THEMES & FOLKLORE

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The Law of Hospitality

One prevalent moral code in this story is the concept of Xenia, the sacred law of hospitality. This custom prescribed a religious obligation to uphold a sacred bond of friendship and protection between guests and their hosts. Once hospitality was offered, it was a religious taboo to violate these obligations. The primacy of this custom is demonstrated by the fact Bellerophon is twice protected by it, in spite of the fact he has been accused of attempting to rape Queen Stheneboae. 

The custom and concept of theoxenia was underpinned by myths and folklore; the idea was that kindness should be extended to any guest or stranger, since the gods themselves sometimes visit us in disguise. This idea was previously expressed in our telling of the Endymion myth, when Endymion entertained Zeus at his fire. 

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Hubris

Bellepheron’s attempted ascent to Olympus is a prime example of the motif of hubris in Greek myth. Hubris was defined as a form of ‘outrage’ - an offence against the natural order of the world, which was how challenging the gods was perceived. It was associated with foolishness, arrogance and over-confidence, and particularly a lack of humility toward others, an attempt to establish one’s own authority or dominance over them, or an encroachment upon the established rights of others. This gives nuance to Bellerophon’s offence in flying to Olympus; not simply in flying to Olympus to challenge the gods, but also thinking himself superior to them, or as competent to question their agency in establishing natural and moral laws. 

The surviving fragments of the Euripides play in which Bellepheron commits his act of hubris are famous for placing atheistic sentiments in Bellerophon’s mouth.  This is a difficult idea to work into the legend of a hero who has such overtly powerful encounters with the gods, including Athena’s gift of a golden bridle out of a dream, his capture of the Pegasus and calling on Poseidon to flood the plain of Xanthos. 

Greek philosophy and literature sometimes criticised traditional notions of the gods, and certainly the gods as portrayed in mythology. In the Euripides fragment, Bellerophon questions belief in the gods and calls calls them a ‘fable’:

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“Is there anyone who thinks there are gods in heaven?
There are not. There are not, for any man who wishes
Not to be a fool and trust some ancient story.
Look at it yourselves, don’t make up your mind
Because of my words. I think that tyranny
Kills so many men and steals their possessions
And that men break their oaths by sacking cities.
But the men who do such things are more fortunate
Than those who live each die piously, at peace.
I know that small cities honor the gods,
Cities that obey stronger more impious men
Because they are overpowered by the strength of their arms.”

- Euripides, fr.286.1-7 (Bellerophon) trans. Erik Robinson / Joel Christensen

on SENTENTIAE ANTIQUAE 

In our episode, the sentiments  of the Bellerophon fragment are combined with lines Euripides writes for Iphigenia and Orestes in the play Iphigenia in Tauris, where Orestes decries the fickleness of the gods by declaring them to be as false as dreams:

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Iphigeneia: Oh, dreams! What nonsense you were! You were false. Meaningless, worthless!

Orestes: The gods, too, whom the prophets call wise, are like those fleeting dreams: False!

Both worlds, the divine as well as the mortal, are equally chaotic.

And this is the thing that saddens this man: Even though he’s a wise man, he still believed in the prophesies and so, he was destroyed.

Those who know him, know how that happened.

 - 'Iphigenia in Tauris', l. 469-473 trans. George Theodoridis

Another Greek play called Sisyphus has a character claim is made that gods were invented to frighten men into moral action. And the philosophical thinker Xenophanes famously said that if cows and horses had hands, "then horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cows like cows". In Plato’s writings, he depicts Socrates as disbelieving traditional myths because they depicted the gods in immoral acts.  

In this vein, in our story, I’ve reconciled Bellerophon’s fantastical history with his scepticism by making his doubts a critique of the supposed nature of the gods; they can’t be gods in the sense of upholding moral law, if they don’t uphold moral law amongst themselves or in their rule over our world. 

Depictions of Female Sexuality and Power

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It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that Bellerophon’s story shows he has issues with women. To begin with, his journey is bound up with a negative female archetype which appears in other myths; the unfaithful Queen who tries to seduce the hero, and then makes a false accusation of assault against him. The same character appears in the Biblical story of Joseph in the shape of Zuleikha (zoo-LAY-kah), the wife of the Pharoah Potiphar; it also shows up in other Greek myths. In our sources, Bellerophon’s heroic victories are apparently supposed to vindicate him and prove his innocence of this crime. The Queen is ritually humiliated by Bellerophon, and the Queen’s daughters are also made to suffer by being driven mad. It is said that some later commentators disclaimed this part of the myth because it cast Bellerophon in a bad light; but frankly, all of the logic at play here is problematic. When I read these myths, the mysoginistic assumptions of Greek culture are on full display here, and Bellerophon’s anger, entitlement and contempt for women seem baked into the legend. In 2020, I don’t think we should give Bellerophon the full benefit of the doubt. So in this telling, Bellerophon may profess his innocence, but I rather think that he protests too much. 

But Bellerophon’s myth contains another interesting symbolic and thematic depiction of female sexuality: when the women of Xanthos halt his march across the plain by lifting their skirts and exposing their vulvas to him.  This is a beguiling incident, and it’s difficult to know exactly how to interpret it. My first thought about this was that it must resemble the Biblical story of Sodom, when Lot and his friends offered up their daughters to be raped instead of them. Once again, the idea that this offended Bellerophon’s modesty would make it another sexist trope that advances ideas about the hero’s virtue. However, there does seem to be another idea implied here; the idea of some kind of inherent power in female sexuality, contemptuous of and capable of un-manning the masculine power of the hero. This is most clearly signalled by the fact that not only Bellerophon but Poseidon is turned back by the display, even though respect for female sexuality isn’t exactly a hallmark of the gods.

In the end, it probably amounts to both. It turns out there are examples of this phenomenon scattered throughout mythology and history, where women shame or express their contempt for male aggressors by exposing themselves.  In some cultures the vulva was believed to be Apotropaic - as having talismanic power to ward off evil. In China, there was a belief that menstrual blood was an effective deterrent against enemies during a seige. In some cases it seems the idea was bound up with the idea that there was something special about the sexuality of women who belonged to the royal family, or were priestesses or otherwise bound by a religious taboo. 

So there is an idea of sacred feminine power here, but it’s not exactly free of sexism; in many cases it’s based on sacred ownership of female sexuality, or fear of women’s sexuality.  But certainly, some are keen to celebrate this act of feminine defiance and claim it's spirit for the feminist movement. This year, the writer Catherine Blackledge published a book called Raising the Skirt which was inspired by this incident in the Bellerophon myth.

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