He sent Bellerophon to his father-in-law with a note detailing the crime and demanding justice. Proetus could not kill a guest outright without violating the sacred laws of hospitality. Embarrassed and scorned, the queen accused the innocent man of attempting to assault her. The queen was attracted to the young prince, but Bellerophon rejected her advances. More trouble came, however, in the form of the king’s wife. Like many heroes in Greek mythology, he had been born into royalty but exiled after an unspecified crime.īellerophon was welcomed into the home of Proetus, the king of Tiryns. The Chimera appeared in the story of the hero Bellerophon. The convention in the art of the time was to show females with shorter, sparser manes than the long ones typical of males. The Chimera can still be identified as female in art, however, because its ears are showing. This was typical in Greek art, where lionesses were shown with a mane. Rather than growing near one another the creature had a typical lion’s head, a goat’s head growing out of its back, and a snake’s head at the end of its tail.Īlthough the Chimera was almost universally described as female, art of the creature shows it with a mane around its lion’s head. As early as the 7th century BC, the Chimera was a popular image in art, particularly in Corinth.Īrtists included the three heads, each coming from the part of the body that corresponded with the animal type. The types of animals contained within the Chimera’s hybrid form remained consistent.Īrtistic representations agreed with Hesiod. Hesiod added the detail that the monster had three heads, each corresponding to a different body type. The earliest written description comes from Homer’s Iliad, in which he described the beast as “lion-fronted and snake behind” with “a goat in the middle.” Homer also said the monster breathed bright, hot fire. While the Greek word chimaira referred to a female goat, from a very early time it was clear that the monstrous Chimera was much more than a common animal. While other monsters like Charybdis and Medusa evolved over time, the Chimera’s image was remarkably consistent. The Chimera was one of the most outlandish monsters in Greek mythology, but surprisingly its description changed very little over the course of the centuries. Read on to learn all about the original Chimera, one of Greek mythology’s most famous monsters. So where did it come from and how did its name spread? The Chimera was one of the most consistently described and depicted creatures in all of mythology. There was only one Chimera, according to the Greeks, and its legend was a familiar one. The ancient Greeks, however, saw the Chimera as a distinct monster. These types of monsters, which combined features from many different animals, were common in mythology around the world. The world chimera today refers to almost any hybrid creature. You have probably heard the word chimera used to describe a monster, but do you know where it all started? Here’s the full story of the original Chimera of Greek mythology!
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