The Penguin Book of Dragons

by The Penguin Book of Dragons (retail) (epub)

  While the victorious Cadmus stood, eyeing the huge bulk of his defeated foe, suddenly a voice was heard. It was not easy to tell where it came from, but heard it was. “Son of Agenor, why stare at the snake you have slain? You, too, will become a serpent, for men to gaze upon.” The colour drained from Cadmus’ cheeks, and for a long time he stood panic-stricken, frozen with fear, his hair on end, his senses reeling.

  Then Pallas, the hero’s patroness, suddenly appeared, gliding down through the upper air. She told him to plough up the earth, and to sow the serpent’s teeth, as seeds from which his people would spring. He obeyed, and after opening up furrows with his deep-cutting plough, scattered the teeth on the ground as he had been bidden, seeds to produce men. What followed was beyond belief: the sods began to stir; then, first of all a crop of spearheads pushed up from the furrows, and after them came helmets with plumes nodding on their painted crests. Then shoulders and breasts and arms appeared, weighed down with weapons, and the crop of armoured heroes rose into the air. Even so, when the curtains are pulled up at the end of a show in the theatre, the figures embroidered on them rise into view, drawn smoothly upwards to reveal first their faces, and then the rest of their bodies, bit by bit, till finally they are seen complete, and stand with their feet resting on the bottom hem.

  Cadmus was terrified at the sight of this new enemy and was about to seize his weapons: but one of the warriors whom the earth had produced cried out to him: “Don’t take to arms! Keep clear of this family conflict!” With these words he drove his unyielding sword into one of his earthborn brothers, who was standing close at hand; then fell himself, pierced by a javelin thrown from a distance. The man who had killed him lived no longer than he did himself; he, too, gasped out the breath he had so lately received. The whole host fought madly in the same way, dealing each other wounds in turn. In the struggle which they had themselves begun, these short-lived brothers perished; until, of all the young warriors granted so brief a span of life, only five remained—the rest lay writhing on the bosom of their mother earth, which was all warm with their blood. One of the five survivors, Echion, flung down his arms, at the bidding of Pallas, promising to fight no more, and asking the same promise from his brothers. These were the companions with whom the foreigner from Phoenicia undertook the task of founding his city, as instructed by Phoebus’s oracles.

  THE DEATH OF LAOCOÖN1

  The Greek gods employed enormous serpents not only as the guardians of sacred places but also as the violent instruments of their will. Such was the case in the story of a priest of Neptune named Laocoön, as told by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE). During their decade-long war with Troy, the Greeks sent a giant wooden horse to the gates of the besieged city. Laocoön warned his compatriots that they should not accept gifts from their enemies. He had good reason to be suspicious because the Trojan horse was, in fact, a clever ruse hatched by the cunning of Odysseus: dozens of Greek warriors hid inside with plans to attack the unwary Trojans and open their city gates under the cover of darkness. When Laocoön advised his people to burn the giant horse, the goddess Athena (Minerva), a staunch ally of the Greeks, sent two giant serpents to crush him to death before he could unmask their plans. With Laocoön silenced by the coils and venom of these monsters, the Trojans brought the giant horse into their city and thus precipitated its downfall.

  “But a new portent strikes our doomed people

  Now—a greater omen, far more terrible, fatal,

  shakes our senses, blind to what was coming.

  Laocoön, the priest of Neptune picked by lot,

  was sacrificing a massive bull at the holy altar

  when—I cringe to recall it now—look there!

  Over the calm deep straits off Tenedos swim

  twin, giant serpents, rearing in coils, breasting

  the sea-swell side by side, plunging toward the shore,

  their heads, their blood-red crests surging over the waves,

  their bodies thrashing, backs rolling in coil on mammoth coil

  and the wake behind them churns in a roar of foaming spray,

  and now, their eyes glittering, shot with blood and fire,

  flickering tongues licking their hissing maws, yes, now

  they’re about to land. We blanch at the sight, we scatter.

