Bellerophon and Pegasus: From the Chimera to Olympus

Bellerophon and Pegasus defeat the Chimera, a creature that combines a lion, a goat and a serpent. Their victory helps an endangered stranger gain a royal marriage and a home in Lycia. Pindar also describes Bellerophon trying to reach the gods, a journey that ends when Pegasus throws him.

The ancient authors tell different parts of this story. Homer recounts the king’s attempts to kill Bellerophon and the hero’s isolation. Apollodorus supplies the aerial attack on the Chimera. Pindar describes Athena’s bridle and the attempted ascent. Homer sets Bellerophon’s success and suffering within a family history told outside Troy. Pindar gives the rider a destination he cannot reach.

A guest carrying an order for his death

Proetus’s wife desires Bellerophon. He refuses her, and she accuses him of making an unwanted sexual approach. Homer calls her Anteia; Apollodorus uses Stheneboea. Apollodorus also begins with an accidental killing for which Bellerophon seeks purification from Proetus. The man who receives and purifies him then believes the accusation against him. Library 2.3.1.

In Homer, Proetus shrinks from killing Bellerophon himself. He gives him a folded tablet bearing an instruction for his wife’s father in Lycia to arrange the bearer’s death. Iobates, as Apollodorus names the Lycian king, entertains his visitor for nine days, sacrificing an ox each day. He asks to see the message on the tenth, then sends Bellerophon against the Chimera. Iliad 6.155–182.

The king has shared his table with the man he now intends to destroy. That welcome makes the command more disturbing: Bellerophon receives a deadly assignment from his host. For nine days, the visitor has received food and honour. On the tenth, he must leave that household to face a fire-breathing creature. Proetus has entrusted the message to Bellerophon; the king in Lycia chooses how to carry out the order. The two kings place their guest in danger through the very households that receive him.

Athena’s bridle at the spring of Peirene

Pindar places Bellerophon’s struggle to harness Pegasus beside Peirene’s spring at Corinth. A seer tells him to sleep at Athena’s altar. In his dream, the goddess brings a bridle with golden fittings and instructs him to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon, the horse-tamer. Bellerophon wakes, finds the bridle and reports the dream to the seer. He follows the instructions, honours Poseidon and dedicates an altar to Athena. With the bridle, he catches Pegasus and mounts him in bronze armour. Olympian 13.63–92, translated by Ernest Myers.

The seer and the gods help Bellerophon acquire the horse. The hero still has work to do: he must follow the instructions and handle the bridle. Pindar gives him a way to succeed through divine assistance and human action together. You can picture the encounter through the objects and actions the poet names: an altar where the hero sleeps, the gold he finds beside him on waking, and a horse he can at last harness. Athena’s gift gives him the means to ride; he must take it and use it.

Fighting the Chimera from above

Apollodorus describes the Chimera devastating the countryside and attacking cattle. Its lion front and serpent tail accompany a goat’s head in the middle, through which it breathes fire. Bellerophon mounts Pegasus, rises above the creature and shoots it from that height. Library 2.3.1–2.

The aerial attack gives the rider a way to approach a creature the king expects to kill him. Pegasus carries him over the land the Chimera has ravaged, and Bellerophon attacks from above. The two act together: the horse provides flight, while the rider aims at the monster. Their success leaves Iobates facing a guest who has survived the task and killed the creature threatening his country.

His survival does not end the king’s attempts. In Homer, Bellerophon next fights the Solymi and the Amazons. The king then selects Lycian warriors to ambush him on his return. Bellerophon kills the attackers. The king has exhausted several ways of carrying out the instruction, and the man who carried the tablet has survived them. Iliad 6.183–190.

An exile enters the ruling family

Homer’s king recognises Bellerophon as the offspring of a god, gives him his daughter and grants him half his royal honour. The Lycians give the hero land with orchards and fields. Iliad 6.191–195, translated by A. T. Murray. Apollodorus names the daughter Philonoe, has Iobates reveal the letter, and says Bellerophon inherits the kingdom at the king’s death. Library 2.3.2.

The accounts give Bellerophon a place among the people whose king tried to kill him. He gains a household and recognised standing in Lycia after arriving there as a stranger with another king’s message.

Homer’s listener also meets the next generation. Bellerophon’s grandson Glaucus tells the story to Diomedes outside Troy. Diomedes remembers that his grandfather Oeneus once welcomed Bellerophon and exchanged gifts with him. Oeneus gave his guest a belt; Bellerophon gave him a gold cup. The two warriors recognise their inherited guest-friendship and agree to avoid each other’s spears. They can continue fighting other men on the battlefield, but they acknowledge obligations to each other’s families. Iliad 6.212–231.

In that battlefield encounter, you can see why Homer spends time on a traveller’s reception. One king uses his guest to carry an order for his death; another host’s welcome leaves descendants with a reason to spare each other.

The rider’s fall and the horse’s destination

In Isthmian 7, Pindar describes Bellerophon seeking the heavenly dwellings and the company of Zeus. Pegasus throws his master. Pindar places the example within a warning about mortal limits. In Olympian 13, he declines to recount Bellerophon’s end and leaves Pegasus in Zeus’s stables on Olympus. Isthmian 7.44–48 and Olympian 13.91–92, translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien.

Homer gives another ending: Bellerophon wanders on the Aleian plain, avoids other people and suffers after the gods come to hate him. Homer also describes the deaths of his son Isander and daughter Laodameia. He mentions neither Pegasus nor an ascent to Olympus in this account. Iliad 6.200–205.

Pindar’s rider loses his place on the horse as he tries to enter the company of Zeus. Against the Chimera, flight had given him a way to survive; on this journey, he cannot remain on Pegasus’s back. The horse has a destination among the gods. Homer leaves the man alone on the plain without explaining his isolation through that flight. His grandson recounts both the honours and the suffering as part of the family history. Bellerophon’s descendants can claim his victories, while remembering the man who withdrew from human company.