Chimera (mythology)
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The
Chimera (also
Chimaera or
Chimæra) (
pron.: /kɨˈmɪərə/ or
/kaɪˈmɪərə/;
Greek:
Χίμαιρα,
Khimaira, from χίμαρος,
khimaros, "she-goat") was, according to
Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of
Lycia in
Asia Minor, composed of the parts of three animals: a lion, a serpent and a goat. Usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a
goat arising from its back, and a tail that ended in a snake's head,
[1] the Chimera was one of the offspring of
Typhon and
Echidna and a sibling of such monsters as
Cerberus and the
Lernaean Hydra. The term chimera has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals.
Description
Homer's brief description in the
Iliad[2]
is the earliest surviving literary reference: "a thing of immortal
make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle,
[3] and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire".
[4] Elsewhere in the Iliad, Homer attributes the rearing of Chimera to Amisodorus.
[5] 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. Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay"[6] The author of the
Bibliotheca concurs:
[7] descriptions agree that she breathed
fire. The Chimera is generally considered to have been female (see the quotation from Hesiod above) despite the
mane adorning its
lion's
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). Sighting the Chimera was an omen of
storms,
shipwrecks, and
natural disasters (particularly
volcanoes).
While there are different
genealogies, in one version the Chimera mated with her brother
Orthrus and mothered the
Sphinx and the
Nemean lion (others have Orthrus and their mother, Echidna, mating; most attribute all to Typhon and Echidna).
The Chimera finally was defeated by
Bellerophon, with the help of
Pegasus, at the command of
King Iobates of
Lycia. Since Pegasus could fly, Bellerophon shot the Chimera from the air, safe from her heads and breath.
[8] A
scholiast
to Homer adds that he finished her off by equipping his spear with a
lump of lead that melted when exposed to the Chimera's fiery breath and
consequently killed her, an image drawn from metalworking.
[9]
The Chimera was situated in foreign Lycia,
[10] but her representation in the arts was wholly Greek.
[11]
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 first appears at an early stage in the
proto-Corinthian pottery-painters' repertory, providing some of the earliest identifiable mythological scenes that can be recognized in
Greek art.
The Corinthian type is fixed, after some early hesitation, in the 670s
BC; the variations in the pictorial representations suggest to Marilyn
Low Schmitt
[12]
a multiple origin. The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the
end of the seventh century into a decorative Chimera-motif in Corinth,
[13]
while the motif of Bellerophon on Pegasus took on a separate existence
alone. 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
[14]
is convinced there must be unrecognized earlier local prototypes. Two
vase-painters employed the motif so consistently they are given the
pseudonyms the Bellerophon Painter and the Chimaera Painter. A
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.
In
Etruscan civilization,
the Chimera appears in the "Orientalizing" period that precedes
Etruscan Archaic art; that is to say, very early indeed. The Chimera
appears in Etruscan wall-paintings of the fourth century BC.
Pebble mosaic depicting Bellerophon killing the Chimera, from
Rhodes archaeological museum
Robert Graves suggests,
[15]
"The Chimera was, apparently, a calendar-symbol of the tripartite year,
of which the seasonal emblems were lion, goat, and serpent."
In
Medieval art, though the Chimera of Antiquity was forgotten, chimerical figures appear as embodiments of the deceptive, even
Satanic forces of raw nature. 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.
[16]
Classical sources
The myths of the Chimera can be found in
Pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheca (book 1),
Homer's Iliad (book 6);
Hyginus'
Fabulae 57 and 151;
Ovid's Metamorphoses (book VI 339; IX 648); and
Hesiod's Theogony 319ff.
Virgil, in the
Aeneid (book 5) employs
Chimaera for the name of
Gyas' gigantic ship in the ship-race, with possible allegorical significance in contemporary Roman politics.
