BELLEROPHON or BELLEROPHONTES, a hero, probably of Oriental origin, although provided with a Greek pedigree as early as Homer. In the Iliad (vi., 153 f oll.) , he is son of Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus of Ephyre (traditionally identified with Corinth) . Anteia, wife of Proetus, king of Argos, loves him, and on her overtures being rejected, falsely accuses him to her hus band (theme of Potiphar's wife, fairly common in Greek) . He sends Bellerophon to his father in-law, the king of Lycia (Iobates as later authors call him), with a written message that he is to be slain. The king sends him against the Chimaera (literally "goat," a fire-breathing monster part goat, part serpent, part lion), then against the Solymi, a warlike tribe, then against the Amazons, and finally, when he vanquishes them all, sets chosen warriors in ambush to kill him. Bellerophon kills them, and the king, recog nizing him as more than human, marries him to his daughter. He lives in prosperity a while, then falls out of favour with the gods, loses two of his children, and wanders, grief-stricken and shun ning mankind, over the "Aleian Plain," i.e., the Plain of Wandering.
Later authors, from Pindar on, add that while still at Corinth, Bellerophon tamed the winged horse Pegasus (q.v.) with a bridle which Athena gave him ; that he visited Proetus because he had slain either the Corinthian hero Bellerus or his own brother, and so went into exile ; that he used Pegasus to fight the Chimaera, and afterwards to punish Anteia (or, as they call her Stheneboea), by inducing her to ride with him and then dropping her from a great height; that he earned the wrath of the gods by trying to fly up to Heaven, being thrown from Pegasus in consequence, and lamed.
His adventures were frequently represented in ancient art, and formed the subject of the lobates of Sophocles, the Bellerophontes and Stheneboea of Euripides. Only fragments of these survive.