  Like troops on attack they’re heading straight for Laocoön—

  first each serpent seizes one of his small young sons,

  constricting, twisting around him, sinks its fangs

  in the tortured limbs, and gorges. Next Laocoön

  rushing quick to the rescue, clutching his sword—

  they trap him, bind him in huge muscular whorls,

  their scaly backs lashing around his midriff twice

  and twice around his throat—their heads, their flaring necks

  mounting over their victim writhing still, his hands

  frantic to wrench apart their knotted trunks,

  his priestly bands splattered in filth, black venom

  and all the while his horrible screaming fills the skies,

  bellowing like some wounded bull struggling to shrug

  loose from his neck an axe that’s already struck awry,

  to lumber clear of the altar . . .

  Only the twin snakes escape, sliding off and away

  to the heights of Troy where the ruthless goddess

  holds her shrine, and there at her feet they hide,

  vanishing under Minerva’s great round shield.”

  THE DRAGON OF BAGRADA RIVER1

  The forbidding and inhospitable terrain of northern Africa was the cradle of giant reptiles in the Roman imagination (see pp. 7–10). During the First Punic War against the Carthaginians (256–241 BCE), Roman soldiers learned firsthand the hazards of campaigning in the African wilderness. At the outset of the war, the statesman and general Marcus Atilius Regulus led the initial assault on the city of Carthage. As his troops crossed the Bagrada River (the modern Medjerda River in Tunisia), they encountered a creature born of nightmares, a serpent of unrivaled size and strength that fell upon the Roman troops with lethal intent. In an act of exemplary heroism, Regulus rallied his soldiers to fight the monster and brought it low with a shower of spears and heavy blows from their catapults. In the sixth book of his epic poem about the Punic Wars (Punica), the Roman author Silius Italicus (ca. 28–ca. 102 CE) captivated readers with his thrilling account of the battle told from the point of view of an eyewitness. While this poem was almost unknown in medieval Europe, the story of the dragon of Bagrada River was frequently retold by naturalists and historians in late antiquity, who claimed that the surviving soldiers brought the remains of this creature back to Rome, where they displayed in public both its jawbone and its skin, which allegedly measured 120 feet in length.

  “The turbid stream of Bagrada furrows the sandy desert with sluggish course; and no river in the land of Libya can boast that it spreads its muddy waters further or covers the wide plains with greater floods. Here, in that savage land, we were glad to encamp upon its banks; for we needed water, which is scarce in that country. Hard by stood a grove whose trees were ever motionless and sunless, with shade dark as Erebus; and from it burst thick fumes that spread a noisome stench through the air. Within it was a dreadful dwelling, a vast subterranean hollow in a winding cavern, where the dismal darkness let in no light. I shudder still to think of it. A deadly monster lived there, spawned by Earth in her wrath, whose like scarce any generation of men can see again; a serpent, a hundred ells in length, haunted that fatal bank and the Avernian grove. He filled his vast maw and poison-breeding belly with lions caught when they came for water, or with cattle driven to the river when the sun was hot, and with birds brought down from the sky by the foul stench and corruption of the atmosphere. On the floor lay half-eaten bones, which he had belched up in the dar
kness of his cave after filling his maw with a hideous meal of the flocks he had laid low. And, when he was fain to bathe in the foaming waters of the running stream and cool the heat engendered by his fiery food, before he had plunged his whole body in the river, his head was already resting on the opposite bank. Unwitting of such a danger I went forth; and with me went Aquinus, a native of the Apennines, and Avens, an Umbrian. We sought to examine the grove and find out whether the place was friendly. But as we drew near, an unspoken dread came over us, and a mysterious chill paralyzed our limbs. Yet we went on and prayed to the Nymphs and the deity of the unknown river, and then ventured, though anxious and full of fears, to trust our feet to the secret grove. Suddenly from the threshold and outer entrance of the cave there burst forth a hellish whirlwind and a blast fiercer than the frantic East-wind; and a storm poured forth from the vast hollow, a hurricane in which the baying of Cerberus was heard. Horror-struck we gazed at one another. A noise came from the ground, the earth was shaken, the cave fell in ruins, and the dead seemed to come forth. Huge as the snakes that armed the Giants when they stormed heaven, or as the hydra that wearied Hercules by the waters of Lerna, or as Juno’s snake that guarded the boughs with golden foliage—even so huge he rose up from the cloven earth and raised his glittering head to heaven, and first scattered his slaver into the clouds and marred the face of heaven with his open jaws. Hither and thither we fled and tried to raise a feeble shout, though breathless with terror; but in vain; for the sound of his hissing filled all the grove. Then Avens, blind with sudden fear—blameworthy was his act, but Fate had him in the toils—hid in the huge trunk of an ancient oak, hoping that the horrible monster might not see him. I can scarce believe it myself; but the serpent, clinging with its huge coils, removed the great tree bodily, tearing it up from the ground, and wrenching it up from the roots. Then, as the trembling wretch called on his companions with his last utterance, the serpent seized him and swallowed him down with a gulp of its black throat—I looked back and saw it—and buried him in its beastly maw. Unhappy Aquinus had entrusted himself to the running stream of the river and was swimming fast away. But the serpent attacked him in midstream, carried his body to the bank, and there devoured it—a dreadful form of death!

