Bellerophon
Rider of Pegasus
buh-LAIR-uh-fon
Tamed the winged horse, killed the Chimera, and then tried to ride up to Olympus, which is where it ended.
The Story
Falsely accused by a queen he refused, he was sent to Lycia carrying a sealed letter asking the king to kill him. The king, unwilling to murder a guest, assigned him the Chimera instead. Athena gave him a golden bridle in a dream, he caught Pegasus at the spring, and killed the thing from above.
He survived every trap set for him and could not survive success. Convinced he had earned a seat among the gods, he flew Pegasus at Olympus; Zeus sent a single gadfly, the horse bucked, and he fell. He spent the rest of his life lamed and blind, avoiding the paths of men, the standing Greek illustration of what happens when a mortal forgets the scale of things.
Did You Know?
- A message that instructs the recipient to harm the person delivering it is still called a Bellerophontic letter.
- He is one of the very few Greek heroes with no divine parent in the standard account, which makes the attempt on Olympus even more presumptuous.
- Homer's Iliad has him but not Pegasus. The winged horse only joins the Chimera story in later sources.