Pegasus

Perseus stood over the sleeping Medusa and looked at her reflection in his bronze shield. Athene guided his hand, so he did not meet the Gorgon’s gaze. He struck with his sickle and cut off her head. He lifted it by the serpent locks and placed it in his wallet.

As Medusa’s head was severed, Pegasus and Chrysaor sprang fully grown from her body. Pegasus was a winged horse. Chrysaor appeared as a warrior holding a golden sword or falchion. They had been conceived earlier by Medusa and Poseidon. One account says that Pegasus emerged where Medusa’s blood fell upon the ground. Perseus was surprised by their appearance and left them without further conflict.

Stheno and Euryale awoke and pursued Perseus, but he escaped because his helmet made him invisible. Pegasus later came into the care of the gods. Hesiod says that he lived with Zeus and carried the god’s thunder and lightning. Another account says that Athena caught and tamed him, then presented him to the Muses. A kick from Pegasus’s hoof opened the fountain Hippocrene on Mount Helicon, the Muses’ mountain.

Pegasus became the horse of Bellerophon. Athena gave the hero a golden bridle and instructed him to sacrifice a white bull to Poseidon, Pegasus’s father. Once Bellerophon had tamed the horse, he rode him against the Amazons, the Solymi of Lycia, and the fire-breathing Chimaera. Pegasus therefore passed from Medusa’s death to the service of gods, the Muses, and a mortal hero.

Zeus freed the Cyclopes from their bondage beneath the Earth. In one telling, Cronos had imprisoned them after taking power. In another, Ouranos had first cast them into Tartarus, and Cronos had confined them there again. Zeus acted with the help of Metis, who gave Cronos a drug. Cronos swallowed it and disgorged the stone and the children he had swallowed. The Cyclopes then returned to the world.

The Cyclopes gave Zeus thunder, lightning, and the thunderbolt as thanks for their freedom. They gave Pluto the cap of invisibility and Poseidon the trident. In the telling attributed to Hesiod, the thunderbolt and lightning were objects that the Cyclopes had made. Zeus took these weapons into his struggle against Cronos and the Titans.

Zeus and his allies fought Cronos and the Titans for ten years. Zeus then freed the Hundred-Handers from their bondage beneath the Earth. They joined his side and helped him defeat the Titans. After the victory, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus, while Oceanus, Helios, Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius escaped that fate.

Gaia bore Typhoeus to avenge the imprisoned Titans. Typhoeus had many snake-headed necks and threatened to rule mortals and immortals. Zeus seized thunder, lightning, and the smoking thunderbolt, then leaped from Olympus and struck the monster. The blows crippled Typhoeus, burned his heads, and set the Earth burning in many places. Zeus defeated him and hurled him down to the Earth. Pegasus did not enter Zeus’s service in this telling, and no event placed him beside Zeus or carrying the god’s weapons.