![]() This article is within the scope of WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, a group of contributors interested in Wikipedia's articles on classics. This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.Ĭlassical Greece and Rome C‑class Mid‑importance This article has been rated as C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. Greece Wikipedia:WikiProject Greece Template:WikiProject Greece Greek articles If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. This article is within the scope of WikiProject Greece, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Greece on Wikipedia. Accounts by early Greek writers show they believed that these horned horses indeed existed, in the land of India, which was impossibly exotic and fantastical to them.This article is of interest to the following WikiProjects: Well, in fact the unicorn was not a mythological creature to the Greeks, but a real one. The Furietti Centaurs, sculptures of the Hellenistic or Roman era, depicted gentler creatures, however here is the Old Centaur copied in marble, at the Louvre.Īnd what of the unicorn? you may be wondering. The Ancient Greeks thought of centaurs as wild beasts, and many were slain in their myths. According to legend, the centaur was the product of an affair between the cloud nymph Nephele and the mortal king Ixion. Of all the horse-hybrids, perhaps the most intriguing is the centaur (or hippocentaur) – for he was a fusion of horse and man. ‘Roger délivrant Angélique’ by Louis-Édouard Rioult It was the symbol of Apollo, the Greek sun god. This mythical creature had the body of the horse but the head of an eagle. The hippocampus is not to be confused with the hippogriff, another equine hybrid, made famous in recent years by the Harry Potter books. ![]() These beasts drew Poseidon’s chariot across the ocean. In honour of Pegasus’s loyalty, he made him a constellation, visible in the northern sky to this day.Īnother horse-hybrid of the Ancient Greeks was the hippocampus, which had the hindquarters and head of a horse but had a fish’s tail (or, in some depictions, the tail of a serpentine sea monster). Eventually, Zeus, king of the gods, made Pegasus his own and had the pterippus draw his chariot of thunder. ‘Athena and Pegasus’ by Theodor van ThuldenĪccording to legend, Pegasus could create a water spring by stamping his hoof on the ground, and he did so for the Muses on Mount Helicon. ![]() For some time he was ridden by the monster-slayer Bellerophon in his adventures. He was of divine origins – fathered by the sea god Poseidon, he sprang from the remains of the Gorgon Medusa when she was decapitated by Perseus. Her eyes then took in the floor, which was paved with fabulous marble tiles arranged in a huge mythological picture: Pegasus the winged white horse surrounded by the Muses – the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus.Īre you familiar with Pegasus? Many people think ‘a pegasus’ is a winged horse, but in fact the correct term for these mythical creatures is pterippi, and Pegasus was the name of a particular pterippus. The sheer size of the room with its high, ornate domed ceiling, supported by delicately veined marble pillars, gave the impression she was entering a cathedral. Here is my heroine’s impression of a hall in her home on the island: In my latest novel Aphrodite’s Tears, set on a Greek island, I draw extensively on the mythology of the Ancient Greeks.
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