Pegasus. The winged horse Pegasus was the offspring of Poseidon and the Gorgon Medusa, born from her blood when she was beheaded by the hero Perseus. The Hippocrene fountain on Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses and thought to inspire poetry in all those who drank from it, was said to have sprung from a stamp of Pegasus’s hoof. He also carried the thunderbolts of Zeus.

    While drinking at the fountain of Pirene in Corinth, Pegasus was captured and tamed by the hero Bellerophon. According to some sources, Pegasus assisted Bellerophon in his many battles, but when the hero tried to ride him to Olympus, he was thrown.

    Popular tradition has Pegasus as an embodiment of imagination and poetic vision, soaring high above the earthbound. Because of the magical steed’s association with the Muses (and because in the post-classical arts Helicon and Parnassus are frequently confused or conflated), Pegasus is often seen in representations of scenes on Parnassus, the mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses. He is also depicted flying with a poet (or Apollo himself) on his back. In painting from the Renaissance onward, Pegasus is shown bearing Perseus to rescue Andromeda.

    

    Classical Sources. Hesiod, Theogony 276—86, 325. Pindar, Olympian Odes 13.60—92; Isthmian Odes 7.44. Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.784ff., j.256ff. Strabo Geography 8.6.21. Apol-lodorus, Biblioteca 2.3.2, 4.2Æ Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.3.5, 2.4.1, 2.31.9, 9.31.3. Hygnius, Tabulae iji.

    

     See also Bellerophon; Muses; Parnassus; Perseus, and Medusa, and Andromeda.