European dragon
The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping
cultures of Europe.
The Roman poet Virgil in his poem Culex lines 163–201, describing a shepherd battling a big constricting snake, calls it "serpens" and also "draco", showing that in his time the two words probably could mean the same thing.
In and after the Early Middle Ages, the European dragon is typically depicted as a large, fire-breathing, scaly, horned, lizard-like creature; the creature also has leathery, bat-like wings, and a long, muscular prehensile tail. Some depictions show dragons with one or more of: feathered wings, crests, ear frills, fiery manes, ivory spikes running down its spine, and various exotic decorations.
In folktales, dragon's blood often contains unique powers, keeping them alive for longer or giving them poisonous or acidic properties. The typical dragon in Christian culture protects a cavern or castle filled with gold and treasure. An evil dragon is often associated with a great hero who tries to slay it, and a good one is said to give support or wise advice.
Though a winged creature, the dragon is generally to be found in its underground lair, a cave that identifies it as an ancient creature of earth.
Dragons have been mentioned in European literature since antiquity. In some accounts, the hero Sigurð defeats Fáfnir by digging a pit and then lying in wait, piercing his heart with a sword as he passes overhead and slaying him. This concept is also seen in various other dragon stories. In many portrayals of the European dragon, it is shown as a greedy beast who wanted wealth and other valuables. This includes the prominent dragons in Germanic mythology, Fáfnir and the killer of Beowulf.
Etymology
Classical period
Roman dragons developed from serpentine Greek ones, combined with the dragons of the Near East, in the context of the hybrid Greek/Eastern Hellenistic culture. From Babylon, the muš-ḫuššu was a classic representation of a Near Eastern dragon. St John's Book of Revelation – Greek text, not Latin – describes Satan as "a great dragon, flaming red, with seven heads and ten horns". Much of St John's literary inspiration is late Hebrew and Greek, but his dragon is more likely to have symbolized the dragons from the Near East. In the Roman Empire, each military cohort had a particular identifying signum ; after the Parthian and Dacian Wars of Trajan in the east, the Dacian Draco military standard entered the Legion with the Cohors Sarmatarum and Cohors Dacorum – a large dragon fixed to the end of a lance, with large, gaping jaws of silver and with the rest of the body formed of colored silk. With the jaws facing into the wind, the silken body inflated and rippled, resembling a windsock.Several personifications of evil or allusions to dragons in the Old Testament are translated as forms of draco in Jerome's Vulgate. e.g. Deuteronomy, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Malachi.
Dragons in Greek mythology often guard treasure. For example, Ladon, a hundred-headed dragon, guarded the tree of Hesperides until he was slain by Heracles. Likewise, Python guarded the oracle of Delphi until he was slain by Apollo out of revenge for Python tormenting his mother. The Lernaean Hydra, a multiple-headed serpentine swamp monster killed by Heracles, is said to be a dragon.
Typhon was the dragon par excellence of the Greek world. He was the parent of all monsters and represented the opposition par excellence to the gods. Typhon was described and represented as a snake-like creature with bat-like wings and who breathed fire from several snake-like mouths that branched off from his limbs.
In a tale in Apuleius's The Golden Ass a band of travelers ask a shepherd for refreshments. The shepherd asks why they care about refreshments in such a place. An old man asks the travelers if they can help get his son from a well; one of them goes to help. When he does not return to the group, they go search for him. They find a monstrous dragon eating the said man from the group while the old man was nowhere to be seen.
The Roman author Pliny the Elder describes the Indian drakōn as a big constricting snake, likely the Indian Python, but described exaggeratedly as able to kill an elephant by constricting its neck.
The Roman author Claudius Aelianus describes the draco as a big constricting snake found in India, presumably the Indian Python, but with its size and strength greatly exaggerated so that it can kill an elephant by constricting its neck; this battle between a draco and an elephant is repeated with much embellishment in later descriptions of dracones or dragons in bestiaries.
