Chimera
The fire-breathing monster of Lycia in Greek myth, a lion in front, a goat in the middle and a serpent behind, killed by Bellerophon riding Pegasus.
Meaning
The Chimera (kye-MEER-uh, as Dictionary.com respells it; the Greek word chímaira means “she-goat”) is one of the oldest monsters in Greek poetry. The Iliad describes her in a line: “in front a lion, and behind a serpent, and in the midst a goat; and she breathed dread fierceness of blazing fire”. Hesiod names her in the same family of monsters as Cerberus and the Hydra of Lerna and gives her three heads. Britannica notes that artists usually drew her as a lion with a goat’s head rising from its back and a snake’s head at the end of its tail, as our drawing does. Her name now means a figment of the imagination, and “chimerical” anything that exists only in the mind.
Origin and history
In the Iliad the king of Lycia, receiving Bellerophon as a guest, gives him a deadly first task: “to slay Chimaira the unconquerable”. He killed her, “obedient to the signs of heaven”. Hesiod adds who helped: “Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay.” Britannica says she had laid waste Caria and Lycia before that.
Later writers tried to explain her. The explanation John Vinycomb repeated in 1906 places her on a mountain in Lycia with a volcano at the top where lions lived, goats grazing on its middle slopes and serpents at its foot.
The Chimera in heraldry and emblems
Vinycomb found heraldry writers describing the Chimera but no British coat of arms that uses her. She appears instead as an emblem. After his marriage to Mary I of England, Philip II of Spain took as his device Bellerophon fighting the Chimera, with the motto “Hinc vigilo”; Vinycomb says the monster stood for the English heresies Philip meant to destroy.
From monster to word
Vinycomb traces the English word “chimerical”, for anything with no existence outside the imagination, to this creature, and Britannica gives the modern sense of “chimera” as a fantastic idea or figment of the imagination.
Read next
- Next in Mythical creatures of Greece and EuropeHydraThe many-headed water serpent of the marshes of Lerna in Greek myth, which grew two heads for every one cut off and was killed by Heracles as one of his labours.
- The same shape in Knights Templar symbolsThe dome on the Templar sealThe domed building on the reverse of the Templar seal, which historians read as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, called the Temple of the Lord by the crusaders.
See also
Pegasus, Manticore, Minotaur, Centaur, Harpy, Siren.
Sources
- The Iliad of Homer (tr. Lang, Leaf and Myers), Homer, The Iliad, translated by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers (1883), Project Gutenberg eBook #3059, Project Gutenberg, Book VI (Bellerophon)
- Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Theogony, lines 306–332
- Chimera (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Chimera”, online edition (archived copy), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
- Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (John Vinycomb, 1906), John Vinycomb, Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art, with Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry (London: Chapman and Hall, 1906), Project Gutenberg, The Chimera, p. 102
- Chimera (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, “Chimera” (Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary), Dictionary.com, entry, pronunciation and origin
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
Added .