Pegasus- Greek CreatureCreature · Hybrid"The Winged Horse"

Born from Blood

The Gorgons slept at the western edge of the world, beyond the stream of Ocean. Two were immortal. Medusa was not. Perseus came with Athena's polished shield and Hermes's adamantine sword, watching the Gorgon only in reflection so her gaze could not reach him. He struck off her head in a single blow.

From the severed neck, twin forms sprang: Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant bearing a golden sword. Both were children of Poseidon, who had lain with Medusa in Athena's temple when she was still beautiful. The goddess punished Medusa, not Poseidon: she turned the woman's hair to serpents and her gaze into a weapon that turned the living to stone. The blade fell, and the god's children emerged fully formed. Chrysaor vanished into the world of men and fathered Geryon, the three-bodied giant Heracles would one day kill.

Pegasus rose into the sky without a glance at Perseus. The hero was left holding a dripping head and watching a wonder disappear into the clouds. The horse flew to Olympus. In the Theogony, Hesiod says Pegasus dwelt in Zeus's halls from that day and bore the god's thunder and lightning across the sky.

The Horse's Fountain

Even as Zeus's thunder-bearer, Pegasus descended to earth to drink. Mortals glimpsed him at the spring Peirene near Corinth and on the slopes of Mount Helicon, but he vanished before anyone could come close. The Greeks heard in his name the word pēgē, "spring." Wherever his hooves struck stone, water burst from the rock.

The most famous spring was Hippocrene on Mount Helicon. The Muses were singing on the mountain when their music so moved the earth that Helicon began to swell toward heaven. Poseidon sent Pegasus to stop it. The winged horse landed on the summit and stamped his hoof. Where it struck, Hippocrene gushed forth. Its waters gave poets the gift of song. The mountain subsided. The spring remained. Pausanias saw it centuries later when he walked the sacred slopes of Helicon.

The Golden Bridle

Bellerophon, grandson of Sisyphus, had been sent to Lycia carrying his own death warrant. King Proetus of Argos, whose wife had falsely accused the young hero, sealed a message to his father-in-law Iobates: kill the bearer. Iobates chose the Chimera, a fire-breathing creature with a lion's head and a serpent for a tail. No warrior on foot could survive its flames. Only from the air could the beast be killed, and only one creature in the world could carry a rider through the sky.

Pindar tells in Olympian 13 how the seer Polyeidos instructed Bellerophon to spend a night in Athena's temple. As he slept on the stone floor, the goddess appeared and placed a golden bridle in his hands. When he woke, the bridle lay beside him. The dream had crossed into the waking world.

He found Pegasus drinking at Peirene, wings folded along his flanks. No rope or net could hold such a creature. But when Pegasus saw the golden bridle, he recognized divine authority and lowered his head. Bellerophon slipped the bridle over his muzzle and mounted. For the first time since his birth, Pegasus carried a rider.

The Chimera and the Conquests

Astride Pegasus, Bellerophon flew to Lycia where the Chimera was burning the countryside bare. From the horse's back, high above the creature's fire, he drove arrows into the monster. The Chimera lunged and snapped at empty air. Pegasus banked and dove, always out of reach, and Bellerophon loosed arrow after arrow.

The killing blow came from a lance tipped with lead. Bellerophon drove it into the Chimera's throat. When the monster breathed fire, the lead melted and poured into her lungs, burning her from within. Mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon then routed the Amazons and conquered the Solymi. Every impossible task King Iobates had set, expecting the hero's death, Bellerophon completed from the back of the immortal horse. Iobates recognized divine favor and gave Bellerophon his daughter and half his kingdom.

The Fall

Bellerophon had slain the Chimera and won a kingdom from the back of a divine horse. He began to believe he deserved a place among the gods. He rode past the clouds where he had fought the Chimera, higher still, toward the halls of Olympus.

Zeus sent a gadfly. It stung Pegasus beneath the wing. The horse reared, and Bellerophon lost his grip on the golden bridle and tumbled from the horse's back. He did not die. Homer says in the Iliad that Bellerophon wandered the Aleian plain for the rest of his days, crippled and blinded, eating his heart out, shunning the paths of men.

Pegasus continued the ascent alone and returned to the stables of Olympus. Zeus honored the horse by setting him among the stars. The Great Square of Pegasus still marks the autumn sky.