Realms of Fantasy and Myth: Week 48 - Chimera

Dec 3, 201219 min read

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Published: Dec 3, 2012

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Realms of Fantasy and Myth: Week 48 - Chimera

Welcome to the forty-eighth issue of my fantasy features! These are now part of a collection in a group created specifically for this project.
If you like this feature, you can find more gorgeous artwork at the group, including some never featured in these articles before.

I hope you enjoy it, and please, show the featured artists some love and recognition through pageviews,

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This week's creature feature is: Chimera

From Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_… :

The Chimera (also Chimaera or Chimæra) was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of three animals: a lion, a serpent and a goat. Usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat arising from its back, and a tail that ended in a snake's head, the Chimera was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and a sibling of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra. The term chimera has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals.

Homer's brief description in the Iliad is the earliest surviving literary reference: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire". Hesiod's Theogony follows the Homeric description: he makes the Chimera the issue of Echidna: "She was the mother of Chimaera who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Her did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay" The author of the Bibliotheca concurs: descriptions agree that she breathed fire. The Chimera is generally considered to have been female (see the quotation from Hesiod above) despite the mane adorning its lion's head, the inclusion of a close mane often was depicted on lionesses, but the ears always were visible (that does not occur with depictions of male lions). Sighting the Chimera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes).

Pliny the Elder cited Ctesias and quoted Photius identifying the Chimera with an area of permanent gas vents which still can be found today by hikers on the Lycian Way in southwest Turkey. Called in Turkish Yanartaş (flaming rock), it consists of some two dozen vents in the ground, grouped in two patches on the hillside above the Temple of Hephaestus about 3 km north of Çıralı, near ancient Olympos, in Lycia. The vents emit burning methane thought to be of metamorphic origin, which in ancient times were landmarks by which sailors could navigate.

Now, for the features! Works are featured from various categories, in no particular order:

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Chimera Tf by Rex-equinox Pg6 by aPhoenixOfBlueFire

Bellerophon and the Chimera by Magnuson24

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Thank you so much for viewing, and come back next time for a different inhabitant of the Realms of Fantasy and Myth!