![]() ![]() Virgil, in the Aeneid (book 5) employs Chimaera for the name of gigantic ship of Gyas in the ship-race, with possible allegorical significance in contemporary Roman politics. The myths of the Chimera may be found in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus (book 1), the Iliad (book 16) by Homer, the Fabulae 57 and 151 by Hyginus, the Metamorphoses (book VI 339 by Ovid IX 648), and the Theogony 319ff by Hesiod. ![]() Provided with a human face and a scaly tail, as in Dante's vision of Geryon in Inferno xvii.7–17, 25–27, hybrid monsters, more akin to the Manticore of Pliny's Natural History (viii.90), provided iconic representations of hypocrisy and fraud well into the seventeenth century, through an emblemmatic representation in Cesare Ripa's Iconologia. In Medieval art, although the Chimera of antiquity was forgotten, chimerical figures appear as embodiments of the deceptive, even satanic forces of raw nature. The Chimera appears in Etruscan wall-paintings of the fourth century BC. In Etruscan civilization, the Chimera appears in the Orientalizing period that precedes Etruscan Archaic art that is to say, very early indeed. As divine mother, and more especially as protector, for Lower Egypt, Bast became strongly associated with Wadjet, the patron goddess of Lower Egypt. ![]() Sekhmet was one of the dominant deities in upper Egypt and Bast in lower Egypt. The lioness represented the war goddess and protector of both cultures that would unite as Ancient Egypt. Two vase-painters employed the motif so consistently they are given the pseudonyms the Bellerophon Painter and the Chimaera Painter.Ī fire-breathing lioness was one of the earliest of solar and war deities in Ancient Egypt (representations from 3000 years prior to the Greek) and influences are feasible. A separate Attic tradition, where the goats breathe fire and the animal's rear is serpent-like, begins with such confidence that Marilyn Low Schmitt is convinced there must be unrecognized or undiscovered local precursors. The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the end of the seventh century into a decorative Chimera-motif in Corinth, while the motif of Bellerophon on Pegasus took on a separate existence alone. The Corinthian type is fixed, after some early hesitation, in the 670s BC the variations in the pictorial representations suggests multiple origins to Marilyn Low Schmitt. The Chimera first appears at an early stage in the repertory of the proto-Corinthian pottery-painters, providing some of the earliest identifiable mythological scenes that may be recognized in Greek art. An autonomous tradition, one that did not rely on the written word, was represented in the visual repertory of the Greek vase-painters. The Chimera was situated in foreign Lycia, but her representation in the arts was wholly Greek. Pebble mosaic depicting Bellerophon killing the Chimera, from Rhodes archaeological museum Sighting the Chimera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes). The Chimera is generally considered to have been female (see the quotation from Hesiod above) despite the mane adorning her head, the inclusion of a close mane often was depicted on lionesses, but the ears always were visible (that does not occur with depictions of male lions). Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay." The author of the Bibliotheca concurs: descriptions agree that she breathed fire. Hesiod's Theogony follows the Homeric description: he makes the Chimera the issue of Echidna: "She was the mother of Chimaera who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion in her hinderpart, a dragon and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Homer's brief description in the Iliad is the earliest surviving literary reference: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire." Elsewhere in the Iliad, Homer attributes the rearing of Chimera to Amisodorus. ![]()
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