The Hippogriff, the Winged Steed Born from Ariosto's Imagination
Half horse and half griffin, the hippogriff is born from a proverb of Virgil and comes to life in the Orlando Furioso: the story of an impossible flight.
Among fantastic creatures the hippogriff is one of the youngest, and also one of the few whose author we know precisely. It has the front of a griffin, with an eagle's head, wings and clawed legs, and the hindquarters of a horse. Its fame is due almost entirely to Ludovico Ariosto, who made it the protagonist of some of the most memorable episodes of the Orlando Furioso, first published in 1516 and in its definitive version in 1532.
An Impossible Union: Virgil's Proverb
The idea of the hippogriff is rooted in a line of Virgil. In the eighth Eclogue a shepherd, abandoned by the woman he loves who marries a rival, exclaims that griffins will now mate with mares: “iungentur iam grypes equis”. It is an adynaton, that is an image of something impossible, like saying that the world has turned upside down. Ancient tradition, in fact, regarded griffins as the natural enemies of horses.
The late antique commentator Servius, explaining the passage, recalls precisely this hostility between griffins and horses. For centuries the union of the two species therefore remained a proverbial expression. The name itself, hippogriff, is a compound formed from the Greek híppos, “horse”, and griffin. Before Ariosto the creature had no real story, nor any stable role in chivalric legends or in the bestiaries.
The Hippogriff in the Orlando Furioso
Ariosto turns the impossible into the natural. In the fourth canto of the poem he specifies that the steed is no magic illusion: “the steed is not feigned, but natural, / begotten by a griffin on a mare”. It is first ridden by the wizard Atlante, who with its help abducts knights and ladies and shuts them in a steel castle in the Pyrenees. When Bradamante defeats the wizard, the hippogriff is left free and ends up taking Ruggiero into the saddle.
The animal, however, does not obey willingly. As soon as Ruggiero mounts it, the hippogriff carries him off across the sky to the island of the sorceress Alcina, far away beyond the known lands. Later Ruggiero learns to guide it with a bridle, and riding the hippogriff he frees Angelica, exposed to a sea monster on the island of Ebuda. The scene clearly recalls the myth of Perseus rescuing Andromeda.
Astolfo's Flight
The hippogriff finally passes to the English paladin Astolfo, who makes the boldest journey with it. He flies over Europe and Africa, reaches Ethiopia and frees King Senapo from the Harpies, then climbs to the Earthly Paradise, on the summit of a very high mountain. There he meets John the Evangelist, who takes him to the Moon in Elijah's chariot, where all the things lost on earth are found, including Orlando's wits.
In the end Astolfo gives the hippogriff back its freedom, letting it return to its wild nature. In the poem the animal embodies the desire to overcome every limit, but also the capricious character of the imagination, which does not always allow itself to be governed. The illustrations of the Furioso made by Gustave Doré in the nineteenth century gave the creature a powerful and dramatic appearance that has influenced many later depictions.
The hippogriff shows that the fantastic bestiary is not a closed repertoire. Even in the modern age a poet could invent a creature and make it believable, provided he rooted it in an earlier tradition. Born from a proverb about the impossible, the horse-griffin has become the very symbol of the flight of poetry, able to carry the reader to the Moon and bring him back again.