Middle Ages
Depiction
During the early Middle Ages, European culture was largely out of contact with classical literature for centuries. During this time there was a gradual change in the usual mental image of the "dragon", i.e. the Latin draco and its equivalents in vernacular languages, which occurred in oral and written literature, including in classical literature. This led to the depiction in this literature of "modern-type" dragons, whose features are described below.The modern Western image of a dragon developed in western Europe during the Middle Ages through the combination of the snakelike dragons of classical Graeco-Roman literature, references to Near Eastern dragons preserved in the Bible, and European folk traditions including descriptions and drawings of animals named as types of snakes but inaccurately drawn with wings or legs. The period between the 11th and 13th centuries represents the height of European interest in dragons as living creatures.
Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body more like a huge lizard, or a snake with two pairs of lizard-type legs, and breathing fire from their mouths. This traces back to the continental dragon, commonly referred to as a fire-breathing dragon. The continental, like many other European dragons, has bat-like wings growing from its back.
The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf refers to a dragon as a draca and also as a wyrm. Its movements are denoted by the Anglo-Saxon verb bugan, "to bend", and it is said to have a venomous bite, and poisonous breath; all of these indicate a snake-like form and movement rather than with a lizard-like or dinosaur-like body as in later depictions, and no legs or wings are mentioned ; however it shows several dragon features that later became popular: it breathed fire, flew, lived underground, and collected treasure.
An early image of a "modern-style" Western dragon appears in an illustration in the bestiary MS Harley 3244 from about 1260. It has two pairs of wings and two pairs of legs to go with them, and a tail longer than most modern depictions of dragons, but it clearly displays many of the same distinctive features. Otherwise four-legged dragons are not seen until the fifteenth century, for instance in Lambeth Palace Library MS 6, depicting the fight between a white and a red dragon from Arthurian legend.
Dragons are generally depicted as having an underground lair or cave, or living in rivers. They are envisioned as greedy and gluttonous, with voracious appetites. Dragons are often identified with Satan, due to the references to Satan as a "dragon" in the Book of Revelation.
In European folklore, dragon-like creatures and dragons in Christian literature are usually portrayed as evil, except mainly in Asturian and Welsh folklore and modern fiction. In the modern period and late medieval times, the European dragon is typically depicted as a huge fire-breathing, scaly, and horned lizard-like creature, with wings, two or four legs, and a long muscular tail. It is sometimes shown with one or more of a crest, a fiery mane, ivory spikes running down its spine, and various exotic colourations. Dragon's blood often has magical properties. The typical dragon protects a cavern or castle filled with gold and treasure and is often associated with a great hero who tries to slay it. Though a winged creature, the dragon is generally to be found in its underground lair, a cave that identifies it as an ancient creature of earth.
Legends and tales
The 12th-century Welsh monk Geoffrey of Monmouth recounts a famous legend in his Historia Regum Britanniae in which the child prophet Merlin witnesses the Romano-Celtic warlord Vortigern attempting to build a tower on Mount Snowdon to keep safe from the Anglo-Saxons, but the tower keeps being swallowed into the ground. Merlin informs Vortigern that underneath the foundation he has built is a pool with two dragons sleeping in it. Vortigern orders the pool to be drained, exposing a red dragon and a white dragon, who immediately begin fighting. Merlin delivers a prophecy that the white dragon will triumph over the red, symbolizing England's conquest of Wales, but declares that the red dragon will eventually return and defeat the white one. This story remained popular throughout the 15th century.The 13th-century Golden Legend, written in Latin, records the story of Saint Margaret of Antioch, a virgin martyr who, after being tortured for her faith in the Diocletianic Persecution and thrown back into her cell, is said to have been confronted by a monstrous dragon, but she made the sign of the cross and the dragon vanished. In some versions of the story, she is swallowed by the dragon alive and, after making the sign of the cross in the dragon's stomach, emerges unharmed - or in another version, after a physical cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards.
Fantastic stories were invented in the Middle Ages to explain gargoyles used as waterspouts on buildings. One medieval French legend holds that, in ancient times, a fearsome dragon known as La Gargouille had been causing floods and sinking ships on the river Seine, so the people of the town of Rouen would offer the dragon a human sacrifice once each year to appease its hunger. Then, in around 600 AD, a priest named Romanus promised that, if the people would build a church, he would rid them of the dragon. Romanus slew the dragon and its severed head was mounted on the walls of the city as the first gargoyle.