The Penguin Book of Dragons
Page 2
ANCIENT ENEMIES
Monstrous Snakes in the Greco-Roman World
The prominence of giant serpents in the imagination of the ancient Greeks and Romans was inscribed in the heavens. The undulating chain of stars in the northern sky known as Draco (Latin for “dragon”) was among the dozens of constellations described by the Roman astronomer Ptolemy in the second century CE. Greek and Latin authors identified this celestial dragon with the serpentine monsters vanquished by their mythological heroes, especially Hercules, whose constellation stands in close proximity to Draco. The dragons of Greco-Roman mythology shared a number of attributes that remained remarkably consistent over centuries of storytelling. They were usually depicted as massive snakes inhabiting sacred groves in remote places, where they guarded treasure and promised a quick death to trespassers with their lethal venom and crushing coils. Their monstrous menace amplified the courage and strength of the heroes who vanquished them. But dragons were not confined to the realm of legend in ancient literature. Classical authors also wrote about them as natural creatures. Roman poets provided breathless accounts of encounters between Roman legions and deadly monsters in far-flung theaters of war, while naturalists collected information about their habitats and diet. Dragons were living and breathing monsters in Greco-Roman literature and history, but they were always a distant threat, their menace mitigated by time and space.
THE HYDRA OF LERNA1
As a child, the demigod Hercules strangled with his bare hands two serpents sent by the goddess Hera to slay him in his crib, thus foreshadowing not only his heroic power but also his confrontation with the Hydra of Lerna, a reptilian monster with nine serpentine heads. As an adult, Hercules performed twelve difficult tasks in the service of King Eurystheus. The second of these labors was the slaying of the Lernaean hydra that ravaged the countryside in the western Peloponnese in Greece. The longest version of the story appears in The Library, a compendium of ancient Greek legends compiled in the second century CE and attributed to Apollodorus of Athens. According to Apollodorus, this task was especially difficult because the hydra sprouted two heads for each one that Hercules smashed with his club. With the help of his nephew Iolaus, however, the hero managed to cauterize the hydra’s severed heads with torches to prevent them from growing back again and eventually killed the beast. Later commentators complained that Hercules deserved no credit for this labor, because he enlisted his nephew’s aid rather than defeating the hydra by himself.
As a second labor, Eurystheus ordered Hercules to kill the Lernaean hydra. That creature, bred in the swamp of Lerna, used to go forth into the plain and ravage both the cattle and the countryside.2 Now the hydra had a huge body with nine heads, eight mortal, but the middle one immortal. So, mounting a chariot driven by Iolaus, Hercules came to Lerna, and having halted his horses, he discovered the hydra on a hill beside the springs of the Amymone, where its den was located.3 By pelting it with fiery arrows, he forced it to come out, and in the act of doing so he seized and held it fast. But the hydra wound itself around one of his feet and clung to him. Nor could he accomplish anything by smashing its heads with his club, for as fast as one head was smashed there grew up two more. A huge crab also came to the help of the hydra by biting Hercules’ foot, so he killed it, and in his turn called to Iolaus for help, who set fire to a piece of wood and burned the roots of the hydra’s heads with the brands, thus preventing them from sprouting. Having thus got the better of the sprouting heads, Hercules chopped off the immortal head and buried it and put a heavy rock on it, beside the road that leads through Lerna to Elaeus. But the body of the hydra he cut up and dipped his arrows in the gall. But Eurystheus said that this labor should not be reckoned among the ten because Hercules had not defeated the hydra by himself, but with the help of Iolaus.
