Πρίν γέ οἱ χρυσάμπυκα κοῦρα χαλινὸν

Παλλὰς ἤνεγκε.”—Pindar.

“Αλλ ὅτε δῆ καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν

ἤτοι ὁ κὰπ πεδίον τὸ Αλήιον οἶος ἀλᾶτο

ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων πἀτον ἀνθρώπων ἀλεείνων.”—Homer.

[The beautiful Corinthian legend of Bellerophon is narrated by Homer in the well-known episode of Glaucus and Diomede, in the sixth book of the Iliad. In that episode the strong-lunged son of Tydeus meets in the fight a face that was new to him, and before engaging in battle desires to know the name of his noble adversary. The courteous request is courteously complied with; and it appears that Glaucus—for such is the champion’s name, though now serving in Priam’s army as a Lycian auxiliary—was by descent a Grecian, the grandson of the famous Bellerophon of Corinth, between whose family and that of Diomede a sacred bond of hospitality had existed. This discovery leads to an interchange of friendly tokens between the intending combatants; the weapons of war are sheathed, and a bright gleam of human kindness is thrown across the dark tempestuous cloud of international conflict.

The story of Bellerophon, as told in this passage of the most ancient Greek poet, is a remarkable instance of how popular legend, proceeding from the germ of some famous and striking fact, is gradually worked up into a form where the actual is altogether subordinated to the miraculous. In Homer there is not a single word said of the winged horse, which is the constant companion of Bellerophon’s exploits, in the current form of the legend afterwards revived, and which appears regularly on the coins of Corinth. The reason, also, of the hero’s fall, from the loftiest prosperity to the saddest humiliation, is only dimly indicated by the poet, when he says that Bellerophon, towards the close of his life, “was hated by all the gods,” and, “avoiding the path of men, ate his own heart” (ὅν θυμὸν κατέδων); but whether it was that Homer, knowing the sin of Bellerophon, with a delicate sense of propriety, refused to set it forth distinctly in the mouth of his grandson, or whether the simplicity of the oldest form of the legend knew nothing more than what Homer tells, certain it is that the ever-active Greek imagination could not content itself with the obscurity of the Homeric indication, and the moral that “pride must have a fall” was distinctly brought out in the later form of the myth. For the rest, the writer has taken the topographical notices in the following verses, not from his own conceit, but from the authority of Pausanias in his Corinthian antiquities.

It needs scarcely be added that the legend of Bellerophon—in ancient times equally the property of Corinth in Europe, and Lycia in Asia—has now become in a peculiar manner the possession of Great Britain by the labours of Sir Charles Fellowes, and the Xanthian Chamber of the British Museum.]

I.

The sun shines bright on Ephyré’s height,[[2]]