[3] Among his greatest feats was killing the Chimera of the Iliad, a monster that Homer depicted with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail: "her breath came out in terrible blasts of burning flame.

[5] One possible etymology that has been suggested is: Βελλεροφόντης (Bellerophóntēs) from Ancient Greek βέλεμνον (bélemnon), βελόνη (belóne) or βέλος (bélos, "projectile, dart, javelin, needle, arrow") and -φόντης (-phóntēs, "slayer") from φονεύω (phoneúō, "to slay").

Chrysaor has no myth besides that of his birth: from the severed neck of Medusa, who was with child by Poseidon, he and Pegasus were both born at the moment of her death.

"[28] Bellerophon's brave journey began in a familiar way,[29] with an exile: in one narrative he had murdered his brother, whose name was given as Deliades, Peiren or Alcimenes; a more precise narrative involves him slaying a Corinthian citizen or nobleman called "Belleros"[30] or "Belleron" by accident, while practicing knife-throwing with his friends, which caused the name change from Hipponous to Bellerophon.

[33] Proetus dared not to satisfy his anger by killing a guest (who is protected by xenia), causing him to finally exile Bellerophon to King Iobates, his father-in-law from the plain of the River Xanthus in Lycia, bearing a sealed letter in a folded tablet which read: "Please remove this bearer from the world: he attempted to violate my wife, your daughter.

On reading the tablet's message Iobates too feared the wrath of the Erinyes if he murdered a guest; so he sent Bellerophon on a mission that he deemed impossible to survive: to kill the Chimera, living in neighboring Caria.

On his way to Caria, he encountered the famous Corinthian fortune teller Polyeidos, who gave him advice on his upcoming battle, telling Bellerophon that in order to emerge victorious, he would be in need of the mythical Pegasus.

While Bellerophon slept, he dreamed that Athena set a golden bridle beside him, saying "Sleepest thou, prince of the house of Aiolos?

[40] Iobates relented, produced the letter, and allowed Bellerophon to marry his daughter Philonoe, the younger sister of Anteia, and shared with him half his kingdom,[41] with its fine vineyards and grain fields.

This act angered Zeus and he sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, causing Bellerophon to fall back to Earth and die.

[46] According to other narratives, on the Plain of Aleion ("Wandering") in Cilicia, Bellerophon, who had been blinded after falling into a thorn bush, lived out his life in misery, "devouring his own soul", until he died.

[47][48] Enough fragments of Euripides' lost tragedy Bellerophon remain (as about thirty quotations in surviving texts) to give scholars a basis for assessing its theme: the tragic outcome of his attempt to storm Olympus on Pegasus.

[49] The replacement of Bellerophon by the more familiar culture hero Perseus was a development of Classical times that was standardized during the Middle Ages and has been adopted by the European poets of the Renaissance and later.