Editing Chimera (mythology) (section)

==Iconography==
[[Image:Chimera on vase at Athens' Archaeological Museum.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Chimera depicted on an Attic vase]]
Although the Chimera was, according to Homer, situated in foreign Lycia,<ref>Homer, ''Iliad'' [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Hom.+Il.+16.327 16.328–329], links her breeding to the non-Trojan ally Amisodarus of Lycia, as a plague for humans.</ref> her representation in the arts was wholly Greek.<ref>Anne Roes "The Representation of the Chimaera" ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' '''54'''.1 (1934), pp. 21–25, adduces Ancient Near Eastern conventions of winged animals whose wings end in animal heads.</ref> An autonomous tradition that did not rely on the written word was represented in the visual repertory of the Greek vase painters. The Chimera first appeared early in the repertory of the [[proto-Corinthian]] pottery painters, providing some of the earliest identifiable mythological scenes that may be recognized in [[Ancient Greek art|Greek art]]. After some early hesitation, the Corinthian type was fixed in the 670s BC; the variations in the pictorial representations suggest multiple origins to Marilyn Low Schmitt.<ref>This outline of Chimera motifs follows Marilyn Low Schmitt, "Bellerophon and the Chimaera in Archaic Greek Art" ''American Journal of Archaeology'' '''70'''.4 (October 1966), pp. 341–347.</ref> The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the end of the seventh century into a decorative Chimera motif in Corinth,<ref>Later coins struck at [[Sicyon]], near Corinth, bear the chimera-motif. (Schmitt 1966:344 note.</ref> while the motif of Bellerophon on Pegasus took on a separate existence alone. A separate Attic tradition, where the goats breathe fire and the animal's rear is serpentine, begins with the confidence that Marilyn Low Schmitt is convinced that there must be unrecognized or undiscovered local precursors.<ref>Schmitt 1966.</ref> Two vase painters employed the motif so consistently they were given the pseudonyms the Bellerophon Painter and the Chimaera Painter.