That which is reported to have fallen out in Lycia, although it be
fabulous, hath yet common fame attesting it. Amisodarus, as they say,
whom the Lycians call Isaras, came from a colony of the Lycians about
Zeleia, bringing with him pirate ships, which Chimarrhus, a warlike
man, who was also savage and brutish, was commander of. He sailed in a
ship which had a lion carved on her head and a dragon on her stern. He
did much mischief to the Lycians, so that they could not sail on the
sea nor inhabit the towns nigh the sea-coast.
This man Bellerophon pursued with his Pegasus and slew him, and also
defeated the Amazons, for which he obtained no due requital, but
Iobates the king was most unjust to him; upon which Bellerophon went
to the seashore, and made earnest supplication by himself to Neptune
that he would render that country barren and unfruitful; and having
said his prayers, he faced about. Upon which the waves of the sea
arose and overwhelmed the land, and it was a dreadful sight to behold
the lofty billows following Bellerophon and drowning the plain. And
now, when the men by their deprecation, laboring to put a stop to
Bellerophon, availed nothing at all, the women plucking up their
petticoats met him full butt; upon which confounded with shame he
turned back again, and the flood, as they say, returned with him. But
some unriddle the fabulous part of this story, by telling us that it
was not by execrations that he brought up the sea; but the fattest part
of the plain lying lower than the sea, and a certain ridge extending
itself all along the shore which beat off the sea, Bellerophon broke
through this, so that the sea forcibly flowed in and overwhelmed the
plain; and when the men by their humble addresses obtained nothing,
the women assembling about him in multitudes gained respect from him
and pacified his wrath. Some tell us that the celebrated Chimaera
was a mountain opposite to the sun, which caused reflections of the
sun’s beams, and in summer ardent and fiery heats, which spread over
the plain and withered the fruits; and Bellerophon, finding out the
reason of the mischief, cut through the smoothest part of the cliff,
which especially caused these reflections. But on seeing that he was
treated ungratefully, his indignation was excited to take vengeance on
the Lycians, but was appeased by the women. The reason which Nymphis
(in the fourth book concerning Heraclea) doth assign is to me not at
all fabulous; for he saith, when Bellerophon slew a certain wild boar,
which destroyed the cattle and fruits in the province of the Xanthians,
and received no due reward of his service, he prayed to Neptune for
vengeance, and obtained that all the fields should cast forth a salt
dew and be universally corrupted, the soil becoming bitter; which
continued till he, condescendingly regarding the women suppliants,
prayed to Neptune, and removed his wrath from them. Hence there was a
law among the Xanthians, that they should not for the future derive
their names from their fathers, but from their mothers.