Prince of Corinth, a city in the northern Peloponnese, Bellerophon lived happily in the palace, where his intelligence, courage and strength admired the court. However, one day he committed a very serious crime. He unintentionally killed his own brother, Alcímenes. Terrified by his action, the young heir left his homeland to wander the world and atone for his guilt.
One morning he landed on the coast of Lycia, a prosperous kingdom located on the other side of the Aegean, in Asia Minor. Preto ruled there, a wise and compassionate sovereign. The monarch not only helped Bellerophon purge his sentence, but also welcomed him among his people as a son. However, after a while, the sovereign’s wife, Estenebea, fell in love with the foreign prince. The boy’s beauty aroused so much passion in the queen that she prepared a love meeting. The prince, however, rejected the invitation.
Despondent, Sthenebea ran to tell her husband that Bellerophon had made a bold advance on her. King Pretus, indignant and pained, but not daring to stain his honor with the blood of a guest, wrote a letter to a neighboring monarch, Ióbates. He handed the letter to Bellerophon with the order not to read it. In it he asked Ióbates to kill the emissary.
After receiving the message, Ióbates conceived a certain death for the young man. He commissioned him to exterminate a monster that was devastating the region, destroying crops and devouring livestock. The creature had a snake’s tail, a lion’s torso and a goat’s head, and it spat fire from its mouth. There was no way to defeat this hideous creature. Many men who tried lost their lives on the mission without being able to complete it. The only way to eradicate the Chimera, as the monster was called, was to attack it from the air.
Bellerophon then told himself that the best thing he could do was to use a famous winged horse born from the blood of Medusa, another monstrous being. It was not easy. Once found, the beautiful steed, immaculately white, resisted. He didn’t want to be tamed. The hero, however, patiently achieved his goal. Thus he was able to soar to the heights and from the sky he killed the Chimera, launching a rain of arrows at it.
King Iobates could not believe his eyes when Bellerophon returned to the palace victorious. Eager to satisfy his ally Preto’s demand for him, the sovereign commissioned a second impossible feat from the Corinthian prince. Nothing less than single-handedly beating the Sólimos, a barbarian people famous for their brutality. But this time also the young exile defeated adversity. Riding Pegasus, infallible with his arrows and willing to fight to the death, he ended up defeating each of his aggressive opponents.
Ióbates, again, received the undefeated hero perplexed. No longer knowing what to do to get rid of him, he sent the stranger on a greater challenge than before. He tasked him with destroying a nation of archers as precise as Bellerophon himself. They were the fearsome Amazons, warrior women whom no mortal had managed to subdue. The Corinthian, however, prevailed thanks to his audacity, his fearsome arrows and the assistance of his faithful Pegasus.
At this point, when King Yobates saw Bellerophon return unharmed, he decided to simply send his best soldiers to set up a lethal ambush for him. However, once again, the young man surpassed his rivals without much difficulty. The monarch, finally admired, showed his guest the treacherous letter that Preto had sent him, offered him the hand of his daughter, Princess Filónoe, and named him his heir to succeed him on the throne the day he died. .
In this way, Bellerophon once again lived happy years of peace, as during his childhood and adolescence in his native Corinth. Loved and respected by the subjects of Ióbates, he supported the sovereign in the government of the kingdom, had fun in the palace with his wife Philonoe and the courtiers or undertook long rides through the air mounted on Pegasus.
However, such tranquility contravened his heroic nature. At times, in the midst of the hearings, the parties, and the walks, she nostalgically longed for the days of his exploits. She fervently desired to accomplish new feats.
So it was that one day, very early, he came out of his room, hugged Pegasus and then mounted him. He led his magnificent horse to the highest, towards Olympus, the abode of the gods. They became irritated, warned of the mortal’s approach. Zeus, especially upset by such insolence, sent a golden gadfly against Bellerophon. The insect, buzzing and flashing in the blue of the sky, stung the winged horse hard on the rump. The animal bucked in the air in such a way that its rider, the brave Bellerophon, lost his balance, fell into the void and crashed to the ground.
This text is part of an article published in number 467 of the magazine Historia y Vida. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
