There was blood everywhere, as though one stood in the middle of a great battle. Except, there were no armies to speak of. A man stood alone, turning in the dark as he screamed, surrounded by blood-soaked stallions and their gnashing jaws. All was chaos in that moment, and fear filled the man’s veins from head to foot as the stallions closed in, kicking with iron hooves, biting with bared teeth that tore into his flesh and cracked his bones as he wailed.
But that was not all. For in the midst of such violence, another beast reared its head. Its roar tore through the air, and a great hissing froze what blood was left in his limbs. And then, all-consuming fire burst forth to close in on the man’s terror-stricken eyes before death claimed him…
“FATHER!”
The room was quiet. Bellerophon was struck dumb for a few moments by the dream he had just endured, the dream the Gods had sent him again. Breathless and sweaty, he swung his legs over the edge of his bed to look out of the palace window at the sun. The great chariot was only just cresting the rocky edges of the Acrocorinthos, the high citadel overlooking the city of Corinthos and the surrounding plains.
Breathe…just breathe… he told himself, wiping the sweat from his brow and burying his face in his hands. He hated that dream, hated how weak it made him feel.
A cock crowed somewhere outside, followed by the braying of a donkey. For once, he was happy for their morning racket to invade and break up his thoughts as the remnants of his dream leached away.
Bellerophon, son of Glaucus, grandson of Sisyphus, stood and looked at the plain wall of his palace room where his great round shield hung above his throwing spears and sword. He stared at them for a moment, and then shut his eyes tightly against the still-flashing images of his nightmare.
It had been some years since his father’s horrible death when his own horses tore him to pieces after Pelias’ funeral games, and yet the images kept coming back to him in the darkness of night. He had not been there when it happened, but he was made to revisit his father’s end over, and over.
Bellerophon felt his jaw tighten and went over to the stone wall where two handprints darkened the whitewash. He squared off before the wall, placed his trembling hands upon it, and pushed with all of his might. He focussed on the strain in every part of his muscular body - arms, shoulders, legs and torso - and forced the tension to still his mind, and provide some focus. When he felt calm, he stepped back from the wall. The surface had cracked where he had been pushing for so long, and yet the wall still stood.
Taking a leather thong from the small wooden table beside his bed, he tied his long, dark hair back and went through an open door that led out onto a small terrace overlooking the clay rooftops of the palace and battlements beyond. He breathed deeply of the fresh Spring air and watched the servants moving about the palace like ants about a mound of dirt. Some carried water into the palace from the spring outside the walls, and others headed out into the fields of olive and orange to begin their toils.
In the courtyard below, he could see a slave preparing a chariot for his brother, Deliades, to go out hunting, while another saddled horses for his other two brothers.
Bellerophon did not care for his siblings. He never had, and the feeling was mutual. He had never felt that he was a part of that family, and with the death of his father, the link that had kept them all civil toward each other had been broken. Some people whispered in the dark corridors of the palace that Bellerophon had not been the son of Glaucus, but rather was the result of an indiscretion between his mother, Eurymede, and Horse-Taming Poseidon. Whether or not that was the reason for his siblings’ dislike or fear of him, he had never cared. He was an outcast in his family, and preferred his own company anyhow.
He chose to spend his days alone, training with sword, spear and shield for a life he did not have. His mother chided him sometimes for his lack of ambition, even for not being possessed of the cunning and ingenuity of his grandfather, Sisyphus, never mind that those ‘qualities’ had landed the latter in the darkest depths of Tartarus.
Corinthos was a prison to be sure, but where else could Bellerophon go? His father had had few friends, and it was rumoured that the goddess Aphrodite had hated Glaucus for preventing his mares from breeding. Even if there was a king or lord who would have wanted to take Bellerophon into their household, they would not have wanted to risk the goddess’ wrath.
The sun was rising quickly now, the heat burning away the morning chill over the plain.
Bellerophon put on his crimson tunic, strapped on his sandals, and then took down his bronze sword, shield, and a clutch of short throwing spears in their quiver off of the wall. He closed his chamber door and went down the fire-lit halls of the palace, still haunted by absence, to the kitchens where he took a skin of wine and a loaf of fresh bread from the servants before going out into the lower courtyard to leave.
“Bellerophon?” his mother, Queen Eurymede called to him. “Where are you going?”
