Odontotyrannos
Odontotyrannos, also odontotyrannus or dentityrannus is a mythical three-horned beast said to have attacked Alexander the Great and his men at their camp in India, according to the apocryphal Letter from Alexander to Aristotle and other medieval romantic retellings of Alexandrian legend.
Descriptions
According to the Latin Letter from Alexander, the creature had a black, horse-like head with three horns protruding from its forehead, and exceeded the size of an elephant. It was undeterred by the sight of fire, killing twenty-six Macedonians and incapacitating fifty-two before being put down by thrusts from hunting spears. The local Indians reportedly called the beast "tooth-tyrant".A fourth-century Latin translation of the Alexander Romance by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius, known as the Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis, spells the beast's name as odontotyrannus and states that the strength of 300 men was required to drag its body out of the river. In the Syriac version of Pseudo-Callisthenes, it is the Mashḳělath or Mashklet which causes 26 casualties among the Macedons and requires 300 men to tug out of a ditch, and in the Armenian version 1,300 were needed for the job.
In the Ethiopic version, it is an elephant-sized beast with tusks that attacks; this creature is unnamed but corresponds to the odontotyrannus. When it is eviscerated, the Macedonians discover among its stomach contents scorpions as well as large fish the size of an ox. In the 5th-century Greek writings of Palladius and the 9th-century writings of George Hamartolos, the odontotyrannus is an amphibious carnivore that can devour an elephant.
In Li romans d'Alixandre of Alexandre de Bernay, the beast is named tirant, and in Thomas de Kent's Roman de toute chevalerie, the Old French name is dent-tyrant. In the Middle English King Alisaunder, the name is given as "deutyrauns".