Chrysaor, "he of the golden sword," sprang from the severed neck of the Gorgon Medusa together with the winged horse Pegasus when Perseus struck off her head.1
When Perseus cut off Medusa's head, there sprang forth at once great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus. Pegasus flew away and left the earth, the mother of flocks, while Chrysaor was so named because he held a golden blade in his hands. Hesiod, who tells how the Dark-haired One had lain with Medusa in a soft meadow amid spring flowers, gives Chrysaor no deed of his own: he is the marvel born of Medusa's death and a link in the chain of monstrous descent.2
The later mythographers supply a father for Medusa's twin offspring. Apollodorus writes that when her head was struck off there sprang from the Gorgon the winged horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, the father of Geryon, and that these she had by Poseidon. Hyginus tells it in Latin, naming Medusa, daughter of Gorgon, and Neptune as the parents of Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus.3
Chrysaor was joined in the love of golden Aphrodite with Callirhoe, daughter of glorious Ocean, and from this union came Geryon, called the strongest of all men. Hesiod names him three-headed; Heracles slew him in sea-girt Erytheia for the sake of his shambling oxen. So Chrysaor, born of one slain monster, became the sire of another.4
Apollodorus places Geryon, son of Chrysaor by Callirhoe, on the island of Erythia near the ocean, now called Gadira: he had the body of three men grown together and joined at the waist, but parted in three from the flanks and thighs, and pastured red kine that Heracles came to fetch. Hyginus likewise calls Geryon three-formed.5
A local memory of the line surfaced far from Greece. In the country of the Lydians, Pausanias relates, a great corpse was uncovered, and the story spread that it was the body of Geryon, son of Chrysaor: a seat was carved into a rocky spur as his throne, a torrent was called the river Ocean, and ploughmen were said to turn up the horns of his cattle. Pausanias records the tale he heard, though he reserved his own judgement.6
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