what is the myth of chimera?

Answer 1

chimera

In classical myth, the Chimera is one of many creatures combining the identities of human and beast, or merging features of more than one animal. In classical thought, these hybrids are sometimes divine: the god Pan, for example, is represented as part goat. Human- animal hybrids deriving from the Near East or from ancient Greece and with a lasting impact on the Western imagination include the centaur. This was a horse-man combination unable to hold its drink — as witness the centaurs' attempts to rape the wedding guests when they attended the Lapith wedding in northern Greece, depicted on the methopes of the Parthenon. Centaurs represented the violence and sexuality of the world of the beasts and it is significant that some artistic representations show them with two sets of genitalia: a human set at the front and a horse set at the back. Then there were satyrs and silens, goat-men with exaggerated sexuality; sirens and harpies, both bird-women, the sirens being associated with perfume, seductive song, and attractive temptation, the harpies with a foul smell, violent noise, and repulsion; also one-off monsters such as the manticore, a lion-scorpion combination with a human head, the bull-man Minotaur, and the riddling lion-woman Sphinx. Beasts such as these, as well as the mermaids, are encountered by heroes and explorers at the limits of the known world, or in the wild zones between inhabited areas. Frequently associated with boundaries between the forbidden and the permitted, the known and the unknown, or the living and the dead, they are often given the function of guarding a palace or its treasure. But they also provide something for heroes to kill in order to prove their heroism, and they allow myth to explore the boundaries of human identity by asking what counts as civilized behaviour. In medieval art, particularly in illustrated bestiaries, the possible combinations of animals multiplied, as composite beings came to be seen as part of creation, providing evidence of the limitless power of God.

The Chimera herself is the supreme hybrid. She has the head of a lion, the mid-section of a goat and the hindquarters of a dragon. Most versions of her myth say that she is one of many monstrous beings deriving ultimately from the union of Gê (Earth) and Pontos (Sea): from the union of Earth and Heaven the Titans were born. Among her kin are the harpies, the Sphinx, the snake-haired Gorgons (of whom Medusa is the best known), and the Nemean lion that featured in the labours of Hercules. The members of this bizarre family tree tend towards the repetition of body parts — for example, the many heads of the dog of the underworld, Cerberus. The Chimera has the heads of all three of her component animals, and breathes fire through her goat head. However, Homer refers to her as having been ‘kept’ by king Amisodarus, which could suggest an alternative tradition in which she was deliberately created as a boundary-guardian or weapon.

Her father was Typhon, half man and half serpent, whose rapid movement makes him the origin of hurricanes and typhoons; he has a hundred hissing snake heads coming from his loins. Her mother, Echidna, also combined human and serpent but, in contrast to her fast-moving, fire-belching husband, she stayed in a cave beneath the earth, only coming out rarely to eat young men. The Chimera was eventually killed by the hero Bellerophon, aided by another hybrid descended from Earth and Sea — the winged horse, Pegasus. Only by rising into the air above the Chimera was it possible to evade destruction by her fire-breathing head.

Because of her triple bodily nature and, in particular, the presence of three different heads, the Chimera is difficult to represent; in art, the lion part often dominates. It has been argued that, because of the uncertainty of her form, the Chimera has become a creature of language, representing the power of the imagination, fantasy, and illusion.-

Answer 2

This Greek dish (probably 7th century bc) is one of the most ancient existing images of the Chimera myth. The subdivision in two sections, air on top and sea at the bottom, may be a hint of the true nature of the myth in its original form: the Chimera as a creature of the sky, possibly linked to storm and thunder.

The Chimaera - or Chimera - was said to be made out of three different creatures: lion, goat and serpent. A savage beast, sprouting fire from its mouth, it devastated the land until it was killed by the hero Bellerophon who flew over it riding his winged horse Pegasus. Although simple in its basic lines, this story is among the most ancient ones of Occidental mythology and it hides some deep and still not completely known meaning. This site is an attempt to collect data and material about the Chimaera seen in its various aspects: myth, legend, art expression, and as a probe of the human mind.

Answer 3

Chimera from Latin chimaera, from the Greek chimaira meaning she-goat.

From the days of Greek mythology, the chimera (pronounced "kih-MEE-ra") was a combination of several animals - it had the head of a lion, the body of a she-goat, and the tail of a serpent (dragon). Some stories include the head of each, and the goat head could breath fire. The Chimera was the child of Typhon (a giant) and Echidna (half human female, half snake), and raised by Amisodarus. The siblings of the Chimera were Cerberus, the Hydra, and Orthrus.

As part of a complicated betrayal and false accusation that is common in Greek mythology (the treacherous woman type), Bellerophon was sent the kingdom of Lycia to be killed by the king. Instead, the king sent him off to kill the Chimera with the hope that Bellerophon would be killed instead. Instead, Bellerophon rode Pegasus (as directed by Polyidus, a soothsayer) and killed it with a lump of lead on the end of a spear stuck in its mouth after weakening it with an arrow. The lead melted from the firey breath and ran down the throat and hardened, killing the Chimera.

Answer 4

in a garage, some friends got together and decided they'd start up their own band. they got really good and hence the popular chimera band! haha. j/k. the myth of chimera can be found so simply as to type in google "myth of chimera"

Answer 5

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monstrous creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, which was made of the parts of multiple animals. Chimera was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and sister of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra.

Homer's brief description in the Iliad is the earliest literary reference: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire". 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 his middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Although some myths tell us that it was the serphant or either the third head which in some descriptions is a dragon would breath a most dreadful blaze of fire.

The Chimera is generally considered to have been female
despite the mane adorning its lion's head. Sighting the chimera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes).

Answer 6

In Greek mythology, the Chimera (Greek Χίμαιρα (Chímaira); Latin Chimaera) is a monstrous creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, which was made of the parts of multiple animals. Chimera was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and sister of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra.

Homer's brief description in the Iliad[1] is the earliest literary reference: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle,[2] and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire".[3] 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 his middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Although some myths tell us that it was the serphant or either the third head which in some descriptions is a dragon would breath a most dreadful blaze of fire. Here did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay."[4] The author of Bibliotheke concurs:[5] descriptions agree that it 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. Sighting the chimera[citation needed] was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes).

While there are different genealogies, in one version it mated with its brother Orthrus and mothered the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion.

The Chimera was finally 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.[6] A scholiast to Homer adds that he finished her off by equipping his spear with a lump of lead that melted when exposed to Chimera's fiery breath and consequently killed her, an image drawn from metalworking.


The Chimera was placed in foreign Lycia,[8] but its representations in the arts was wholly Greek.[9] 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 BCE; the variations in the pictorial representations suggest to Marilyn Low Schmitt[10]a multiple origin. The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the end of the seventh century into a decorative Chimera-motif in Corinth,[11] 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 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.

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 BCE.

Robert Graves suggests[12] that "the Chimaera 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, actually 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.[13]

"Even in antiquity the Chimaera was regarded as a symbol of the volcanic character of the Lycian soil," Harry Thurston Peck noted. (Peck 1898). Ctesias (as cited by Pliny the Elder and quoted by Photius) identified the Chimaera with an area of permanent gas vents which can still 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 sailors could navigate by, and which today the custodian uses to brew tea. (Strabo held the Chimaera to be a ravine on a different mountain in Lycia.)

Answer 7

My friend is not a myth.

Answer 8

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/chimera.html

Answer 9

that's my blue pits name and yeah..... i don't know.... cant wait to find out.