MEDUSA, MOTHER OF MONSTERS1
A century after the fall of the Roman Republic, Lucan (39–65 CE) composed the Pharsalia, an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. The ninth book of the poem was set in Africa, where the Roman forces loyal to Caesar regrouped after the death of Pompey at the hands of the ruling pharaoh of Egypt, Ptolemy XIII. Here the poet digressed to tell the story of the dreaded Medusa, a monstrous woman with snakes for hair, who lurked in the desert wastes of Libya. This fearful aberration, whose gaze turned people to stone, was defeated by the hero Perseus, who cut off her head with a magical sword. According to Lucan, the gore dripping from the Gorgon’s severed head seeded the landscape of Libya with venomous serpents and winged dragons large enough to hunt elephants. This story was no idle distraction. Lucan’s readers would have immediately recognized the parallels between Perseus’s defeat of the Medusa and Rome’s final conquest of the northern coast of Africa. In both cases, the heroes of reason and order triumphed over the forces of frenzy and chaos.
Why the air of Libya abounds in so many plagues and is fruitful of death, or what secretive Nature has mixed in its harmful soil, our study and toil to know has been to no avail, besides the story that has spread throughout the world beguiling it for centuries, in place of the true cause. At Libya’s farthest edges, where burning earth meets the Ocean heated by the sinking sun, sprawl the wastelands of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys. No forest canopy covers them, no sap softens them. A harsh land, rough with the rocks of those who beheld the gaze of its mistress, in whose body Nature, being cruel, first gave birth to nasty pests. From her throat snakes poured their piercing hisses with trembling tongues, and flowing down her back like a woman’s hair, they lashed Medusa’s neck, which gave her pleasure. The serpents rose up straight above her brow, and viper venom streamed down when she combed her locks.
Poor Medusa, these are what she had that everyone was free to gaze at with impunity. For whoever feared that monster’s face and gaping jaws? Whoever looked Medusa straight in the face did she allow to die? She snatched fates while they wavered, preventing fear. Limbs perished with breath still in them, shades did not escape but froze deep down in the bones. The Eumenides’ hair would only stir up fury, Cerberos calmed his hissing when Orpheus sang, Amphitryon’s son saw the Hydra he was beating. This monster was feared by her own father, Phorcys, the waters’ second power, and her mother, Ceto, and her sister Gorgons. She could threaten heaven and sea with uncommon sluggishness and cover the world with earth. Suddenly birds grew heavy and fell from the sky, beasts clung fast to rocks, whole tribes of Ethiopians living nearby were hardened into marble. No animal could endure the sight of her, and even her own serpents recoiled to avoid the face of the Gorgon. She turned Atlas, the Titan who holds up the Western Pillars, into rocky crags, and long ago when heaven feared the Giants rearing up on serpent tails in Phlegra, she turned them into mountains, and so the Gorgon on the breastplate of Pallas brought an end to that monstrous war of gods.
Here came Perseus, after his birth from Danae and the shower of gold, carried on the Parrhasian wings he got from Arcadia’s god (inventor of the kithara and wrestling oil), swift and sudden he flew, carrying the Cyllenian saber—a saber already bloody from another monster, for it had killed the guardian of the cow that Jove had loved—and maiden Pallas helped her flying brother, getting from the bargain the monster’s head. She instructed Perseus to turn round toward the sunrise once he reached the border of Libya, and to fly backward across the Gorgon’s realms. For his left hand she gave him a gleaming shield of burnished bronze, in which she ordered him to watch out for Medusa, who turns things to stone.
The deep sleep that would drag her down into the eternal rest of death had not completely overwhelmed her. Much of her hair is awake and watching, snakes stretch out from her locks and defend her head, while some lie sleeping down over her face, shadowing her eyes. Pallas herself guides Perseus’s trembling hand, and as he turns away she aims the shaky saber that Hermes gave him, breaking the broad neck that bore all those snakes.
What did the Gorgon’s face look like then, with her head cut off and the wound from that hooked blade? I
would imagine her mouth exhaled a mass of poison, and how much death poured out of her eyes! Not even Pallas could look, and they would have frozen the averted gaze of Perseus, if Tritonia had not shaken that thick hair and covered the face with snakes. So he grabbed the Gorgon and fled on wings to the sky.
