Details
Region Additional (if applicable)
Greek
Region
Category
King
Gender
Male
Time Period
c. 8th century BCE (Homeric tradition); Bronze Age setting
Symbol
A sealed tablet & crown
Tags
greek-mythology, iobates, lycia, bellerophon, chimera, pegasus, proetus, trojan-war
Introduction
Iobates is the king of Lycia who received a sealed letter ordering him to murder the man who carried it, and who found himself unable to kill the greatest hero of his age. He is the father of Philonoe, the princess he gave in marriage to the very man he had been commanded to destroy. He is the lord who sent Bellerophon, the rider of the winged horse Pegasus, against the Chimera, the fire-breathing monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, and who watched in astonishment as the hero returned alive. He is the king who then sent Bellerophon against the Solymi, the warlike tribe of Lycia, and against the Amazons, the warrior women who lived beyond the Black Sea, and who set an ambush of his best soldiers, only to see them all defeated. He is the ruler who finally understood that Bellerophon was favoured by the gods and gave him half his kingdom and his daughter's hand rather than continue a war he could not win. And he is the ancestor of Glaucus, the Lycian hero who fought beside the Trojan prince Hector in the Trojan War, a legacy that stretched from the age of monsters to the age of cities.
Gallery
Who or What was...
Iobates
Iobates ruled Lycia, a kingdom in the south-west of Asia Minor, a land of mountains and coves where the river Xanthus ran gold with silt from the Taurus range. He was a powerful king, allied by blood and guest-friendship to Proetus, the king of Tiryns in the Argolid, the region of the Peloponnese that lay across the sea. The two kings had exchanged hospitality in the old way, the sacred bond of xenia that made every guest a protected friend and every host a guardian. When Proetus sent a messenger to Lycia, Iobates received him with honour, laid a feast before him, and asked what business had brought him across the Aegean Sea. The messenger was Bellerophon, a young prince of Corinth, the son of Glaucus and grandson of Sisyphus, the cunning king who had cheated death twice and was punished in Tartarus by being forced to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. Bellerophon was handsome, courteous, and skilled in every art of war, but he carried a folded tablet sealed with the marks of Proetus himself.
Iobates took the tablet and broke the seal. Inside, written in the script that Proetus had learned from his Phoenician ancestors, was a message that made the king's blood run cold. Proetus commanded Iobates, by the bonds of their guest-friendship, to kill Bellerophon. The reason was terrible: Bellerophon had been accused by Proetus's wife Antea, or Stheneboea in some tellings, of trying to assault her. The truth was the opposite. Antea had desired Bellerophon and, when he refused her out of loyalty to his host, she had accused him before her husband to save her own honour. Proetus could not kill a guest in his own house, for that would violate the sacred laws of xenia and bring the wrath of Zeus, the king of the gods who protected all guests, upon his head. So he had sent Bellerophon to Iobates with the sealed tablet, hoping that the Lycian king would do what he dared not.
Iobates faced the same dilemma. He could not kill a guest who had eaten at his table, for the gods punished such murders with terrible curses. But he could not ignore the command of his ally and friend. He devised a solution that he believed would solve both problems at once. He would send Bellerophon on a mission so dangerous that no mortal could survive it, and when the hero died, the gods would not blame Iobates for his death. The mission was to kill the Chimera, a monster that had been terrorising the countryside near Lycia. The Chimera was a creature of impossible horror, with the head and front of a lion, the body of a goat rising from its back, and the tail of a serpent, and it breathed fire that melted stone and bronze. It had been born from the union of Typhon, the hundred-headed storm giant who had tried to overthrow Zeus, and Echidna, the half-woman half-serpent mother of monsters, and it was the most feared beast in all of Asia Minor.
Bellerophon accepted the mission, but he did not go alone. The gods had given him a gift that Iobates did not know about. Athena, the grey-eyed goddess of wisdom and war, had appeared to him in a dream and shown him how to find Pegasus, the winged horse born from the blood of the slain Medusa, the Gorgon whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone. Bellerophon caught the horse with a golden bridle given by Athena, and together they flew to the lair of the Chimera. The monster breathed fire, but Bellerophon soared above the flames on Pegasus's back and drove a lead-tipped spear down its throat. The lead melted in the fire and choked the beast, and the Chimera died. Bellerophon returned to Xanthus with the monster's head, and Iobates saw that the gods had favoured this man.
But the king was not yet ready to give up. He sent Bellerophon against the Solymi, the warlike tribe who lived in the mountains of Lycia and were the most dangerous enemies of Iobates's own people. Bellerophon defeated them. Then Iobates sent him against the Amazons, the warrior women who lived beyond the Black Sea and who cut off their right breasts to draw the bow more easily. Bellerophon defeated them too. Finally, Iobates set an ambush of his best Lycian soldiers, the bravest men in his kingdom, chosen to kill a single man. Bellerophon killed them all. When the survivors returned to Xanthus and told the king what had happened, Iobates understood at last. He called Bellerophon before him, admitted that the tablet had commanded his death, and told the hero that the gods had made their will clear. He gave Bellerophon his daughter Philonoe in marriage, and he divided his kingdom, giving half to the man he had tried to destroy. Bellerophon ruled in Lycia beside his father-in-law, and from their union came the line of Lycian kings who would fight at Troy.
Summary
Iobates stands as the king who learned that some men cannot be killed by mortal means, the ruler who tried every weapon in his arsenal and finally accepted the will of the gods. From the sealed tablet of Proetus to the ashes of the Chimera, from the mountains of the Solymi to the marriage bed of his own daughter, his story is a lesson in the limits of royal power when the gods have chosen a favourite. His descendants fought at Troy, his kingdom endured into the age of cities, and every king who has ever sent an enemy on a suicide mission only to see him return victorious carries something of his astonishment. He is the reminder that sometimes the only choice left is to bow to what cannot be stopped.
References
Validation References:
- Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 6, Lines 152-211 (Glaucus tells the story of Bellerophon and Iobates to Diomedes)
- Hesiod, Theogony (c. 700 BCE) - Lines 319-325 (the birth of the Chimera from Typhon and Echidna)
- Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (1st-2nd century CE) - Book 2.3.1-2 (Bellerophon's missions for Iobates and the marriage to Philonoe)
- Pindar, Olympian Odes (c. 476 BCE) - Ode 13, Lines 60-92 (Bellerophon and Pegasus, the slaying of the Chimera)
- Hyginus, Fabulae (c. 2nd century CE) - Section 157 (Bellerophon and the missions of Iobates)
- Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica (1st century BCE) - Book 4.79.3-4 (Bellerophon in Lycia and the marriage to Philonoe)
- Strabo, Geographica (c. 7 BCE - 23 CE) - Book 14.3.5 (Lycia and the river Xanthus)
- Homer, Iliad (c. 750 BCE) - Book 6, Lines 119-236 (Glaucus and Sarpedon as descendants of Bellerophon in Lycia)
- Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) - Volume 1, pp. 301-308 (comprehensive survey of the Bellerophon myth and Iobates)
- Kirk, G. S., The Iliad: A Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 1990) - Volume 2, pp. 161-167 (commentary on Iliad 6 and the Bellerophon digression)