748 



IIIPPODAMIA HIPPOPOTAMUS. 



mount Helicon, a mountain in Bceotia, consecrated 

 to the muses, the waters of which possessed the 

 power of poetic inspiration. It was sacred to the 

 muses and Apollo. It is said to have risen from the 

 ground, when struck by the hoofs of Pegasus. 



HIPPODAMIA was the name of several females 

 of antiquity ; for example, of the wife of Pirithous 

 (see Pirit/ious), king of the Lapitlue. The most 

 rcU-brated is the daughter of CEnomaus, king of Pisa 

 in Elis. On account of a prediction that he was to 

 be murdered by his future son-in-law, he made a 

 condition that all the suitors for his daughter should 

 contend with him in a cha riot-race, and, if he should 

 overtake them before they arrived at the goal, should 

 fall by his hand. He thus succeeded in slaying thir- 

 teen, or, as some say, seventeen suitors, when Pelops, 

 by corrupting the charioteer, caused CEnomaus to be 

 upset in the middle of the course, by which means 

 he lost his life. Thus Hippodamia became the wife 

 of Pelops, and mother of Atreus and Thyestes. She 

 committed suicide, from grief at the accusation of 

 having misled these sons to fratricide. 



HIPPODROME, from <Wo?, horse, and S^, 

 course, race) was the name, among the Romans and 

 Greeks, of the public place where the horse and 

 chariot races were held. Of all the hippodromes of 

 Greece, the most remarkable was the one of Olym- 

 pia, of which a description may be found in Pausanias. 

 After this one, there was none more remarkable than 

 that of Constantinople, which still fills the traveller 

 with astonishment. Severus began the erection of 

 this splendid structure, and Constantino finished it, 

 in imitation of the great circus at Rome. It is sur- 

 rounded by two ranges of columns, extending farther 

 than the eye can reach, raised one above the other, 

 and resting on a broad foundation, and is adorned by 

 an immense quantity of statues, of marble, porphyry, 

 and bronze, of men and beasts, emperors and athletes. 

 Among other remarkable monuments of art, the four 

 bronze horses of Lysippus stood here, which have 

 migrated from Greece to Rome, Constantinople, 

 Venice, and Paris, and have, at last, been transported 

 back to Venice. The Turks called this place 

 Atmeidan, that is, horse-place, and thus recall to the 

 mind its former destination. It is, at present, 400 

 geometrical paces in length, 100 in breadth, and, 

 passing over many slight irregularities, almost quad- 

 rangular ; and, notwithstanding the corroding touch 

 of time, some remarkable relics of antiquity are still 

 found here. 



HIPPOGRIFF ; the name of a fabulous animal, a 

 griffin whose body terminated in that of a horse. It 

 was a symbol of Apollo, but it is uncertain whether 

 it belonged to him as the god of the muses or of the 

 sun. Buonarrotti thought that the Greeks had bor- 

 rowed this symbol, together with the worship of 

 Apollo, from the East, without knowing the exact 

 signification ; and this is not improbable. Although 

 it may have been originally the symbol of the god of 

 the sun, the poets sometimes attribute it to the god 

 of the muses, instead of Pegasus. 



HIPPOLYTUS. See Phaedra. 



HIPPONAX; a Greek poet, born at Kphesus, 540 

 years before the Christian era. His satirical raillery 

 obliged him to fly from Ephesus. As lie was na- 

 turally deformed, two brothers, Buphalus and 

 Anthermus, made a statue of him, which, by the 

 deformity of its features, exposed the poet to univer- 

 sal ridicule. Hipponax resolved to revenge the 

 injury, and wrote such bitter invectives and satirical 

 lampoons against them, that they hanged themselves 

 in despair. 



HIPPONOUS ; the original name of the celebrated 

 Bellerophon, the son of Glaucus and of a daughter of 

 Sisyphus, king of Corinth. Having unintentionally 



killed his brother, he fled to Prcetus, king of Argos, 

 who received him hospitably, and expiated him. 

 But queen Antea soon conceived a criminal love for 

 the youth ; and, when Bellerophon, revering the 

 rites of hospitality, did not return her affection, she 

 avenged herself by calumniating the innocent youth 

 to her husband. Proetus sent him to his father-in- 

 law, Jobates, king of Lycia, with tablets having char- 

 acters engraved on them which were of dangerous 

 import to the bearer. Jobates, in compliance with 

 the hospitable custom of the heroes of antiquity, enter 

 tained the strangerduring the space of nine days,before 

 he inquired into the object of his visit; and having, on 

 the tenth day, learned his commission, he also feared 

 to lay hands on his guest. He ordered him, how- 

 ever, to kill the Chimera (q. v.), a monster which 

 had three heads, and breathed fire, being convinced 

 that no valour would enable him to sustain this com- 

 bat. But Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus a 

 present from Pallas fought in the air, and over- 

 powered the monster. After this, he conquered the 

 Solymians, and, at last, the Amazons. Jobates, 

 then recognising the divine origin of the youth, gave 

 him his daughter Philonoe in marriage, and shared 

 his kingdom with him. The children of Bellerophon 

 were Isanderos, Hippolochus, and Hippodamia. He, 

 at length, attempted to ascend to Olympus on his 

 winged steed, but, as some writers assert, was hurled 

 down by the thunderbolt of Jupiter ; according to 

 others, Pegasus, stung by a gadfly, threw him oft'; 

 and from that time he avoided the face of man, and 

 wandered through the deserts of Aleia in Cilicia, 

 where he perished with hunger. 



HIPPOPOTAMUS (H. amphibius). This genus 

 of ihe pachydermata consists of but a solitary species, 

 at present existing; recent observations, however, 

 have shown, that four others lived in the earlier ages 

 of the world. The hippopotamus is fully equal to 

 the rhinoceros in size, and is not less formidable. He 

 has four cutting teeth in each jaw, those in the lower 

 jaw straight and pointing forward nearly horizontally, 

 the two middle ones being the longest. The canine 

 teeth, or tusks, are four in number ; those in the 

 upper jaw short, those in the lower very long, and 

 obliquely truncated. They are sometimes two feet 

 in length, and weigh upwards of six pounds. These 

 tusks are in great request with the makers of artificial 

 teeth, as they are not subject to turn yellow. In 

 figure, the hippopotamus more closely resembles an 

 unwieldy ox than any other animal. A male hip- 

 popotamus has been known to be seventeen feet in 

 length, seven in height, and fifteen in circumference. 

 The head is very large, being three feet and a half 

 in length ; the mouth is amazingly wide, the ears 

 small, pointed, and lined with fine, short hairs ; the 

 eyes and nostrils are small; the lips very thick, 

 broad, and beset with a few scattered tufts of short 

 bristles ; the body is thinly covered with very short, 

 whitish hair, more sparingly distributed on the under 

 parts ; the tail is short, slightly compressed, and 

 almost bare ; the legs are short and thick ; the feet 

 large, and divided into four parts, each furnished with 

 a hoof; the skin is very thick, and of a dusky colour. 



The hippopotamus is confined to Africa, ami 

 abounds most in the lakes and rivers of Abyssinia, 

 Nubia, and Upper Egypt; but these animals are also 

 found in considerable numbers in the Gambia, Niger, 

 &c. They formerly were plentiful near the cape of 

 Good Hope, but are now nearly extirpated. To 

 preserve the few remaining, the government liaye pro- 

 hibited the shooting them without express permission. 



The hippopotamus appears to have been well 

 known to the ancients, though their descriptions of 

 its form and habits are inaccurate. Tims Aristotle 

 and Pliny describe it as having hoofs like an ox, a 