He was about to change course and cut a shorter path through the air by plowing straight through the middle of Europe’s cities, but Pallas told him not to harm those lands and to spare their peoples. For who would not gaze up in the sky at such a marvelous flight? He bends his wings into the west wind, heading over Libya, which sows and tends no crops and lies empty, exposed to stars and Phoebus: the beaten path of the sun furrows into it, burning out its soil. Nor does night fall deeper over the heavens of any land, obstructing the course of the moon if she forgets the slant of her wandering and runs straight across the zodiac signs, instead of fleeing north or south to avoid the shadow. Although that land is barren and its fields grow nothing good, it draws in the poison of Medusa’s dripping gore, the dreadful dewdrops of that savage blood which heat gave strength, cooking it down into the stinking sand.
Here the gore first stirred a head out of the dust and raised up the neck of the asp, swollen with the sleep it gives. More blood fell there with a thick drop of poison, and so no serpent contains more of it. Needing heat, she doesn’t pass into chilly regions and by her own will ranges the sands as far as the Nile. Nevertheless (when will our greed for profit give us shame?) Libyan forms of death are sought out here and we have made a commodity of the asp.
But the bizarre haemorrhois unrolls its scaly coils and stops its victims’ blood from clotting at all. And the chersydros was born, it dwells among the Syrtes’ pools and shoals, and the chelydros, which draws a smoking trail, and the cenchris, which always glides along in a straight line. The many markings on its belly are finer grained than the flecks of color in Theban serpentine. The ammodytes look exactly like burned sand, and the cerastes roves with curving spine. The scytale is unique in shedding its skin even when there’s frost; the dipsas is hot and dry; the amphisbaena is burdened with two heads, each trying to turn it. The natrix pollutes its waters, the iaculus has wings; the parias is content to furrow a path with its tail, and the prester opens wide his ravenous fuming mouth; the seps corrupts the body, even dissolving bones. And raining hisses that terrify all other pests, harming without venom, the basilisk clears out all the rabble far and wide and reigns over desolate sands.
You dragons, too, who creep along in every land and are regarded as harmless spirits, gleaming bright as gold, scorching Africa makes you deadly. High in the air you mount on wings and hunt entire herds, winding your tails around enormous bulls, you lash them into submission. Not even elephants are big enough to be safe. You deal death to everything without resort to venom.
CADMUS AND THE DRAGON OF ARES1
A colossal reptile played a pivotal role in the legend of the foundation of the city of Thebes in Boeotia (central Greece). As told by Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) in his epic poem of mythological stories called The Metamorphoses, a Phoenician hero named Cadmus arrived in Greece in search of his sister Europa, who had been abducted by Zeus. There Cadmus consulted the oracle at Delphi, who instructed him to follow a wild cow to the place where he would establish a new city. Unfortunately, the heifer halted near a spring sacred to the god Ares (Mars) that was guarded by a gigantic serpent. After vanquishing the monster with his iron javelin, Cadmus was instructed by the goddess Athena to sow the dragon’s teeth into the earth “as the seeds from which his people would spring.” Much to his amazement, dozens of warriors sprang up from the furrows and fought a pitched battle against each other until only five remained. These survivors made a truce and founded the city of Thebes with Cadmus. Tracing their descent from these mythical warriors, members of the Theban nobility allegedly bore a birthmark shaped like a spearhead. For his part, Cadmus was not so fortunate. Ares later transformed him and his wife into snakes in revenge for slaying the guardian of his sacred spring. This legend gave rise to the phrase “sowing the dragon’s teeth,” an expression that still refers to any action that leads to a troubled outcome.
Cadmus wandered over the whole world; for who can lay hands on what Jove has stolen away? Driven to avoid his native country and his father’s wrath, he made a pilgrimage to Apollo’s oracle, and begged him to say what land he should dwell in. This was Phoebus’s reply: “In solitary pastures you will come upon a heifer, which has never felt the yoke, nor drawn the crooked plough. Go on your way with her to guide you, and when she lies down in the grass, there build your city walls, and call the place Boeotia.”
Cadmus went down from the Castalian grotto: almost at once he saw a heifer walking slowly along with none to guard her. There was no trace of harness upon her neck. He followed her, keeping close behind, and offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving to Phoebus, who had directed his way.
