Bellerŏphon

, a son of Glaucus king of Ephyre by Eurymede, was at first called Hippo no us. The murder of his brother, whom some call Alcimenus or Beller, procured him the name of Bellerophon, or murderer of Beller . After this murder, Bellerophon fled to the court of Prœtus king of Argos. As he was of a handsome appearance, the king’s wife, called Antæa or Stenobœa, fell in love with him; and as he slighted her pa ion, she accused him before her husband of attempts upon her virtue. Prœtus, unwilling to violate the laws of hospitality by punishing Bellerophon, sent him away to his father-in-law Jobates king of Lycia, and gave him a letter, in which he begged the king to punish with death a man who had so dishonourably treated his daughter. From that circumstance, all letters which are of an unfavourable tendency to the bearer have been called letters of Bellerophon . Jobates, to satisfy his son-in-law, sent Bellerophon to conquer a horrible monster called Chimæra, in which dangerous expedition he hoped, and was even a ured, he must perish. See: Chimæra . But the providence of Minerva supported him, and, with the aid of the winged horse Pegasus, he conquered the monster, and returned victorious. After this Jobates sent him against the Solymi, in hopes of seeing him destroyed; but he obtained another victory, and conquered afterwards the Amazons, by the king’s order. At his return from this third expedition, he was attacked by a party sent against him by Jobates; but he destroyed all his a a ins, and convinced the king that innocence is always protected by the gods. Upon this, Jobates no longer sought to destroy his life; but he gave him his daughter in marriage, and made him his succe or on the throne of Lycia, as he was without male i ue. Some authors have supported that he attempted to fly to heaven upon the horse Pegasus, but that Jupiter sent an insect which stung the horse, and threw down the rider who wandered upon the earth in the greatest melancholy and dejection till the day of his death, one generation before the Trojan war. Bellerophon had two sons, Isander, who was killed in his war against the Solymi, and Hippo loch us, who succeeded to the throne after his death, besides one daughter called Hippo dam i a, who had Sarpedon by Jupiter. The wife of Bellerophon is called Philonoe by Apollo dor us, and A chem one by Homer. Homer , Iliad , bk. 6 , li. 156 , . — Juvenal , satire 10.— Apollo dor us , bk. 2 , ch. 3 ; bk. 3 , ch. 1 .— Hyginus , fables 157 & 243; Poetic on Astronomic on , bk. 2 , ch. 18 .— Hesiod , Theogony , li. 325 .— Horace , bk. 4 , ode 11, li. 26 .— Pausanias , bk. 9 , ch. 31 .