  “Thus I alone was suffered to escape from the monster so terrible and deadly. I ran as fast as grief would let me and told all to the general. He groaned aloud, in pity for the cruel fate of his men. Then, eager as he ever was for war and battle and conflict with the foe, and burning with a passion for great achievements, he ordered his men to arm instantly, and his cavalry, well tried in many a fight, to take the field. He galloped forward himself, spurring his flying steed; and at his command there followed a body of shieldsmen, bringing the heavy catapults used in sieges and the weapon whose huge point can batter down high towers. And now, when the horses speeding over the grassy plain surrounded the fatal spot with the thunder of their hoofs, the serpent, aroused by the neighing, glided forth from his cave and hissed forth a hellish blast from his reeking jaws. Both his eyes flashed horrible fire; his erected crest towered over the tall tree tops; and his three-forked tongue darted and flickered through the air and rose up till it licked the sky. But, when the trumpets sounded, he was startled and reared aloft his huge bulk; then, couching on his rear, he gathered the rest of his body beneath his front in circling coils. Then he began a fearsome conflict, quickly unwinding his coils and stretching his body out to its full length, till he reached in a moment the faces of men far away. All the horses snorted, in their terror of the serpent, refusing to obey the rein and breathing frequent fire from their nostrils. The monster, towering above the frightened men with swollen neck, waved his high head to right and left and, in his rage, now hoisted them on high, and now delighted in crushing them beneath his huge weight. Then he breaks their bones and gulps down the black gore; with his open jaws wet with blood, he leaves the half-eaten body and seeks a fresh foe. The soldiers fell back, and the victorious serpent attacked the squadrons from a distance with his pestilential breath. But then Regulus speedily recalled the troops to battle and encouraged them thus: ‘Shall we, the men of Italy, retreat before a serpent, and admit that Rome is no match for the snakes of Libya? If his breath has conquered your feeble strength, and your courage has oozed away at sight of his open mouth, then I will go boldly forward and cope with the monster single-handed.’ Thus he shouted and undismayed hurled his flying spear through the air with lightning speed. The weapon rushed on and did its work: it struck the serpent fairly on the head, gaining not a little force from the fierceness of the creature’s charge, and stuck there quivering. A shout of triumph rose, and the sudden noise of it went up to Heaven. At once the earth-born monster went mad with rage: he spurned defeat and was a stranger to pain; for never before in his long life had he felt the steel. Nor would the swift charge, prompted by his pain, have failed, had not Regulus, skilled horseman that he was, eluded the onset with wheeling speed, and then, when the serpent, with a bend of its supple back, once again followed the turning horse, pulled the rein with his left hand and soon got out of reach.

