Bellerophon

Homer's Iliad tells Bellerophon's story through his grandson Glaucus, a Lycian fighting for Troy. In Book 6, Diomedes asks Glaucus who he is, and Glaucus answers with his family. Sisyphus, son of Aeolus, lived at Ephyre in Argos. Sisyphus fathered Glaucus, and that Glaucus fathered Bellerophon. The gods gave Bellerophon beauty and a man's courage.

Proetus, who ruled the Argives, drove him from the land. Proetus's wife Anteia wanted to lie with Bellerophon in secret, and he refused her. So she lied to her husband: die yourself, she told Proetus, or kill Bellerophon, who tried to force me. Proetus shrank from killing him. Instead he sent him to Lycia with a folded tablet of deadly signs, to show to Anteia's father, the Lycian king.

The king feasted him for nine days before he asked to see the token. After reading it, he sent Bellerophon to kill the Chimera. Homer says he killed her trusting in the signs of the gods. Next he fought the Solymi, the fiercest battle he ever entered, and third he killed the Amazons. On his way back, the king set the bravest men of Lycia in ambush. Bellerophon killed every one of them.

Then the king knew him for the offspring of a god. He kept Bellerophon in Lycia, gave him his daughter and half his royal honour, and the Lycians marked out an estate for him. His children were Isander, Hippolochus and Laodameia. Laodameia lay with Zeus and bore Sarpedon, a warrior armed in bronze. Hippolochus was the father of Glaucus, the man telling the story.

Glaucus ends it darkly. Bellerophon came to be hated by all the gods and wandered alone over the Aleian plain, eating out his heart and shunning the paths of men. Ares killed his son Isander in battle with the Solymi, and Artemis killed his daughter in anger. Homer gives no reason for the gods' hatred. Diomedes, hearing the story, remembers that his grandfather Oeneus once hosted Bellerophon for twenty days, and the two warriors agree not to fight.

Hesiod's Theogony adds the winged horse that the Iliad's account never mentions. In its catalogue of monsters it says that Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slew the Chimera, and says nothing more about the fight.

Pindar's Olympian Ode 13 tells how he got the horse. Bellerophon struggled to harness Pegasus beside a spring until Pallas Athena brought him a golden bridle in a dream. He had slept on her altar at the bidding of a seer, the son of Coeranus, and woke to find the bridle beside him. Athena told him to sacrifice a white bull to Poseidon the Tamer. Then he bridled the horse, and from the air he attacked the Amazons, the Chimera and the Solymi. The full arc, from exile to fall, is told in Bellerophon and Pegasus.

The same ode refuses to tell his death, saying only that Pegasus now lives in the ancient stables of Zeus on Olympus. Pindar's Isthmian Ode 7 is blunter. Winged Pegasus threw his master, it says, when Bellerophon tried to reach the dwellings of heaven and the company of Zeus. Pindar gives the fall as a warning: a sweetness beyond measure waits for a bitter end.

Apollodorus's Library follows Homer's outline with new names and a new beginning. Bellerophon comes to Proetus to be purified after accidentally killing his brother, called Deliades, Piren or Alcimenes. The queen is Stheneboea and the Lycian king is Iobates. Bellerophon mounts Pegasus, offspring of Medusa and Poseidon, and shoots the Chimera down from the height. After the ambush, Iobates shows him the letter, gives him his daughter Philonoe, and leaves him the kingdom when he dies.

Hyginus's Fabulae also names the queen Stheneboea and makes Iobates her father. Bellerophon kills the Chimera riding Pegasus and is said to have fallen on the Aleian plain and dislocated his hip. When the king gives him his other daughter, Stheneboea kills herself. Hyginus's Astronomica says he fell from fear, looking down at the earth as he flew toward the sky, and that Jupiter set the horse among the stars. Euripides wrote two tragedies on the story, Stheneboea and Bellerophon, which survive only in fragments.