Pegasus
PEG-uh-sus
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe winged horse that sprang from Medusa's neck when Perseus struck off her head, along with Chrysaor. Hesiod says he took his name from the springs of Ocean where he was born.
Pindar gives the rest: Bellerophon could not catch him until Athena came to him in sleep with a golden bridle, and with it he mastered the horse and killed the Chimera from its back.
A monster's death producing the means to kill the next monster is a pattern the Greeks kept returning to.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 280-286
- Pind. Ol. 13.63-90
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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