Chimera
ky-MEER-uh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesLion in front, goat in the middle, serpent behind, and fire out of the mouth. Homer describes her in six lines and says she was of divine stock and not human, and that Bellerophon killed her on the gods' instructions.
Hesiod adds that she breathed raging fire and was great and swift-footed and strong, and gives her the three heads rather than Homer's three parts.
She matters here as precedent. A fire-breathing thing of divine stock, killed by one man sent against it, is the shape of the story before Kalaxes is in it.
Sources
- Hom. Il. 6.179-183
- Hes. Theog. 319-325
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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