Gdau.I has been mad about Greek Mythology for the last year or two, in the way that other kids of similar age might be mad about dinosaurs . . . or Barbie-dolls. She sent the family out a quiz last week with 10 questions about the ancient greeks and their stories. I did woefully, scraping a bare 2/10 right. Then again, at least 4 of the questions I was pretty certain I'd never known the answer. It was the other four which niggled, because when I was her age, I'd been quite interested / knowledgeable in the field. One of those edge of consciousness question s was "
Who tamed Pegasus [the winged 'orse]? As I dredged the dark reaches of distant memory the word
Bellerophon surfaced but I batted that down with
naaah that was Napoleon's horse assuming that the retrieval 'bots were just popping up any old nag. I was wrong on several levels:
- Bellerophon Βελλεροφόντης was indeed the chap who, the help of a magic bridle, tamed and rode Pegasus
- Belleraphon was not Napoleon's horse - that was called Marengo
- But Bellerophon is in the same room of the memory palace because after the disaster at Waterloo, Napoleon acknowledged that the game was up and surrendered to the nearest British warship which was HMS Bellerophon, Captain Maitland [bloboprev on the "Billy Ruffian"].
In the course of my scraping the barrel of my memory, I recalled Bucephalus Βουκεφάλας [begins withh B; is Alexander the Great's horse] and
Copenhagen: Wellington's horse at Waterloo. He was up top
when Henry Paget lost his leg. Having washed up in København, it seems meet to hang out there for a bit
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