“To train,” he answered.
“You have a wild look in your eyes, my son.” She approached him, her long, pale hair falling over her silk-covered shoulders. Her green eyes looked upon him with pity and, for once, a little kindness. “The servants heard you cry out this morning again. Are you unwell?”
“I’m fine, Mother. I’m a grown man now. You need not worry.”
“A mother always worries.”
Just not for me, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. “The Gods sent me another dream.”
She was quiet, and he saw that she took a small step backward from him. “Sit. Tell me of this dream,” she said, going over to the bench beneath a large olive tree in the middle of the courtyard.
Bellerophon watched her sit, but did not move. Instead, he stood there in the gathering light, his shield on his arm, and the spears slung over his shoulder. She had never spoken up for him when it came to the others, nor tried with the council elders to gain him a seat since the crown was out of his reach. Now, years later, she pretended to care.
I don’t want any of it anyway, he thought as he took a few steps forward, but did not sit.
Eurymede of Megara sat there looking up at her son expectantly. “Tell me,” she said, placing her hands in her lap when she saw he would not sit.
“It is nothing,” Bellerophon lied. “I dreamed of father’s end. That is all.”
She stared at her clasped hands in her lap and, for a moment, there was sadness there, more than he thought her capable of feeling.
It surprised him.
“Your father was ruled by fear of many things. He lived in your grandfather’s shadow, and the end he too met still endures. Sisyphus built this great polis, and was married to the daughter of a Titan. Glaucus always compared his life to those before him, those around him. He was King of Corinthos, and he wanted to appear as such to his peers. And yet, he feared greatness and the punishments the Gods might mete out to him as they did to his father.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with my dream, Mother.”
She pursed her lips, the long, golden earrings she wore dangling from her lobes. “That fear of appearing weak to others led him to treat his mares badly in the hopes that it would make them aggressive enough to win at Pelias’ funeral games. He sowed his own doubt all his life, and in the end, it brought about his downfall. Now…while his father is tortured for all time in Tartarus, Glaucus’ shade haunts the hippodrome of Isthmia.”
Bellerophon lowered his shield arm as the weight of it began to strain.
“The problem was,” Eurymede continued, “Sisyphus was not someone to aspire to. He was a trickster, and though he did found Corinthos, and fortify the mountain above us, his end is not to be envied.”
She stood, walked over to her son, and looked up into his dark eyes. “I see the fear in your eyes, the anger… And I know that I have not done enough for you since Glaucus died. I am sorry for that.” She placed her hands upon his broad shoulders. “Men need to aspire to their own deeds, Bellerophon. You need to overcome your own, individual fears and trials without looking to the past, or the deeds of other men. Envy and comparison only leads one to lose oneself.” She searched his eyes for a moment, a glimmer of hope there, but even that was as fleeting as the feigned tenderness she now displayed in the palace courtyard. Eurymede stepped back.
“I must go now,” he said to her as he hoisted his shield.
“Yes. Go. Train. Think on what I have said.”
Without another word, Bellerophon turned and made his way out of the gate, the fear that had awoken him that morning now replaced with anger.
Standing in the swirling dust of the courtyard, Eurymede watched her son leave through the stone archway and make his way along the road that led to the Acrocorinthos. She turned and went back inside the palace.
Bellerophon walked briskly up the gently-sloping road that cut through the olive and orange groves that surrounded the base of the mountain. He was in no rush, for outside of the palace, away from his mother and siblings, he felt at last like he could breathe.
He did not see the point of his mother’s words. It angered him how she thought she knew him. She was always a bit sad, speaking only dark words to him. She has had her own trials, I suppose. But that darkness had seeped into him since he was a child.
The dream of the previous night flashed once again in his mind, and he gripped his shield more tightly and removed one of the spears from the quiver. He paused in the middle of the road, his eyes searching the surrounding trees where the sound of cicadas was settling in.
A few stray workers moved about the trees, pruning, but none else that he could see. But his dream stretched through the veil it seemed, for the sound of that roaring, and the sight of gnashing horses, seemed to be all around him.
Bellerophon shook his head, as if shaking away a flurry of flies, and looked up at the Acrocorinthos built by his grandfather.
Clutching his shield and weapons, he continued up the road that led to the sun-baked crown of the mountain.