  “But Marus did not merely look on at such a scene and take no part: my spear was the second to transfix the great body of the monster. His three-forked tongue was now licking the rump of the general’s tired horse; I threw my weapon and quickly turned on myself the serpent’s fierce assault. The men followed my example and hurled their darts together with a will, making the creature shift its rage from one foe to another; and at length he was restrained by a blow from a catapult that would level a wall. Then at last his strength was broken; for his injured spine could no longer stand up stiff for attack, and the head had no strength to rear up to the sky. We attacked more fiercely; and soon a huge missile was lodged deep in the monster’s belly, and the sight of both his eyes was destroyed by flying arrows. Now the dark pit of the gaping wound sent forth a poisonous slaver from the open jaws; and now the end of the tail was held fast to the ground by showers of darts and heavy poles; and still he threatened feebly with open mouth. At last a beam, discharged from an engine with a loud hissing sound, shattered his head; and the body lay at last relaxed far along the raised bank, and discharged into the air a dark vapor of poison that escaped from its mouth. Then a cry of sorrow burst from the river, and the sound spread through the depths; and suddenly both grove and cave sent forth a noise of wailing, and the banks replied to the trees. Alas, how great were our losses, and how dearly we paid in the end for our battle!”

  DRAGONS AGAINST ELEPHANTS1

  The sprawling encyclopedia of natural phenomena compiled by the Roman statesman Pliny the Elder (ca. 23–79 CE) was an astonishing feat of diligence and energy. A keen observer of the world around him, Pliny’s interest in contemporary knowledge about animals, plants, minerals, and natural history in general stemmed from his boundless curiosity. While writing a chapter on elephants, his thoughts turned to dragons, for these two giants of the natural world were mortal enemies. Pliny identified India as the habitat of the dragon and described how, in the jungles of that remote country, these writhing reptiles battled to the death with their colossal rivals. Pliny’s encyclopedia was widely read long after his death during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Centuries later, in medieval Europe, Christian thinkers pondered the symbolic meaning of this combat between dragons and elephants and interpreted it as an allegory for the Devil’s corruption of Adam and Eve.

  Africa produces elephants, but it is India that produces the largest, as well as the dragon, which is perpetually at war with the elephant, and is itself so enormous in size, as easily to envelop the elephant with its folds and encircle them in its coils. The contest is equally fatal to both; the elephant, vanquished, falls to the earth, and by its weight crushes the dragon which is entwined around it.

  The cunning that every animal exhibits on its own behalf is wonderful, but in these it is remarkably so. The dragon has much difficulty in climbing up to so great a height, and t
herefore, watching the road, which bears the marks of the elephant’s footsteps, when going to feed, it darts down upon it from a lofty tree. The elephant knows that it is quite unable to struggle against the coils of the serpent, and so seeks for trees or rocks against which to rub itself.

  The dragon is on guard against this, and tries to prevent it, first of all by confining the legs of the elephant with the coils of its tail; while the elephant, on the other hand, tries to disengage itself with its trunk. The dragon, however, thrusts its head into the elephant’s nostrils and thus, at the same moment, stops its breath and wounds its most tender parts. When it is met unexpectedly, the dragon raises itself up, faces its opponent, and flies more especially at the eyes; this is the reason why elephants are so often found blind, and worn to a skeleton with hunger and misery.

  * * *

  —

  There is another story, too, told in relation to these combats. The blood of the elephant, it is said, is remarkably cold; for this reason, in the parching heats of summer, the dragon seeks it with great eagerness. It lies, therefore, coiled up and concealed in the river, in wait for the elephants when they come to drink, upon which it darts out, fastens itself around the trunk, and then fixes its teeth behind the ear, that being the only place which the elephant cannot protect with its trunk. The dragons, it is said, are of such vast size that they can swallow all of an elephant’s blood. Consequently, the elephant, being drained of its blood, falls to the earth exhausted, while the dragon, intoxicated with the blood, is crushed beneath it, and so shares its fate.