis , 255f.
- Hyginus Mythographus , De astronomia , 2, 18; 2, 21.
- Hyginus Mythographus, Fabulae , 57; 157; 243; 273.
- Pausanias , travels in Greece , 2, 2, 4; 2, 3, 5; 2, 4, 1-3; 2, 27, 2; 2, 31, 9; 3, 18, 13; 9, 31, 3.
- Strabon , Geographica , 379; 573; 630; 667.
literature
- Erich Bethe : Bellerophon . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 1, Stuttgart 1897, Col. 241-251.
- Marie Luise Kaschnitz : Bellerophontes. In: Marie Luise Kaschnitz: Greek Myths. Insel, Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-458-17071-5 , pp. 72–84 (poetic retelling of the myth)
- Catherine Lochin: Pegasus . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VII, Zurich / Munich 1994, pp. 214-230.
- Rolf Peppermüller: The Bellerophontessage. Your origin and history. Dissertation. Tubingen 1961.
- Adolf Rapp : Bellerophon . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 758-774 ( digitized version ).
Web links
- Bellerophontes in the Theoi Project
- Photos of depictions of the Bellerophon in art, in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pronunciation: [bɛˈleːrofɔn].
- ↑ Hesiod , Fragments , 7; Hyginus Mythographus , Fabulae 157
- ↑ Homer , Iliad 6: 155-203.
- ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus 2, 30-33.
- ↑ Homer Scholion Z 155.
- ↑ Homer, Iliad 6: 155-203.
- ↑ Pindar Olympic Oden 13, 60ff.
- ^ Pausanias , Description of Greece 1, 4, 6.
- ↑ Hesiod, Theogony 319ff; Apollodor, Libraries 2, 3, 2; Pindar , Olympic Odes 13, 63ff .; Hyginus, Fabulae 157.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Homer, Iliad 6, 219ff.
predecessor | Office | successor |
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Glaucoma |
King of Corinth 13th century BC Chr. (Fictional chronology) |
Ornytion |