Chimera part 1: mythology and art history

This will be the first part in a series of posts regarding the Chimera, a monster taken from Greek myth. In this part, I will briefly recount the etymology, mythology and historical art concerning the chimera.

The word chimera comes from Ancient Greek word for "she-goat," or possibly an Etruscan word meaning "three-headed" or "three-faced" that was glossed with the former word. This is a feminine noun; the masculine form, at least in English, might be construed as chimerus. It may be used as a proper noun, such as Chimera herself in Greek myth.

The Lycian chimera is a she-dragon appearing in the myth of the hero Bellerophon, who slayed the monster while riding Pegasus. Given the "Lycian" qualifier, there may have been more than one across the world. Some historians have speculated she was a metaphor for a volcano (the Mount Cragus where she lived), the slopes perhaps inhabited by lions, goats and snakes.

Bellerophon fights chimera, artist unknown

Chimera lacks a consistent appearance in myth and art. Homer describes her as lion in the front, snake in the back, and goat in the middle, whereas it was Hesiod who specified she had three heads. Some Etruscan art added wings. A Roman plate depicts the chimera with the upper body of a lioness and a snake replacing the lower body.

Homeric chimera, Fantastic Beasts: Cases from the Wizarding World

Hesiodic chimera, artist unknown

Hesiodic chimera, ca. 1600, Jacopo Ligozzi

Roman chimera, ©2012 Jeremy Cardona

Given Greece's trade with the ancient Near East, the chimera possibly descended from depictions of sphinxes, cherubs and other tutelaries (e.g. neo-Hittite chimera). Chimeras have continued to be depicted as gargoyles and grotesques, echoing this usage.

Neo-Hittite Chimera, Museum of Fine Arts

“Chimère” (Chimera) by Henri Alfred Jacquemart, 1860, Fontaine Saint-Michel, place Saint-Michel, Paris

Later heraldic depictions varied immensely. Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry describes no less than three variants: the "Society chimera," "Greek chimera," and "German chimera."

• The Society chimera is attributed to John Bossewell. It has the heads of a lion, goat and dragon at the front, referencing Hesiod's description. It appears to have inspired the chimera as depicted in Dungeons & Dragons (with the wings presumably deriving from the aforementioned Etruscan art). 
• The Greek chimera has the head of a lion in front, a goat on the back, and a snake at the end. This draws from a mix of Homer's and Hesiod's descriptions, having the three heads arranged linearly.
• The German chimera generally has only the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon as in Homer's description. Sometimes it is depicted with a snake-headed tail (similar to a Japanese nue), or even with the head and breasts of a woman like the Greek sphinx. (For comparison, the Greek sphinx was classically depicted as a lioness with the face and breasts of a woman and the wings and tail of a dragon. The German chimera may be the result of conflation or confusion.)

Society/Etruscan chimera, Monster Manual (5e)

German/Homeric chimera, ©2013 Kory Bing

Sphinx chimera, Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry

Of course, the images presented above are by no means exhaustive. There are countless depictions of the chimera, and no author or artist can agree which parts go where. Video games, for example, have gone in a variety of fascinating strange directions.

Later the word chimera came to mean general fusions of animals, as well as delusions or illusions. The former kind was seen in carvings of gargoyles and grotesques, which could be bipartite, tripartite, etc.

In the second part of this series, I would like to review the chimera's appearances in fantasy gaming. In the third part, I would like to discuss my own ideas concerning the lore and ecology of the chimera.