Dragon

Fear and Power

Martin Arnold

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781780239415
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

From the fire-breathing beasts of North European myth and legend to the Book of Revelation's Great Red Dragon of Hell, from those supernatural agencies of imperial authority in ancient China to the so-called dragon-women who threaten male authority, dragons are a global phenomenon, one that has troubled humanity for thousands of years. These often scaly beasts take a wide variety of forms and meanings, but there is one thing they all have in common: our fear of their formidable power and, as a consequence, our need either to overcome, appease, or in some way assume that power as our own.In this fiery cultural history, Martin Arnold asks how these unifying impulses can be explained. Are they owed to our need to impose order on chaos in the form of a dragon-slaying hero? Is it our terror of nature, writ large, unleashed in its most destructive form? Or is the dragon nothing less than an expression of that greatest and most disturbing mystery of all: our mortality? Tracing the history of ideas about dragons from the earliest of times to Game of Thrones, Arnold explores exactly what it might be that calls forth such creatures from the darkest corners of our collective imagination.

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Dragons in Greek and Roman Mythology

IN THE MID-THIRD CENTURY BC, some ten years into the First Punic War (264–241 BC) between Rome and Carthage, the general Marcus Atilius Regulus and his Roman legions had crossed the Mediterranean to North Africa. Less than one hundred miles from launching their assault on Carthage, they arrived at the Bagrada river, where they were confronted by a huge dragon rearing up from the muddy reed beds. Unable to see any immediate way of repelling it, Regulus ordered his men to seek out an alternative crossing.

Further up-river, with the dragon now nowhere in sight, Regulus’ men started to ford across. But before they reached the opposite bank, the water all around them started violently churning. Then suddenly the dragon’s gigantic head surfaced, snatched up a man in its jaws and dragged him below the surface. Many others met the same fate and those who had attacked the dragon with their javelins were crushed beneath its coiled tail. But dire though this situation was, this was a siege army equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry. Regulus duly ordered their massive catapults, their ballistae, to be trained on the dragon, so showering a barrage of large boulders down on it until it was eventually battered to death. No crossing could now be made at this place owing to the deadly poisons leaking from the dragon’s body.

While variants of this tale are to be found in a number of Roman sources, it was clearly regarded as historical truth, for the original account of it, long since lost, was said to have been set down in an official military communique by Regulus himself. Furthermore, it is widely stated that the dragon’s skin, some 36 m (120 ft) in length, was displayed on Rome’s Capitoline Hill for the next one hundred years. If this is to be believed, just what kind of creature this was is a complete mystery.¹

Depiction of the draco on the walls of the Temple of Hadrian from the 2nd century AD.

The Bagrada river dragon was not the only one to have been presented as factual in early Roman sources.² Suggestive of this is that, from the second century AD until the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the Roman cavalry clearly regarded the power of the dragon as something worth emulating. So it was that a silver-jawed dragon with a wind-inflated, multicoloured silk body was emblazoned on the lances of the so-named draconarius legions and flourished aloft both before battle and in their cavalry games, the hippika gymnasia.³

Roman mythological beliefs were, of course, very much derived from those of the ancient Greeks, where the thin line between myth and history had, in the fourth century BC, prompted Plato to warn parents that they should not allow their children to be exposed to stories recounted by ancient historians and mythographers, for they ‘not only tell lies but bad lies’.⁴ As is quite apparent, however, Plato’s warning did little to prevent tales of the Greek gods and of heroes, such as Heracles, from becoming a defining feature of the culture of the classical world.

The nature of Greek mythology

The early literary sources for Greek mythology are numerous and range from the eighth century BC through to Roman poets and historians of the early centuries AD, thus spanning some one thousand years. Given the complex evolution of these myths, there are numerous differences in the various sources concerning the details and significances attached to characters and events. Broadly speaking, the myths can be considered as belonging to four overlapping phases: first, myths of origin (otherwise known as theogonies); second, stories telling of interactions between gods and mortals; third, the Heroic Age, where the narratives are more preoccupied with human rather than divine actions; and fourth, the Trojan War and its aftermath.⁵

As to the nature of Greek mythology, some of this can be understood from its origins in beliefs that all things – human, animal, plant and other natural phenomena – have a spiritual essence. Emerging from this are notions of higher beings that vie for control, so prompting mythic explanations for why it is that mortal life is so precarious. This development may well have been the result of the absorption of ideas necessary for social expansion, which inevitably involved belligerence from or towards neighbouring peoples.

