Chimera
The Chimera is a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid, described by both Homer and Hesiod as lion in front, serpent behind, and goat in the middle, breathing blazing fire from her middle head. Born to the monsters Typhon and Echidna, she terrorized Lycia until the hero Bellerophon killed her, an early account crediting the gods' guidance alone and a later one adding the winged horse Pegasus.
Chimera, the fire-breathing lion-goat-serpent
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Core Myth
Homer's Iliad gives the oldest surviving account of the Chimera, describing her as "in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the midst a goat, breathing forth in terrible wise the might of blazing fire." Glaucus tells the story to Diomedes as part of his own family history: his grandfather Bellerophon, exiled from Argos on false charges, was sent to the king of Lycia carrying sealed tablets that, unknown to him, asked for his own death. The Lycian king set him three deadly tasks instead of killing him outright, and killing the Chimera was the first and most famous of them. Homer credits the victory to nothing more specific than Bellerophon's trust in the gods' guidance - no flying horse, no special weapon, just the outcome. Hesiod's Theogony, composed in the same period, gives the Chimera her family instead of her fight: she is a daughter of Typhon and Echidna, born alongside Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra in the same brief catalogue of monsters, described as fearful, great, swift-footed, and strong, with unapproachable fire pouring from her. Later tradition filled in the missing method behind the kill. Apollodorus has Bellerophon mount the winged horse Pegasus, born from Medusa's blood, and shoot the Chimera down from the air, while Pindar's Olympian Ode 13 credits Athena with the golden bridle that let Bellerophon tame Pegasus for the flight in the first place.
Was the Chimera three separate heads or one body with mixed parts?
Both descriptions exist side by side. Homer's Iliad describes one continuous body - lion in front, serpent behind, goat in the middle - while Hesiod's Theogony calls her three-headed outright. Ancient vase painting generally follows Hesiod's reading, showing a lion's body with a second goat head rising from its back and a snake for a tail, which is also the image that became standard in later art.
Hesiod, Theogony 319-325
Did Bellerophon really ride Pegasus to kill the Chimera?
Not in the earliest account. Homer's Iliad, the oldest surviving telling of the fight, credits Bellerophon's victory to nothing more specific than his trust in the gods, with no flying horse mentioned at all. Pegasus enters the story only in later sources, most clearly Pindar's Olympian Ode 13 and Apollodorus's Library, both written centuries after Homer.
Homer, Iliad 6.150-183
Who were the Chimera's parents?
Hesiod's Theogony names her as a daughter of the monsters Typhon and Echidna, born in the same catalogue of offspring as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra. All three are described together as fearsome creatures with no ordinary animal ancestry, part of the same brief but crowded family history.
Hesiod, Theogony 319-325
Where did the Chimera live?
Homer places her in Lycia, in southwest Asia Minor, which matches where the rest of Bellerophon's cycle of trials under King Iobates takes place. The Iliad gives no more specific location within Lycia than that.
Homer, Iliad 6.150-183
Why couldn't ordinary weapons defeat the Chimera?
Her fire kept most attackers from ever closing the distance to strike her directly. Apollodorus's version of the fight solves this by putting Bellerophon in the air on Pegasus, letting him strike down at her from a height her flame could not reach, rather than facing her fire on the ground.
Apollodorus, Library 2.3.2
Later Traditions
The word chimera entered English and other languages as a general term for any wildly implausible, patched-together idea or fear, a legacy of how unnatural her three-part body seemed even within a mythology already full of hybrid monsters. In modern biology the same word names an organism made of genetically distinct tissues, borrowing the myth's central image of one body holding parts that do not belong together, with no further connection to the plot of the myth itself.
Lineage
See the full family tree5 recorded relations, each with the ancient line behind it.
Siblings
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Siblings through their shared parents, Typhon and Echidna, per Hesiod's catalogue of monstrous offspring.
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Siblings through their shared parents, Typhon and Echidna, per Hesiod's catalogue of monstrous offspring.
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Hesiod names the Sphinx in the same catalogue passage as these monsters, but manuscripts disagree on the exact parent pairing behind her birth, which is why this sibling link is marked weak rather than strong.
Also Connected
1 recorded connection, each with the ancient line behind it.
Enemies
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Pegasus carried Bellerophon in the fight that killed the Chimera; the kill itself is credited to Bellerophon, not to Pegasus directly.
Where Accounts Differ
- whether Pegasus was involved in killing the Chimera
- Homer's Iliad, the earliest surviving account of Bellerophon's fight, credits no flying horse at all; Pegasus enters the story only in later sources such as Pindar and Apollodorus.
- Bellerophon, the hero who killed the Chimera, is not yet a character in this corpus; his role here is described only through the sources that name him.
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Mythology
Sources
- Homer, Iliad 6.150-183
- Hesiod, Theogony 319-325
- Apollodorus, Library 2.3.1-2.3.2
- Pindar, Olympian Ode 13
- Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)