B E L L E R O P H O N
was son of Glaucus, King of Corinth, and named at first Hipponous. The murder of Beller, his brother, by him, procured his second name of Bellerophon or the murderer of Beller; after he had committed which, he fled to the court of Prœtus, King of Argos, where being of a noble and fine person, he won the affections of the wife of the king; he refused to listen to her passion, and in revenge he was accused by her to her husband, of attempting her virtue.
Prœtus, was very unwilling to trespass upon the laws of hospitality by punishing him, but sent him with a letter to Jobates the father of his queen, entreating him to put to death the man who would have insulted the honour of his daughter.
Jobates to satisfy his son-in-law, sent Beller to attack a monster called Chimæra, in the full expectation that he would be destroyed. By the assistance of Minerva, however, who lent him Pegasus the winged horse, he succeeded in conquering the monster, and returned victorious to the court of Jobates.
After this he was sent on various expeditions of great danger, in all of which he was so successful, that Jobates imagined he was
under the protection of the gods, and gave him the hand of his daughter Cassandra in marriage, naming him as his successor to the throne.
It has been asserted by some that he attempted to fly to Olympus upon Pegasus, but that Jupiter sent an insect which stung the horse, who threw his rider headlong to the earth; and that for many years he remained melancholy, languishing, and full of pain and weakness.