Bellerophon ease, with the privations suffered by the good—is apparently the basis for Aristophanes' imputation of "atheism" to the poet. The replacement of Bellerophon by the more familiar culture hero Perseus was a development of Classical times that was standardized during the Middle Ages and has been adopted by the European poets of the Renaissance and later. Bellerophon Bellerophon (; Ancient Greek: Βελλεροφῶν) or Bellerophontes () is a hero of Greek mythology. He was "the greatest hero and slayer of monsters, alongside Cadmus and Perseus, before the days of Heracles", and his greatest feat was killing the Chimera, a monster that
Chimera (mythology) parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling. The sight of a Chimera was an omen for disaster. 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." Elsewhere in the "Iliad", Homer attributes the rearing of Chimera to Amisodorus. Hesiod's "Theogony" follows the Homeric description: he makes the Chimera the issue of Echidna: "She was