Chimaera

Composite monster — a lion in front, a goat in the middle with a second head rising from the back, a serpent behind — breathing blasts of flame. She was the scourge of Lycia, where King Iobates sent the Corinthian suppliant Bellerophon against her expecting his death. In the Apollodoran version Bellerophon rode the winged Pegasus high above her reach and shot her down from the sky with arrows; the later mythographic tradition (scholia on the *Iliad* and Tzetzes) adds the detail that Bellerophon fixed a lump of lead to the tip of his spear and drove it down her throat, where her own flames melted it and choked her.

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