The Unicorn and Pegasus: Science and Religion

In some comments on my recent articles on unicorns, there have been references to Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. Yet, grouping Pegasus and unicorns together is like grouping angels and astronauts, because the two images come from very different traditions of ancient thought. Pegasus comes from the mythology of ancient Greek religion, while the unicorn, strange as it may seem, comes from ancient science.

Pegasus: the hideous birth of a mythological creature

Pegasus, the beautiful winged horse, which has become associated with poetic inspiration and spiritual journeying, has perhaps the most horrible birth of any creature in Greek mythology. His father was Poseidon, the god of the sea and of horses, and his mother was the Gorgon Medusa, whose face would turn to stone those who dared to look at her.

Pegasus and his human brother Chrysaor were born when the hero Perseus, with the help of Athene, beheaded their mother. Then, after safely storing her head in his "wallet" (according to most translators, but obviously it would have been more like a sack), Perseus mounted Pegasus and flew away on the son of the monster whose head he was carrying.

What happened to the newborn Crysaor, the human brother of Pegasus, is not told. We do know that later he would father a monster, Geryon, whose cattle Hercules would steal.

These stories come from the mythology, that is, the religion of the ancient Greeks. Apparently, there was no scripture for Greek religion. Instead, what we know of Greek mythology comes from literary works, most notably the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, but perhaps most importantly, the Theogony Θεογονία or "birth of the gods" by Hesiod, which we can read online here.

For many of us, our introduction to Greek mythology was in Edith Hamilton's Mythology, but she tried to clean up and smooth over the harshness of the stories she eloquently, but rather drily, retold.

The unicorn: a discovery of ancient science

Although unicorns may seem to share the same territory of fantasy and inspiration as Pegasus, they are very different beasts. In The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, although there are several references to Pegasus, the only appearance of the word unicorn is as the name of a publisher in a bibliographical entry.

Pegasus was a single, individually named creature with a distinctive family history. Unicorns were not mythological, and they were not individuals. They were a species described scientifically - at least in terms of the science of the day - by Ctesias, a Greek historian from the fifth century, BC, whose work I quoted in an earlier article (here).

Pegasus and the unicorn: a lesson for our times?

To try to embrace both Pegasus and the unicorn, to put them in some way together, is like grouping angels and astronauts, and of course, some writers in recent years, such as Erich von Däniken (more) have done just that, interpreting angels as ancient astronauts. We are still trying to balance the wisdom of religious teachings with the facts of science.

What lessons can we learn from Pegasus and the unicorn? On that, I shall remain silent as those ancient beasts themselvs are.

Online sources are linked to throughout the article.

Offline sources:
The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology
Edith Hamilton, Mythology

You can find an index to all my stories of hunting unicorns, "The Joys of Chasing Unicorns," here.