De Incredibilibus (excerpta Vaticana)

Anonymi Paradoxographi

Anonymi Paradoxographi. Rationalizing Myth in Antiquity, Hawes, Greta, author and translator. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014

They say that Heracles fought Achelous in single combat. But here is how it was: the Achelous flowed between the Aetolians and the Curetes and would cut off great tracts of land, sometimes favouring one tribe and sometimes the other. As a result, a great quarrel arose. Heracles, coming to the Aetolians as an ally, defeated the Curetes and, having confined the river in a single channel and one outlet, he strengthened the land to the advantage of the Aetolians and took away Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus.

Pasiphae, having fallen in love with a young local man, made Daedalus her accomplice and assistant in the affair. Even prior to this, she had been in the habit of watching whenever he was working on something, and so, while he was making a very beautiful statue of a cow, which resembled a living one to a very great extent, she continually went to Daedalus’ house to see the cow and have sex with her lover, until the affair was detected. The stories told about this are mythical.

This is what Plutarch says about the Chimaera in his monograph De Mulierum Virtutibus [248c]: The Chimaera was an east-facing hill, and in summer it produced violent and fiery reflections and flares which, spreading across the plain, would cause the crops to wither. Bellerophon, recognizing this, cut through the smoothest part of the cliff, which was primarily responsible for sending out the reflections.