Bellerophon was known for capturing the winged horse Pegasus with the help of Athena's charmed bridle, and earning the disfavour of the gods after attempting to ride Pegasus to Mount Olympus to join them.
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16 Facts About Bellerophon
2.
Bellerophon was the son of the mortal Eurynome by either her husband, Glaucus, or Poseidon.
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3.
Bellerophon was the father of Isander, Hippolochus, and Laodamia by Philonoe, daughter of King Iobates of Lycia.
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4.
Bellerophon's father was Glaucus, who was the King of Potniae and son of Sisyphus.
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5.
Bellerophon had to approach Pegasus while it drank from a well; Polyeidos told him which well —the never-failing Pirene on the citadel of Corinth, the city of Bellerophon's birth.
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6.
Bellerophon mounted his steed and flew off to where the Chimera was said to dwell.
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8.
Bellerophon felt the Chimera's hot breath and was struck with an idea.
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9.
Bellerophon got a large block of lead and mounted it on his spear.
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10.
Bellerophon then flew head-on towards the Chimera, holding out the spear as far as he could.
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11.
The palace guards then were sent against him, but Bellerophon called upon Poseidon, who flooded the plain of Xanthus behind Bellerophon as he approached.
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12.
Iobates relented, produced the letter, and allowed Bellerophon to marry his daughter Philonoe, the younger sister of Anteia, and shared with him half his kingdom, with its fine vineyards and grain fields.
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13.
Bellerophon felt that because of his victory over the Chimera, he deserved to fly to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods.
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14.
Enough fragments of Euripides' lost tragedy, Bellerophon, remain as about thirty quotations in surviving texts, giving scholars a basis for assessing its theme: the tragic outcome of his attempt to storm Olympus on Pegasus.
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15.
An outspoken passage—in which Bellerophon seems to doubt the gods' existence, due to the contrast between the wicked and impious, who live lives of ease, with the suffering of the good—is apparently the basis for Aristophanes' imputation of "atheism" to the poet.
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16.
Replacement of Bellerophon by the more familiar culture hero Perseus was a development of Classical times that was standardized during the Middle Ages and has been adopted by the European poets of the Renaissance and later.
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