Plaque with Bellerophon and the Chimera. Constantinople (?), 5th century Ivory

The surface details of this openwork plaque, now much abraded, were carved in high, rounded relief; part of the frame at the lower right is restored and some interior pieces are broken away. Intended to decorate another object, it may have been set into a diptych or a piece of furniture.

Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, slays the Chimera, a ferocious monster with the head and body of a lion, a fire-spewing goat head on its back, and a serpent's tail. Bellerophon thrusts his lance into the lion's mouth, and the Chimera succumbs, falling onto its forelegs. Three trees indicate a landscape setting and fill out the network of supports reaching the frame.

The scene is bordered by a bead and reel on three sides, acanthus leaves at the bottom and top, and a diminutive horseshoe arcade across the top.

The iconography of the scene is atypical: not only is an indication of landscape unusual, but here Bellerophon rides towards the right and the Chimera faces left, whereas the standard late Roman formula shows both moving in the same direction. Significantly, these two aspects appear on the fragmentary peristyle mosaic in the Great Palace in Constantinople (Hiller, 1970, fig. 34). A picture in a middle Byzantine manuscript of Pseudo-Oppian's treatise on the hunt, Cynegetica (Bibl. Marc. cod. gr. 479; Weitzmann, 1951, fig. 112), also shows the attack in a rocky setting with trees and the Chimera collapsed on its forelegs, but the figures move in the same direction. The similarities in these three images perhaps reflect a local variation of this scene, since all are seemingly Constantinopolitan. There are enough differences, however, to obviate a single model.

The symbolic significance of Bellerophon killing the Chimera has been a subject of recent debate. As interpreted by Hiller (1969, pp. 278-280; Hiller, 1970, pp. 66-99), images from the fourth century and later ultimately allude to the emperor triumphing over his enemies. Brandenburg (1971, pp. 167-168), however, explains it in this context more convincingly as a symbol of virtue defeating evil, and, in general (Brandenburg, 1968, pp. 49-86), as a prophylactic symbol with allusions to a larger repertory of nature imagery. Huskinson (1974, pp. 73-78), in a review of the problem, concludes that the monuments must be treated individually to determine their contextual significance. Found on bronze casings for caskets (Buschhausen, 1971, cf. Index and A9), on con- torniates (A. Alfoldi, 1943, pi. xlii, 1-4), and mosaics (Brandenburg, 1968, no. 14), the scene cannot be interpreted in the same way in every case. Bibliography: Hiller, 1970, p. 89, Catalogue D, VIII, 1, fig. 33; Volbach, 1976, no. 67.