One of the most striking aspects of Greek mythology is that there is no doctrine of the end of things, no eschatology. Unlike in Christian beliefs, where a central tenet is that there will be a final apocalypse or Judgement Day, Greek mythology focuses exclusively on the development of civilization and the gradual overcoming of impediments to social progress. It is therefore the case that troublesome monsters like dragons are increasingly less prominent in successive phases of the mythology, until by the time of Homer’s ‘histories’ of the Trojan War, it is human heroics and divine interventions that dominate, with far fewer distractions in monstrous form.

In order to examine the most noteworthy dragon episodes in Greek mythology, this chapter will draw chiefly on two mythographers from opposite ends of the chronology of sources: the poetry of Hesiod (fl. c. 750–650 BC) in his Theogony and Works and Days; and Pseudo-Apollodorus’ prose Bibliotheca (second century AD).⁶ These and other accounts of the mythology may be regarded as cautionary tales, in other words, advice on how mortals might best conduct themselves in a dangerous world presided over by often unsympathetic gods.

Creatures of extraordinary ability and appearance, mortal and immortal, are, then, central features of the early stages of Greek mythology. As the gods can be just as destructive, self-interested and morally questionable as the monsters, it is not possible to classify the gods and monstrous ‘otherness’ in terms of oppositions between good and evil; rather, the actions of the Greek gods more reflect the social complexities, competitive individualisms and survival struggles of the human world. There is, therefore, no force for good other than victory over adversaries and the resultant benefits this might bring.

Yet even victories do not always bring benefits, for they can sometimes be the making of a tyrant and, as a consequence, of social oppression. The monsters can often be regarded as epitomizing these social and political negatives, and as far as human beings are concerned, so can the gods. Something of the nature of the gods and the monsters is revealed in their origins and the subsequent Titanomachia, the intergenerational, Oedipal conflict between the Titan and Olympian gods.⁷

Origins: Titans and Olympians

The earth, known as Gaia, originated from Chaos, the great void where neither time nor substance exists. It is from Gaia that Uranus (Sky) emerges asexually, and it is from the incestuous fertilization of Gaia by Uranus that the twelve Titan gods are born, along with two races of giants: the three one-eyed Cyclopes and the three Hekatonkheires, each of which has fifty heads and a hundred hands. Fearing the strength of these creatures, Uranus has them cast into the dungeon of Tartarus, a deep abyss, where they are guarded by the female dragon Campe.⁸ But Gaia is most displeased by what Uranus has done and persuades their cleverest and most ruthless son, the sickle-bearing Cronus, perhaps signifying the dawn of Time, to castrate his father.⁹

Worried that, in the future, his children might do the same to him, Cronus now feels obliged to devour them the minute they are born, a practice that his wife, Rhea, understandably abhors. In order to save her last-born son from this fate, Rhea wraps a stone in swaddling clothes and tricks Cronus into swallowing it. The child she saves and has raised in secret on Crete is Zeus. Once fully grown, Zeus visits his mother incognito and feeds his father an emetic, which results in him vomiting up all his previous children. Zeus and his rescued siblings now declare war on Cronus and the other Titans, but it is only once Zeus has freed the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires and brought them into his service that the Titans are overthrown. Their punishment is to be hurled into Tartarus, but not before Zeus has castrated Cronus, just as Cronus had always feared.

It is in this way that the Olympian gods, with Zeus as their chief on Mount Olympus, supplanted the Titans. Yet the presence of the offspring of the primordial gods and the Titans remains, mostly in monstrous form, and it is Zeus’ task to eliminate them. Many of these creatures are dragons, both male (drakōn) and female (drakaina), and both serpentine, often in the form of a sea monster (kētos), and reptilian.

While the Titans and their offspring are generally viewed as enemies of the Olympians, one particularly sharp-witted Titan, Prometheus (‘Fore-thought’), was neither initially their enemy nor ever one of mankind. Fore seeing the overthrow of the Titans, Prometheus had chosen not to challenge the Olympians and had therefore escaped punishment. Representing both scientific invention and cunning, it was Prometheus who fashioned man from clay during the time of Cronus and was from then onwards man’s patron. From the outset, man had had the means to live in good health and comfort and, crucially, to make fire, but Zeus, who is antagonistic to Prometheus’ creation, largely because Prometheus has tricked him into allowing man to make less costly sacrifices to him, deprives them of this essential survival aid. But Prometheus, proud and protective of his creation, steals back fire for man, and for this Zeus punishes him by nailing him to a rock, where each day his liver, believed to be the seat of the emotions, is pecked out by an eagle, only to grow back after nightfall.

