Pegasus, the winged horse

Essay after the Legendary Creatures

Pegasus is the legendary Greek winged horse and horse god. His mother was believed to be the devil Medusa. Pegasus was born from the blood that oozed out of her head when she was killed. Many believed that when Perseus chopped off her head, Pegasus and his brother Chrysaor sprang from the blood in her neck and was born. His brother Chrysaor was not a winged horse as Pegasus was but rather a giant. Their father was believed to be Poseidon, the god of the sea, which conceived then when Medusa’s blood dripped from her head into the sea below. Another version of this story is that Poseidon seduced Medusa (when she was still a mortal) inside the temple of Athena. As revenge for soiling her temple, Athena turned Medusa’s hair into snakes. When she died, Pegasus and his brother were born from the mixture of her and Poseidon’s blood.
Pegasus was widely known for carrying the thunderbolts for Zeus but in other stories he was linked with mortals. One of these was Bellerophon, a Greek hero. Bellerophon caught the mythical horse after spotting him drinking by a nearby stream. Intrigued by this horse, he asked the gods for help on how to capture him. Athena, still angry at Pegasus’s parents, gave Bellerophon a golden bridle and taught him how to catch the flying horse. With Pegasus’s help, Bellerophon was able to defeat many monsters and armies, such as the famous Chimera and the army of Amazons. However, Bellerophon tried to persuade Pegasus to take him up to Mount Olympia which angered Zeus. Therefore he sent a thunderbolt down, causing Bellerophon to fall from Pegasus’s back and die. The winged horse then went back to work for the gods where he later married Eurippe. When he died, he was made into a constellation in the heavens.
Sources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus, http://gogreece.about.com/od/mythology/a/mythpegasus.htm?terms=greek+mythology+medusa, http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/myth/mypegas.htm

Image-