Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, son of Sisyphus, having accidentally killed his brother
Deliades or, as some say, Piren, or, as others will have it, Alcimenes, came
to Proetus and was purified.1 And Stheneboea fell in love with
him,2 and sent him proposals for a meeting; and when he rejected them, she told
Proetus that Bellerophon had sent her a vicious proposal. Proetus believed her, and gave
him a letter to take to Iobates, in which it was written that he was to kill Bellerophon.
Having read the letter, Iobates ordered him to kill the Chimera, believing that he would
be destroyed by the beast, for it was more than a match for many, let alone one; it had
the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third head, the middle one, was
that of a goat, through 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.4
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1 Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 17; Tzetzes, Chiliades vii.810ff.; Scholiast on Hom. Il. vi.155. According to one account, mentioned by these writers, Bellerophon received his name （meaning slayer of Bellerus） because he had slain a tyrant of Corinth called Bellerus.
2 In the following story of Bellerophon, our author follows Hom. Il. 6.155ff. （where the wife of Proetus is called Antia instead of Stheneboea）. Compare Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron 17; Tzetzes, Chiliades vii.816ff.; Zenobius, Cent. ii.87 （who probably followed Apollodorus）; Hyginus, Fab. 57; Hyginus, Ast. ii.18; Scriptores rerum mythicarum Latini, ed. Bode, i. pp. 24, 119 (First Vatican Mythographer 71, 72; Second Vatican Mythographer 131). Euripides composed a tragedy on the subject called Stheneboea. See TGF (Nauck 2nd ed.), pp. 567ff. According to Tzetzes （Scholiast on Lycophron 17）, Iobates refrained from slaying Bellerophon with his own hand in virtue of an old custom which forbade those who had eaten together to kill each other.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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