They passed by the shallow pools of Cephisus and through the lands of Panope. When they had gone so far, the heifer stopped, lifted up her head, graced with lofty horns, and raising it towards the sky filled the air with her lowings. She looked back at the friends who were following her; then, sinking to her knees, lay down on her side in the tender grass. Cadmus gave thanks, kissed the foreign soil, and greeted fields and mountains to which he was as yet a stranger. Then, intending to offer sacrifice to Jove, he ordered his attendants to go in search of fresh spring water, for a libation.
There was an ancient forest which no axe had ever touched, and in the heart of it a cave, overgrown with branches and osiers, forming a low arch with its rocky walls, rich in bubbling springs. Hidden in this cave dwelt the serpent of Mars, a creature with a wonderful golden crest; fire flashed from its eyes, its body was all puffed up with poison, and from its mouth, set with a triple row of teeth, flickered a three-forked tongue. The Phoenician travelers entered the grove on their ill-omened errand and dipped their pitchers in the waters. At the sound, the dark gleaming serpent put forth its head from the depths of the cave, hissing horribly. The blood drained from the men’s limbs, the jugs fell from their grasp, and they shuddered with sudden dread. As for the snake, it coiled its scaly loops in writhing circles, then with a spring shot up in a huge arc, raising more than half its length into the insubstantial air, till it looked down upon the whole expanse of the forest. It was as huge as the Serpent that twines between the two Bears in the sky, if its full length were seen uncoiled. Without a moment’s pause the monster seized upon the Phoenicians, while some of them were getting their weapons ready, and some were preparing to flee. Others were too terrified to do either. With its fangs, its constricting coils, and tainted poisonous breath, it slew them all.
The noonday sun had reduced the shadows to their shortest. Agenor’s son, wondering what was detaining his friends, went out to look for them. His shield was a lion’s skin, his weapon a lance with shining point. He had a javelin too, and courage that was of more avail than any weapon. When he entered the grove he saw the dead bodies, and their monstrous foe, towering triumphant above them, the blood dripping from its tongue as it licked their cruel wounds. “My faithful friends,” cried Cadmus, “I shall avenge your death, or share it!” As he spoke he lifted a great boulder in his right hand and hurled this huge missile with tremendous force. Towering walls with lofty battlements would have been shaken by the impact: but the serpent was unharmed. Protected by its scales as by a breastplate, and by the toughness of its black skin, it repelled the stoutest blows. But that same toughness was not proof against the javelin, which struck home in a coil in the middle of the creature’s sinuous back: the whole iron tip sank deep into its belly. Maddened with pain, the serpent twined its head round to look at its back, and seeing the wound, bit at the shaft of the spear that was lodged there. By violent efforts it loosened the shaft all round, and just managed to drag it out: but the iron remained fixed in its bones. Then indeed, when this fresh irritation increased its normal savagery, the ve
ins of the snake’s throat filled and swelled with poison and white foam flecked its venomous jaws. Its scales rasped along the ground and its breath, rank as that from Stygian caves, spread foulness through the air. Now it coiled itself into huge spirals, now shot up straighter than a tree, or again, like a river swollen by the rains, swept violently along, its breast brushing aside the woods which barred the way. Cadmus drew back a little, received the onslaught on his lion’s shield and, using his spear point as a barrier, blocked the threatening jaws. The serpent, in a frenzy, bit uselessly at the hard iron, and fastened its teeth on the point of the spear. Now the blood began to flow from its poison-laden throat, spattering the green grass. But the wound was a slight one, for the snake retreated from the blow, drawing back its injured neck; by yielding ground, it prevented the weapon from striking home, or entering more deeply. Meanwhile the son of Agenor kept pressing close, driving in the iron he had fixed in its throat; until an oak tree blocked the backward movement, and its neck was pinned to the trunk. The tree bent beneath the serpent’s weight and groaned as the end of the creature’s tail thrashed against its bark.