Beller'ophon

Beller'ophon (originally called HIPPONOUS) was the son of the Corinthian king Glaucus, and Eurymede, daughter of Sisyphus. Other accounts make Neptune his father. Having accidentally killed the Corinthian Bellerus, he fled to his relative Prætus, king of Argos, whose wife, Antæa, fell in love with the young hero. He rejected her offers, whereupon in revenge she poisoned her husband's mind against his guest. Prætus sent him to his father-in-law, Iobates, king of Lycia, with a sealed message, asking Iobates to cause the youth to be slain. The latter, reluctant to do so directly, imposed upon Bellerophon the seemingly impossible task of slaying the formidable Chimæra (q.v.). Mounted on the winged steed Pegasus (given to him by Pallas), the hero ascended into the air, and succeeded in slaying the monster with his arrows. He was next sent against the Amazons, whom he also defeated. On his way home he destroyed an ambuscade of Lycians, set by Iobates for his destruction. That monarch now thought it useless to attempt his death, and, as a sort of recompense, gave the hero in marriage his daughter Philonœ, by whom he had three children—Isander, Hippolochus, and Laodameia. Homer relates that he at last drew on himself the hatred of the gods, and wandered lonely through the Aleian field. Pindar relates that Bellerophon on Pegasus endeavoured to mount to Olympus, when the steed, maddened by Jove through the agency of a gadfly, threw his rider, who was stricken with blindness. Bellerophon was a favourite subject in ancient art. His story was dramatised by Sophocles in Iobates, and by Euripides in Stheneboea and Bellerophonites, but not one of the three has come down to us.