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This article is about the book character. You may be looking for the character from the TV series.

The Chimera ("she-goat", also spelled "Chimaera") is the monster offspring of Echidna and Typhon.

History[]

The Chimera was a child of Echidna and Typhon. It has been terrorizing the kingdom of Lycia for a long time, destroying villages and burning crops. The priests have believed that the creature had crawled out of Tartarus. A neighboring king, Amisodarus, tried to harness it for war but it destroyed his kingdom. When the daughter of King Iobates, Queen Anteia of Argos, requested him to kill Bellerophon in revenge for rejecting her, Iobates decided to send him against the Chimera hoping he would die from that.

The Chimera was torching a village twenty miles south of the capital. Bellerophon brought a sword and spear with Pegasus. The Chimera’s goat head shot fire barely missing them, then the snake head spat a poison cloud infecting Bellerophon, finally the lion head roared loud. Bellerophon was scared of the goat head the most, he decided needed to stop the flames. Remembering the time he burned down a dining hall while roasting marshmallows, he went to an abandoned blacksmith’s shop and found a lump of lead the size of a pillow. It was heavy, but Bellerophon managed to climb back onto Pegasus with the lead on his spear. He offered it to the Chimera, who considered it but then decided against. Unfortunately for her, when goat head tried to breath fire again, Bellerophon threw the lead into her mouth. Then he drove his sword to the belly, finishing it off.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians[]

The Lightning Thief[]

Typhon

Typhon, his father

While on the Quest for the Master Bolt, Percy Jackson was cornered by a fat lady and her pet chihuahua at the top of the Gateway Arch. The lady constantly refers to her pet as "sonny" or "son" and it is only when Percy is forced to wait for a second elevator down, and left without the company of Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase that he discovers that the fat lady really is Echidna, mother of all monsters.

The chihuahua transforms into his true form, that of the Chimera, and attacks Percy. As Percy tries to defend himself and a few innocent bystanders with Riptide, he is outwitted by the creature and ultimately forced to dive out of the Gateway Arch (via a hole conveniently provided by the Chimera) into the Mississippi after being poisoned by the snake-headed tail.

Appearance[]

The Chimera has the head of a lion, the body of a goat, a blood-caked mane, and a ten-foot-long diamondback snake-headed tail which grows out of its shaggy behind while only a larger female has the head of lioness the body of a goat, with a six foot long horns on her head and a fifteen-foot-long king cobra-headed tail on her behind. The Chimera secretes deadly venom released through a bite and breathes fire. While disguised as a chihuahua, he wears a rhinestone collar, which he retains in his true form. His dog tag reads, "CHIMERA-RABID, FIRE-BREATHING, POISONOUS-IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL TARTARUS-EXT. 954."

When Bellerophon encountered the Chimera, it was about the size of a woolly mammoth. In the front, it had the head and forepaws of a lion. The back half of its body was scaly and reptilian, with dragon legs and a snaky tail that had a rattlesnake's head at the tip. A goat head poked straight up from its back like a periscope, it can turn in almost a complete circle and spew hundred-foot-long columns of fire. Percy Jackson says that monsters often change appearance to explain the differences.[1]

Abilities[]

The Chimera has many powers including:

  • It can breathe fire.
  • Its snake-headed tail has venomous fangs and excretes a venom that is acidic.
  • It is immensely strong.
  • It has human intelligence.

Trivia[]

  • In The Lightning Thief film, the part where Percy and his friends encounter Chimera and Echidna was replaced with them fighting the Hydra at a replica of the Parthenon in Tennessee. According to screen writer Craig Titley, the part was in his original script draft for the film, but was replaced with the Hydra scene due to the Chimera being deemed "too weird looking", and thus being seen as "un-relatable and unbelievable in its looks for an audience to connect to". Chris Columbus came up with the idea to replace the Chimera with the Hydra, as it was a more iconic creature that would also seem realistic for an audience to connect to. It was also supposedly easier for the actors to react to while filming. The scene itself was also thought to be too expensive and difficult to film.[citation needed]
    • Rick Riordan, on the other hand, thought the entire scene was awful and completely alien to the story. He said the Parthenon was a place where they will lose the readers of the books in droves for no good reason, but thought it could easily be fix if Ares was placed there.[2]
  • The graphic novel depicted the Chimera as having the horns of a goat instead a body.
  • In The Lightning Thief, Echidna calls the Chimera her son. However, in most ancient myths, the Chimera was a female, along with the fact that her name means 'she-goat'. Though considering the fact that the lion's head of the Chimera is of a male lion, it's easy for people to make this mistake.
    • In the Disney+ series, the Chimera is in fact referred to as a female.
  • Chimeras in botany are usually single organisms composed of two genetically different types of tissues. The word derived from the monster's name because of its several body part structure.
  • In Paleontology, a Chimera is a fossil which was reconstructed with elements coming from more than a single species of animal.

References[]

  1. Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes, Whatever It Is, Bellerophon Didn’t Do It
  2. http://rickriordan.com/2018/11/memories-from-my-tv-movie-experience/
Monsters
Species: Amphisbaena | Apollo's Cattle | Blemmyae | Basilisk | Carnivorous Sheep | Centaur | Cyclops | Cynocephali | Dragon | Drakon | Empousa | Eurynomos | Feather-Shooting Bird | Fire-Breathing Horse | Flesh-Eating Horse | Gegeines | Geminus | Giant Eagle | Giant Scorpion | Giant Snake | Ghoul | Gorgon | Gryphon | Harpy | Hellhound | Hippalektryon | Hippocampus | Hydra | Hyperborean Giant | Ichthyocentaur | Karpoi | Katobleps | Keres | Khromandae | Laistrygonian Giant | Leucrotae | Lycanthrope | Makhai | Merperson | Myrmekes | Nikai | Pandai | Pegasus | Pit Scorpion | Satyr | Scythian Dracaena | Sea Serpent | Siren | Strix | Stymphalian Birds | Tauri Sylvestres | Telekhine | Troglodyte | Unicorn | Vrykolakai | Yale
Friendly Monsters: Argus | Blackjack | Briares | Bombilo | Chiron | Cottus | Don | Ella | Festus | Gleeson Hedge | Gray | Grover Underwood | Guido | Gyges | Lysas | Mrs. O'Leary | Ophiotaurus | Peaches | Peleus | Porkpie | Rainbow | Scipio | Tyson | Tempest | Sssssarah
Enemy Monsters: Antaeus | Agrius and Oreius | Arachne | Cacus | Carthaginian Serpent | Charybdis and Scylla | Chimera | Chrysaor | Clazmonian Sow | Colchis Bulls | Echidna | Euryale | Geryon | Kampê | Karkinos | Kekrops | Lamia | Manticore | Medusa | Minotaur | Nemean Lion | Polyphemus | Python | Skolopendra | Sphinx | Stheno | Sun Dragons | Typhon | Trojan Sea Monster
Neutral Monsters: Cerberus | Erymanthian Boar | Gray Sisters | Furies | Ladon | Orthus | Sybaris
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