[17]
Hypothesis about origin
The eternal fires of
Chimera in
Lycia where the myth takes place
Main article:
Mount Chimaera cited
Ctesias and quoted
Photius identifying the Chimera with an area of permanent gas vents which still can be found today by hikers on the
Lycian Way in southwest
Turkey. Called in Turkish
Yanartaş (flaming rock), it consists of some two dozen vents in the ground, grouped in two patches on the hillside above the Temple of
Hephaestus about 3 km north of
Çıralı, near ancient
Olympos, in
Lycia. The vents emit burning
methane thought to be of
metamorphic origin, which in ancient times were
landmarks by which sailors could navigate.
The Neo-Hittite Chimera from
Carchemish, dated to 850–750 BC, which is now housed in the
Museum of Anatolian Civilizations[18]
no doubt served as a basis for the Greek legend. It differs from the
Greek version in that while there are three heads, none of them is that
of a goat, only a main human head, a lion's head facing forward and
placed on the chest of the lion's body, and a snake's head placed at the
end of the tail.
Use for Chinese mythological creatures
Some western scholars of Chinese art, starting with
Victor Segalen, use the word "chimera" generically to refer to winged quadrupeds, such as
bixie,
tianlu, and even
qilin.
[19]
See also
Notes
- ^ Peck, "Chimaera".
- ^ Homer, Iliad 6.179–182
- ^ "The creature was a goat; a young goat that had seen but one winter was called chimaira in Greek". (Kerenyi 1959:82).
- ^ In Richmond Lattimore's translation.
- ^ Homer, Iliad, 16.328–329
- ^ Hesiod Theogony 319–325 in Hugh Evelyn-White's translation.
- ^ Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.3.1:
"it had the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third
head, the middle one, was rough which it belched fire. And it devastated
the country and harried the cattle; for it was a single creature with
the power of three beasts. It is said, too, that this Chimera was bred
by Amisodarus, as Homer also affirms,3 and that it was begotten by
Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates".
- ^ Pindar: Olympian Odes, 13.84–90; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.3.2; Hesiod, Theogony 319 ff.
- ^ Graves, section 75, note
- ^ Homer, Iliad 16.328–329, links her breeding to the Trojan ally Amisodarus of Lycia, as a plague for men.
- ^ Anne Roes "The Representation of the Chimaera" The Journal of Hellenic Studies 54.1 (1934), pp. 21–25, adduces Ancient Near Eastern conventions of winged animals who wings end in animal heads.
- ^ This outline of Chimera motifs follows Marilyn Low Schmitt, "Bellerophon and the Chimaera in Archaic Greek Art" American Journal of Archaeology 70.4 (October 1966), pp. 341–347.
- ^ Later coins struck at Sicyon, near Corinth, bear the chimera-motif. (Schmitt 1966:344 note.
- ^ Schmitt 1966.
- ^ Graves 1960:sect.34.2.
- ^ John F. Moffitt, "An Exemplary Humanist Hybrid: Vasari's 'Fraude' with Reference to Bronzino's 'Sphinx'" Renaissance Quarterly 49.2 (Summer 1996), pp. 303–333, traces the chimeric image of Fraud backwards from Bronzino.
- ^ W.S.M. Nicoll, "Chasing Chimaeras" The Classical Quarterly New Series, 35.1 (1985), pp. 134–139.
- ^ fr:Fichier:Museum of Anatolian Civilizations080.jpg
- ^ Barry Till (1980), "Some Observations on Stone Winged Chimeras at Ancient Chinese Tomb Sites", Artibus Asiae 42 (4): 261–281, JSTOR 3250032
References
- Graves, Robert, (1955) 1960. The Greek Myths (Baltimore: Penguin), section 75.b, pp 252–56
- Kerenyi, Karl, 1959. The Heroes of the Greeks. (London and New York:Thames and Hudson)
- Peck, Harry Thurston, 1898. Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: "Chimaera"
Research Reference for Monstropedia Everna
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28mythology%29
