Chrysaor

In Greek mythology, Chrysaor (Template:Langx, gen. Template:Lang), "he who has a golden sword" (from Template:Lang "golden" and Template:Lang "sword"]) was the brother of the winged horse Pegasus, often depicted as a young man, the son of Poseidon and Medusa, born when Perseus decapitated the Gorgon Medusa. Template:Quote

Mythology

In Greek mythology, Medusa was one of the Gorgons, three monstrous siblings. Medusa, unlike her sisters Stheno and Euryale, was mortal, and was beheaded by Perseus. Chrysaor and Pegasus sprang from the blood of her decapitated body.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In art, Chrysaor's earliest appearance seems to be on the great pediment of the Temple of Artemis, Corfu dated to the early 6th century BCE, where he is shown beside his mother, Medusa.

Offspring

Template:Blockquote Chrysaor and Callirrhoe may have also been the parents of Echidna.<ref>Hesiod, Theogony 270-300. Though Herbert Jennings Rose says simply that it is "not clear which parents are meant", Athanassakis, p. 44, says that Phorcys and Ceto are the "more likely candidates for parents of this hideous creature who proceeded to give birth to a series of monsters and scourges". The problem arises from the ambiguous referent of the pronoun "she" in line 295 of the Theogony. While some have read this "she" as referring to Callirhoe (e.g. Smith "Echidna"; Morford, p. 162), according to Clay, p. 159 n. 32, "the modern scholarly consensus" reads Ceto, see for example Gantz, p. 22; Caldwell, pp. 7, 46 295–303; Grimal, "Echidna" p. 143.</ref>

In an alternate genealogy from Stephanus of Byzantium's Ethnica, Chrysaor is a son of Glaucus and grandson of Sisyphus, and his son Mylasus goes on to found Mylasa.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This ancestry would make Chrysaor a double of Bellerophon.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

References

• Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). "Chrysaor"
• Ovid, Metamorphoses

External links

• The Theoi Project, "KHRYSAOR"
• Magna Graecia: An Introduction