ABSTRACT
Son of Glaucus, king of Corinth, or else of Poseidon. His mother was Eurynome (or Eurymede). Bellerophon was one of the greater heroes; but like Heracles, Jason, and Theseus, he often performed feats imposed by a superior. As a young man at Corinth, or rather Ephyra as its name then was, Bellerophon aspired to break in the immortal winged horse Pegasus, sprung from the blood which had fallen from Medusa’s severed neck when Perseus had killed her. As she was pregnant by Poseidon, it was said that the steed owed its paternity to that god. Its name was sometimes connected with the Greek word pege, ‘a spring of water’, and the origins of at least two springs in Greece were attributed to a stamp of the horse’s hoof, namely Hippocrene (‘the horsespring’) on Mount Helicon, and a spring of the same name at Troezen. At first the young horse wandered over land and through the air, refusing to allow any man to approach it. Bellerophon tamed it eventually by enlisting the aid of the seer Polyidus. Polyidus told him to lie for a night upon the altar of Athena. There the young man dreamed that the goddess gave him a golden bridle and ordered him to sacrifice a bull to Poseidon the Tamer. When he awoke, he found the bridle on the ground beside him; Polyidus commanded him to obey his orders at once, and Bellerophon duly performed the sacrifice. Then he found Pegasus calmly waiting at the spring of Pirene in Corinth; it seemed to welcome his approach, and he placed the bridle on its head.
