Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/153

 BELLEROPHON. 121 Medea a prominent place in the genealogy composed by a Corin- thian poet, accustomed to blend together gods, heroes and men in the antiquities of his native city. According to the legend of Eumelus, Jason became (through Medea) king of Corinth ; but she concealed the children of their marriage in the temple of Here, trusting that the goddess would render them immortal. Jason, discovering her proceedings, left her and retired in disgust to lolkos ; Medea also, being disappointed in her scheme, quitted the place, leaving the throne in the hands of Sisyphus, to whom, according to the story of Theopompus, she had become attached. 1 Other legends recounted, that Zeus had contracted a passion for Medea, but that she had rejected his suit from fear of the displea- sure of Here ; who, as a recompense for such fidelity, rendered her children immortal : 2 moreover Medea had erected, by special command of Here, the celebrated temple of Aphrodite at Corinth. The tenor of these fables manifests their connection with the temple of Here: and we may consider the legend of Medea as having been originally quite independent of that of Sisyphus, but fitted on to it, in seeming chronological sequence, so as to satisfy the feelings of those JEolids of Corinth who passed for his descendants. Sisyphus had for his sons Glaukos and Ornytion. From Glaukos sprang Bellerophon, whose romantic adventures com- mence with the Iliad, and are further expanded by subsequent poets : according to some accounts he was really the son of Poseidon, the prominent deity of the .ZEolid family. 3 The youth Compare also v. 1376 of the play itself, with the Scholia and Pausan. ii. 3 6. Both Alkman and Hesiod represented Medea as a goddess (Athenogoras, Legatia pro Christianis. p. 54, ed. Oxon.}. 1 Pausan. ii. 3, 10 ; Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 74. 2 Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 32-74 ; Plutarch. De Herodot. Malign, p. 871. 3 Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 98. and Schol. ad 1 ; Schol. ad Iliad, vi. 155 ; this seems to be the sense of Iliad, vi. 191. The lost drama called lobates of Sophokles, and the two by EuripidC-s called Sthenebcca and Bdlerophdn, handled the adventures of this hero. See the collection of the few fragments remaining in Dindorf, Fragm. Sophok. 280 ; Fragm. Eurip. p. 87-108 ; and Hygin. fab. 67. Welcker (Griechische Tragod. ii. p. 777-800) has ingeniously put together 11 that can be divined respecting the two plays of Euripides. Voleker seeks to make out that Bellerophon is identical with Poseidon TOL. I. 6