Heroes: Volume II of Mythos

F LYING TOO HIGH Iobates hid his fury well when a cheerful Bellerophon strode into his chamber and dropped a stinking, scorched lion’s head and suppurating snake carcass on his desk. Philonoë gasped. ‘You killed her! Oh, you’re so brave!’ Bellerophon winked and her cheeks flared red. Iobates was thinking hard. ‘That’s … good lord … my, my … I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Come, share a cup of wine with me. You killed her!’ ‘Her death should bring peace and prosperity back to your kingdom,’ said Bellerophon, downing his wine with the casual modesty that only arrogance can produce. ‘Yes indeed …’ mused Iobates. ‘Only … that is … well, it’s nothing.’ ‘Don’t tell me there’s another monster rampaging about?’ ‘No, no, not a monster. We do have a problem with the men of Pisidia. They’re descended from SOLYMUS. Heard of him? No? Well, Solymus married his sister MILYE, and you know what the offspring of incestuous couplings are like. His descendants – the Solymi, they call themselves – they pay no taxes, they raid neighbouring towns and villages, and word has it they are even now rising up to revolt against my rule. I’ve sent platoons and even large companies of soldiers against them, but they’ve always been ambushed and either kidnapped for ransom or slaughtered.’ ‘So you’d like them brought into line?’ said Bellerophon with an infuriatingly cocky grin and another wink at the round-eyed Philonoë. ‘It’s too much to ask … too much …’ A few days later a column of Solymi trooped into the palace to bow low and swear allegiance to Iobates for ever. They had lost seventy of their finest when Bellerophon and Pegasus descended on their town, and that was enough. Now Iobates urged Bellerophon not to go to war with the Amazons, who were in the habit of raiding Lycia from their fastness in the northeast. Mounted on Pegasus, Bellerophon dropped great boulders on these fierce female warriors until they too pledged themselves by treaty to leave Iobates and his kingdom alone. Next Bellerophon defeated the pirate CHEIMARRHUS, having ignored Iobates’ entreaties about leaving such a fearsome foe well alone.fn12 News of this latest exploit reached Iobates ahead of Bellerophon. Desperate to finish off the arrogant youth once and for all, the king now ordered his own citizens to take up arms and kill the pestilential youth as soon as he returned to Xanthus. Arriving at the gates of the palace to see the troops lined up against him and barring entrance to the city, Bellerophon at last understood: all this time Iobates had meant him harm. Without Pegasus, whom he had left behind in his meadow, he was all but defenceless against such numbers. All he could do was pray to his father Poseidon. Behind Bellerophon, the River Xanthus began to overflow its banks, flooding its plain with water which swept towards the city. Iobates, watching in horror from the tower of his palace, sent men to plead with the hero, but the iron had entered Bellerophon’s soul and he marched grimly on, the waters surging behind him. Finally the women of Xanthus, desperate to save their homes and families, hoisted their dresses right up and ran towards him. Bellerophon, so bold and self-assured in other ways, was modest, shy and awkward when it came to sexual matters. At the sight of the women’s buttocks, breasts and bushes he turned and ran, shocked and hot with shame and embarrassment. The floodwaters receded with him and the city was saved. It was time for Iobates to understand the obvious truth: this hero was protected by the gods. The letter of his son-in-law Proetus made no sense. If Bellerophon had truly tried to rape Stheneboea, surely the gods would have abandoned him? Now Iobates came to think of it, his daughter Stheneboea had always been trouble. Perhaps he had misjudged the boy? A sudden clamour drew him to look down into the courtyard. Bellerophon and Pegasus had landed; the young man dismounted and was now striding towards the king’s apartments, sword in hand. When he burst into the chamber, he found Iobates waving a letter at him. ‘Read this, read this!’ cried the king. Bellerophon snatched the letter and read it. ‘B-but it was the other way round,’ he said. ‘It was she who tried to seduce me!’ Iobates nodded. ‘I see that now. Of course I do. Forgive me, my boy. I owe you everything.’ In the end it turned out that Bellerophon didn’t want to go back to Corinth and marry Aethra, the princess of Troezen. Over the weeks and months he stayed in Xanthus, he had begun to notice how beautiful and sweet-natured young Philonoë was. When the news reached Stheneboea that her sister was to marry Bellerophon, she knew the story of the botched seduction and spiteful, duplicitous revenge would come out. Proetus would hear of it. The whole of the Peloponnese would whisper of it. Unable to bear the shame, Stheneboea hanged herself.fn13 Like the Chimera herself, Bellerophon’s story begins with a glorious and majestic roar but ends with a sharp serpent’s bite. It gives me no pleasure to relate that his youthful cockiness soured over the years into a very unappealing arrogance and vanity. He believed that his divine parentage, his relationship with Pegasus and the heroic feats he undertook with that magical horse had all raised him to a level greater than that of a mere mortal. One day he mounted Pegasus and rode the winged horse up to Mount Olympus. ‘The gods will welcome me,’ he told himself. ‘I am of their blood. I have always been marked out for greatness.’ Such hubris was a blasphemy that could not go unpunished. When Zeus saw Bellerophon flying towards the summit, he sent a gadfly to torment Pegasus. The insect’s vicious sting maddened the horse, who bucked and reared, throwing Bellerophon. The hero plummeted down through the thin air, smashing his hip on the rocks far below. Pegasus landed on the top of Olympus and Zeus kept him there as his glamorous pack animal, charged with carrying his thunderbolts. Bellerophon dragged out the rest of his days shunned by society for his sacrilege, until he died a crippled, embittered and lonely old man. Few heroes die peacefully in their beds after long lives filled with happiness. But few have had sadder ends than the once glorious Bellerophon.