The Fall from Heaven: The Myth of Bellerophon and Pegasus

The myth of Bellerophon is one of the oldest in the Greek tradition — and one of the most misread. He is remembered as the overreacher, the man who won everything and ruined it by wanting one thing more. What is less often remembered is how far he had to travel to get there, how much was taken from him before he was given anything at all.

Bellerophon tamed Pegasus at the spring of Pirene — not by strength or cunning, but through prayer, and a damp field, and a night spent alone on the altar of Athena. He killed the Chimera, that improbable combination of lion, serpent, and goat that had been terrorising Lycia with all the committed purposefulness of a creature that has nothing to lose. He defeated the Solymi. He defeated the Amazons. He was given a king's daughter in marriage and half a kingdom and lived well for a long time before deciding, in the autumn of his life, that he had earned the right to something more.

The gods had always found Bellerophon interesting. They found his final ambition considerably less so.

The Fall from Heaven: The Myth of Bellerophon and Pegasus is the story of what happened from Corinth to Olympus — told by a narrator who is present, opinionated, and constitutionally unable to pass a legend without noting the gap between the story as it is told and the story as it probably happened. Where this series begins.

Drawing on Pindar's odes and Apollodorus's Library, the novel follows Bellerophon through Corinth, Tiryns, Lycia, and beyond — in a voice that has very little interest in celebrating the legend at the expense of the person inside it.