DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1004#0404
352 PEGASUS ON THE COINS OF CORINTH.
descriptions of Strabo and Pausanias it is not easy to collect which of these
three sources bore the name of Peirene; but the probability is, that this
was a title applied at different times to them all, or at least to the two first
of the three, which were supposed to have a subterranean communication
with each other.
We prefer to imagine that the Peirene, at which Pegasus was caught,
while he was drinking, by Bellerophon, was that source which springs from
the rock on the summit of the Acrocorinth, and that it was from this high
point that he soared aloft into the air. It is remarkable that the winged
Pegasus appears upon most of the coins of Corinth and her colonics. The
mythological analogy between the Horse and the element of Water,—an
analogy which shews itself in the name of Pegasus, and which appears in
the activity of both the animal and the element, each, in its own manner,
struggling to burst from its confinement, foaming with restless fury, and,
as it were, " pawing to get free," and at other times bridled, whether by
reins of steel or stone, and in the circumstance that they both are to man
the means of conquering distance and of conversing with things remote,—
may have led to the adoption of this device; and the symbol upon these
coins was, perhaps, intended to express the natioaal sense entertained by
Corinth of the advantage which she enjoyed in the excellence and super-
descriptions of Strabo and Pausanias it is not easy to collect which of these
three sources bore the name of Peirene; but the probability is, that this
was a title applied at different times to them all, or at least to the two first
of the three, which were supposed to have a subterranean communication
with each other.
We prefer to imagine that the Peirene, at which Pegasus was caught,
while he was drinking, by Bellerophon, was that source which springs from
the rock on the summit of the Acrocorinth, and that it was from this high
point that he soared aloft into the air. It is remarkable that the winged
Pegasus appears upon most of the coins of Corinth and her colonics. The
mythological analogy between the Horse and the element of Water,—an
analogy which shews itself in the name of Pegasus, and which appears in
the activity of both the animal and the element, each, in its own manner,
struggling to burst from its confinement, foaming with restless fury, and,
as it were, " pawing to get free," and at other times bridled, whether by
reins of steel or stone, and in the circumstance that they both are to man
the means of conquering distance and of conversing with things remote,—
may have led to the adoption of this device; and the symbol upon these
coins was, perhaps, intended to express the natioaal sense entertained by
Corinth of the advantage which she enjoyed in the excellence and super-