Pegasus, the winged horse born from Medusa's blood
From Medusa's severed head to the Hippocrene spring, from Bellerophon to the Chimera: the myth of Pegasus and the Great Square of the autumn sky.
On autumn evenings four stars draw a great quadrilateral in the sky, so regular that it seems ruled with a straight edge. It is the body of Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, which in the celestial figure appears upside down and cut in half, with its head and forelegs stretching westwards. Few animals of myth have enjoyed such lasting fame, from the coins of Corinth to the poetry of every age.
Son of Medusa and Poseidon
Hesiod, in the Theogony, tells that when Perseus cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, two creatures sprang from her neck: the warrior Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus. Their father was Poseidon, god of the sea and protector of horses. Hesiod himself links the name Pegasus to the springs of Ocean, in Greek pegai, near which he was said to have been born.
The link with water returns in one of the best-known episodes. On Helicon, the mountain in Boeotia sacred to the Muses, Pegasus struck the ground with his hoof and made a spring gush forth, called Hippocrene, “the horse's fountain”. For ancient poets, and later for those of the Renaissance, drinking from that spring meant receiving inspiration, and Pegasus thus became a symbol of poetry itself.
Bellerophon and the Chimera
The rider of Pegasus was Bellerophon, a hero of Corinth. Pindar, in the thirteenth Olympian ode, relates that the hero could not tame the horse until Athena appeared to him in a dream and gave him a golden bridle. With Pegasus, Bellerophon could attack from above the Chimera, a monster of Lycia with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail, which breathed fire, and he killed it.
Success, however, made the hero proud. According to the myth, Bellerophon tried to ride Pegasus all the way to Olympus, the home of the gods. Zeus sent a gadfly to sting the horse, which threw its rider; Bellerophon fell to earth and spent the rest of his life wandering alone. Pegasus instead reached Olympus, where he was received into the stables of Zeus and, according to tradition, carried his thunder and lightning.
The Great Square
The Greeks called the constellation simply Hippos, “the horse”; the name Pegasus became established later. Of the four stars of the Great Square, three now belong to Pegasus, while the fourth, Alpheratz, has been assigned to Andromeda, the princess rescued by Perseus, underlining the narrative bond between the figures of this region of the sky. Near the horse's muzzle shines Enif, whose Arabic name means “nose”.
For centuries the coins of Corinth showed Pegasus as the emblem of the city, and the winged horse reappeared in heraldry and in the symbols of many modern institutions. In the sky, the halved image led some ancient commentators to think that the horse was emerging from a cloud or from the waters, in memory of his birth near the springs.
Pegasus is an animal that unites opposites: he is born from the death of a monster and becomes a symbol of inspiration; he carries a hero in flight and lets him fall when he oversteps the limit. His story teaches that flight is granted, but not possession of the sky. And the sky, in the end, welcomes only him, leaving on earth the rider who had demanded too much.