Mythical Monsters

"Yet on the other side it is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie...

The text also goes on to state that "they (the ancients) regarded it as the enemy of mankind, and its overthrow is made to figure among the greatest exploits of the gods and her...

[24] A writer in _Macmillan's Magazine_ in 1860 concludes a series of objections to the canal as follows: "And the Emperor must hesitate to identify himself with an operation wh...

Alexander (while he attacked or devastated some portions of India, and also seized others), lighted on, among other numerous animals, a dragon, which the Indians, because they c...

In reviewing the past succession of different forms of ancient life upon the globe, we are reminded of a series of dissolving views, in which each species evolves itself by an i...

If we assume that the antiquity of man is as great, or even approximately as great, as Sir Charles Lyell and his followers affirm, the question naturally arises, what has he bee...

We now approach the consideration of a country in which the belief in the existence of the dragon is thoroughly woven into the life of the whole nation. Yet at the same time it...

It would have been a bold step indeed for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of cl...

A belief in the unicorn, like that in the dragon, appears to have obtained among both Eastern and Western authors, at a very early period. In this case, however, it has survived...

Intercourse between various parts of the old world and the new was probably much more intimate even three or four thousand years ago than we, or at all events our immediate ance...

I do not propose to bestow any large amount of space upon the enumeration of the palæontological evidence of the antiquity of man. The works of the various eminent authors who h...

From the date of the earliest examination of the literature of China, it has been customary among Sinologues to trace a fancied resemblance between a somewhat remarkable bird, w...

There is but little additional information as to the dragon to be gained from Japan, the traditions relating to it in that country having been obviously derived from China. In f...

The reasoning upon the question whether dragons, winged snakes, sea-serpents, unicorns, and other so-called fabulous monsters have in reality existed, and at dates coeval with m...

Lycaonus, King of Emathia, had a son named Macedon, from whom eventually the country was called, the old name becoming obsolete. Now, one of Macedon's sons, named Pindus, was in...

Onesicritus Astypalæus writes that there were two dragons in India [nurtured by an Indian dancer], one of forty-six and the other of eighty cubits, and that Alexander (Philip's...

A dragon whelp, born in Arcadia, was brought up with an Arcadian child; and in process of time, when both were older, they entertained a mutual affection for one another. The fr...

There is a peculiar divination of the dragon, for in Lavinium, a town of the Latins but in Lavinium, there is a large and dense sacred grove, and near it the shrine of the Argol...

Indeed, a dragon received divine honours in a certain tower in Melita in Egypt. He had his priests and ministers, his table and bowl. Every day they filled the bowl with flour k...

In Idumea, or Judæa, during Herod's power, according to the statement of the natives of the country, a very beautiful, and just adolescent, woman, was beloved by a dragon of exc...

Æthiopia generates dragons reaching thirty paces long; they have no proper name, but they merely call them slayers of elephants, and they attain a great age. So far do the Æthio...

The Epirotes, both at home and abroad, sacrifice to Apollo, and solemnise with extreme magnificence a feast yearly in his honour, There is a grove among them sacred to the god,...

Beyond the Oasis of Egypt there is a great desert which extends for seven days' journey, succeeded by a region inhabited by the Cynoprosopi, on the way to Æthiopia. These live b...

In India, as I am told, there is great enmity between the dragon and elephant. Wherefore the dragons, aware that elephants are accustomed to pluck off boughs from trees for food...

Hegemon, in his Dardanic verses, among other things mentions, concerning the Thessalian Alevus, that a dragon conceived an affection for him. Alevus possessed, as Hegemon states...

When dragons are about to eat fruit they suck the juice of the wild chicory, because this affords them a sovereign remedy against inflation. When they purpose lying in wait for...

When Halia, the daughter of Sybasis, had entered the grove of Diana in Phrygia, a certain sacred dragon of large size appeared and copulated with her; whence the Ophiogenæ deduc...