Chimera (mythology) repertory of the Greek vase-painters. The Chimera first appears at an early stage in the repertory of the proto-Corinthian pottery-painters, providing some of the earliest identifiable mythological scenes that may be recognized in Greek art. The Corinthian type is fixed, after some early hesitation, in the 670s BC; the variations in the pictorial representations suggests multiple origins to Marilyn Low Schmitt. The fascination with the monstrous devolved by the end of the seventh century into a decorative Chimera-motif in Corinth, while the motif of Bellerophon on Pegasus took on a separate existence alone. A separate Attic tradition, where the goats
Chimera (mythology) in "Inferno" xvii.7–17, 25–27, hybrid monsters, more akin to the Manticore of Pliny's Natural History (viii.90), provided iconic representations of hypocrisy and fraud well into the seventeenth century, through an emblematic representation in Cesare Ripa's "Iconologia". The myths of the Chimera may be found in the "Bibliotheca" of Pseudo-Apollodorus (book 1), the "Iliad" (book 16) by Homer, the "Fabulae" 57 and 151 by Hyginus, the "Metamorphoses" (book VI 339 by Ovid; IX 648), and the "Theogony" 319ff by Hesiod. Virgil, in the "Aeneid" (book 5) employs "Chimaera" for the name of gigantic ship of Gyas in the ship-race, with possible