Pegasus

Also Known As: Greek Pegasos, Πήγασος; the name linked by Hesiod to pegai, the springs of Ocean, and by later grammarians to pegazo, to spring forth
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: An immortal winged horse who flies without tiring and opens springs of water wherever his hoof strikes the ground.
Role in Mythos: He carries the hero Bellerophon through his monster-killing labours, then leaves him and passes into the service of Zeus.
Relation to Humans: No mortal catches him without divine help, and the one man who rides him is destroyed by trying to keep him. To everyone else he is a gift at second hand, felt in the water of the springs he opened rather than in the horse himself.

The spring at Peirene comes up cold out of the rock below Acrocorinth, and men used to say that if you waited there long enough and kept still, a horse would come down to drink. Not a farm animal. This one landed, folded a pair of wings against its flanks, and put its mouth to the water while the whole hillside went quiet. Anyone who moved lost him. He was airborne again before the sound of the footfall reached him.

He was born in blood, which is easy to forget when you see him on a coin. Hesiod tells it plainly: Perseus took the head of the Gorgon Medusa, and out of the stump of her neck came two children she had been carrying by Poseidon, Chrysaor of the golden blade and the horse Pegasus. The poet says the name came from the springs of Ocean, the pegai, beside which he was born. Later readers preferred a second reading, that the name means the one who sprang forth, which fits a creature that arrives at speed from a severed neck. Both readings point the same way. This is a horse made of water and a killing.

The earliest poetry is oddly quiet about what he looked like. Hesiod gives him no colour and barely gives him wings, saying only that he left the earth behind and flew. The whiteness, the long primary feathers, the wings set high on the shoulder so they clear the rider’s knees, all of that comes from the painters and the potters, who had him in flight on Corinthian vases by the seventh century BC and never let him go. Corinth stamped him on its silver for four hundred years, and the coins were known simply as colts. A city put a horse nobody could catch on the money everybody handled.

Where he came down, water followed. On Helicon he struck the ground and the Hippocrene opened, the horse’s fountain, and the Muses took it for their own, which is why poets have been claiming a drink from it ever since. Pausanias, walking the same ground centuries later, was shown the spot. He was also shown another at Troezen, where the people told him the earth had let up water under the same hoof. The nymphs of those springs were called Pegasides after him. It is a strange kind of generosity from an animal with no interest in people at all.

Only one man ever rode him, and he needed a goddess to manage it. Bellerophon had been trying to take the horse at Peirene and getting nowhere. The Corinthian seer Polyidos told him to sleep at Athena’s altar, and in the night the goddess stood over him with a golden bridle in her hand and told him to stop grieving and take it. He woke with the metal lying beside him, cold and real. Pindar sang this in 464 BC for a Corinthian athlete, and the poem lingers on the weight of the thing in the hero’s hands. Bellerophon sacrificed a bull to Poseidon, walked down to the water, and the bridle went on without a fight.

Then came the Chimera, a lion in front, a goat rising from the spine, a serpent for a tail, and fire in its throat. It had burned out a stretch of Lycia and killed everything sent against it. Bellerophon went up instead of in. From above, the fire could not reach him, and the arrows fell into the animal for as long as he cared to circle. The ground below was scorched and stinking by the end of it. He went on from there to fight the Solymoi and the Amazons, and won both, always from the air, always on the horse he had not earned.

That is the trouble with a borrowed thing. Bellerophon began to think the horse meant something about himself and turned him upward, past the height of any bird, aiming for Olympus and a seat among the gods. Zeus sent a gadfly. It stung Pegasus under the tail, the horse bucked once in open sky, and the man came off. He survived the fall and lived out his years lamed and avoided, picking his way across the Aleian plain and eating his heart, in Homer’s phrase for a different part of the same story. Pindar, who knew the ending perfectly well, refused to tell it. He said only that it is right for a man to keep quiet about such things, and changed the subject.

The horse kept climbing. Hesiod has him reach the house of Zeus and stay there, carrying the thunder and lightning for the king of the gods, which is the only job in the myth that suits him: an errand at impossible speed for someone who never needs to hold the reins. He was set among the stars afterward, though the constellation shows only his forequarters, the head and neck and the two front legs, as if the sky could not fit the rest.

His powers are the powers of the springs he came from. He does not tire, he cannot be outrun, he cannot die, and water follows his hooves. His limitations are all about ownership. He cannot be taken without a god’s tackle, he cannot be kept, and he throws anyone who mistakes a ride for a right. Nobody in these stories owns him. Bellerophon is the cautionary version and Zeus is the successful one, and the difference between them is that only one of them ever asked.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Pegasus in Greek mythology?

Pegasus is an immortal winged horse who sprang from the neck of the Gorgon Medusa when Perseus beheaded her. He was the child of Medusa and Poseidon, and his twin brother was Chrysaor. He is best known as the mount of the hero Bellerophon and later as the horse that carried Zeus’s thunder and lightning.

How did Bellerophon catch Pegasus?

Bellerophon could not catch Pegasus by his own effort. On the advice of the Corinthian seer Polyidos he slept at Athena’s altar, and the goddess appeared to him in a dream and gave him a golden bridle. He woke to find the bridle beside him, sacrificed a bull to Poseidon, and bridled the horse at the spring of Peirene in Corinth.

What happened to Pegasus after Bellerophon fell?

Bellerophon tried to ride Pegasus up to Olympus, and Zeus sent a gadfly that stung the horse and threw him. Bellerophon survived crippled and disgraced, while Pegasus completed the flight alone. Hesiod says he reached the house of Zeus and remained there, carrying the god’s thunder and lightning, and he was later placed among the stars as a constellation.

Why is Pegasus associated with springs and poetry?

Pegasus opened springs of water wherever his hoof struck the earth. The most famous is the Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, which became sacred to the Muses, so that drinking from it came to stand for poetic inspiration. His name itself was connected by Hesiod to pegai, the springs of Ocean beside which he was born.

What did Pegasus look like?

Pegasus is described as a horse with wings set at the shoulder, and in art he is usually white. The earliest surviving poetry says almost nothing about his appearance beyond the fact that he flew; the familiar image comes from Greek vase painting and Corinthian coinage, where he appears in flight from the seventh century BC onward.