Su due sculture minori di Alessandria e Leptis Magna

Abstract

This paper focuses on two marble sculptures representing Bellerophon with the Chimaera, now in the Alexandria and Lepcis Magna Museums, which received the attention of the late Professor Nicola Bonacasa several decades ago. Carved in Proconnesian marble and rendered with a very close iconography, they are part of a larger group of about ten trapezophora with the same subject. Pointing out more on differences among these exemplares than on their analogies, after some considerations on the long debate about the function and the meaning of these sculptures as well as on the geography of the myth of the Chimaera, a new interpretation of the myth is proposed, not as unique but co-existing with the others.