Yet Zeus is still not satisfied and now arranges for his smith, Hephaestus, to create the most beautiful woman ever to live. This is Pandora (‘Allgift’), and Zeus’ intention is for her to bring about the misery of man for all time: says Hesiod, ‘from her is descended the female sex, a great affliction to mortals as they dwell with their husbands – no fit partners for accursed Poverty, but only for Plenty.’¹⁰ Among the gifts that the gods add to Hephaestus’ creation, Hermes, the patron of thieves, contributes ‘fashioned lies and wily pretences and a knavish nature by deep-thundering Zeus’s design’.

Giorgio Vasari, The Mutilation of Uranus by Cronus, 1560.

Pandora is then sent to Prometheus’ somewhat dull-witted brother, Epimetheus (‘Afterthought’), who, fearing Zeus’ anger should he do otherwise, receives her, despite Prometheus’ warning that he should never accept gifts from Zeus ‘lest some affliction befalls mortals’. Accordingly, such is Pandora’s ‘bitch’s mind and knavish nature’ that when she comes across a certain jar that Prometheus had instructed Epimetheus never to open, she takes off its lid, so releasing all the ills that have plagued mankind ever since.¹¹ Zeus’ vengeance on Prometheus and his human protégés is in this way fulfilled, for as Hesiod reports, the only thing that remains in the jar is Hope.¹²

Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Prometheus Brings Fire, 1817.

The obvious irony as regards Prometheus’ role in Greek mythology is that, as both the patron of mankind and a trickster of the Olympians, he is ultimately responsible for bringing mankind into conflict with the gods, the result being mortal suffering. Prometheus’ Titan origins, once exposed as being no less dangerous to the Olympians than that of the Titan monsters, bring about not only his punishment but that of his creation. As for Pandora, she sets both a standard and a justification for the misogyny that we will see throughout the mythology.

There is, then, a great deal of ambivalence in mankind’s relationships with the gods, some of whom are favourable to humans, some of whom are not, often depending on whether their mortal inferiors show sufficient deference, especially when they are unwittingly caught up as mere pawns in Olympian dramas. Yet when it comes to the monsters, there is nothing to be gained for humans by their presence. It is, then, in both Zeus’ and mankind’s interests that the world be rid of them, particularly, as far as Zeus is concerned, those of Titan origin.

Echidna and Typhon

The most prolific breeders of monsters, many of which are dragons, are the Titans Echidna and Typhon, known respectively as ‘the mother and father of all monsters’. Hesiod’s description of Echidna tells of her dragon-like features:

the wondrous Echidna stern of heart, who is half nymph with fair cheeks and curling lashes, and half a monstrous serpent, terrible and huge, glinting and ravening, down in the hidden depths of the numinous earth . . . immortal nymph and ageless for all time.¹³

Equally dragon-like is Apollodorus’ description of Typhon:

part man, part beast, and in both size and strength he surpassed all the other children of Ge [Gaia]. Down to his thighs he was human in form . . . Below his thighs, he had massive coils of vipers, which, when they were fully extended, reached right up to his head and emitted violent hisses. He had wings all over his body, and filthy hair springing from his head and cheeks floated around him in the wind, and fire flashed from his eyes.¹⁴

While Zeus is content to leave Echidna and her offspring as a test for future heroes, most notably Heracles, Typhon’s destructive powers, which can cause typhoons, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions, oblige him to take action, especially once Typhon directs his powers against the Olympians.

In his first encounter with Typhon, Zeus pelts him with thunderbolts, but when this fails to deter the Titan, Zeus strikes him with an adamantine – that is to say, unbreakable – sickle, so forcing him to flee. With Typhon now severely wounded, Zeus gives chase and attacks him hand-to-hand, the outcome being that Typhon seizes the sickle and cuts Zeus’ tendons from his hands and feet. The incapacitated Zeus is then carried through the sea and placed in a cave, where the part-woman, part-dragon Delphyne is left ...