Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner's Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the

Literature of Natural History

Author(s): Phil Senter, Uta Mattox and Eid. E. Haddad
Source: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 53, No. 1-4 (January/April 2016), pp. 67-124
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/jfolkrese.53.1-4.67
Accessed: 29-02-2016 13:13 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Folklore Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Phil Senter, Uta Mattox, and Eid. E. Haddad

Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s

Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the
Dragon in the Literature of Natural
History

Abstract: Dragons, in the origi­nal sense of the word, are real animals.
These iconic monsters of European folklore are the literary descendants
of ordinary snakes that evolved through the centuries with much help
from the discipline of natural history. Classical authors applied the term
dragon to large snakes such as Aesculapian snakes and pythons. Over
time, so many fabulous traits accrued in the descriptions of these ani-
mals that by the Renaissance dragon descriptions strained credulity, and
eighteenth-­century scientists dismissed dragons as mythical. Particularly
important among dragon descriptions in the literature of natural history
is that of Conrad Gessner in the snake volume of his animal encyclopedia
Historiae animalium. Published in 1587, it incorporates a more compre-
hensive review of dragon lore and literature than any previous work.
This makes it an important reference for describing the conceptual evo-
lution of the dragon from an ordinary snake into a fabulous monster. The
volume was first published in Latin, then in German in 1589 under the
title Schlangenbuch. Here we use Schlangenbuch’s sources to trace the evo-
lution of the dragon in the literature of natural history, with comments
on the dragons of folktales, myths, and legends. We also present the first
English translation of the dragon section of Schlangenbuch, annotated
to identify Gessner’s sources and their contributions to the conceptual
evolution of the dragon. In addition we present, similarly annotated,
the first English translation of the dragon section of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s Canon of
Medicine, a source that Gessner repeatedly cited.

The evolution of the dragon in the Occidental literature of natural

history provides an instructive look at how science, when combined
Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 53, No. 1, 2016
Copyright © 2016, Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University

67

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
68 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

with mythology and folklore, can produce a fantastic monster. The

word dragon is derived from the Greek δράκων (drakˉon) and its Latin
cognate draco. The ancient Greeks and Romans applied the term to
large, constricting snakes. Authors of ancient and medieval works on
natural history typically listed the dragon among the vari­ous types of
snakes. Over the centuries, errors in dragon descriptions accumulated
by mistranslation, exaggeration, acceptance of folklore and myth as
truth, and conflation of different animals that included snakes, ma-
rine fishes, and taxidermic hoaxes. By the Renaissance, the dragon
had transformed into a fabulous creature (fig­ure 1).
The role of natural history in contributing to this transformation
has not previously been traced in detail. Here we present such a history,
using Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch as a primary point of reference.
Gessner (1516–1565), a Swiss physician, was one of several European
naturalists of the Renaissance who wrote encyclopedic treatises in
an attempt to compile all previous writings about the natural world
(Findlen 1996). Gessner studied at Strasbourg, Basel, and Paris, and
afterward taught Greek for three years. In 1541 he earned a doctorate
in medicine from the University of Basel, and subsequently became a
town physician and teacher of Aristotelian philosophy in Zurich. His
1545 work Bibliotheca universalis was an attempt to list all the books
written since the time of ancient Greece. His five-­volume encyclopedia
of animals, Historiae animalium, remains a classic of natural history
literature. It was an attempt to compile all that had ever been written
about every animal species. Its fifth volume, on snakes, was published
posthumously in 1587 in Latin. A German edition, titled Schlangenbuch,
was published in 1589.1 Historiae animalium was recognized in its own
day as outstanding, and Gessner’s immediate successors cited him as
an authority (Topsell 1608; Aldrovandi 1640; Kircher 1678). Gessner’s
dragon illustrations (fig­ure 2) were also reproduced in numerous sub-
sequent books, in­clud­ing Edward Tospell’s Historie of Serpents (1608).
We recently translated the dragon section (xxxv–xliii) of Schlan‑
genbuch into English and have appended the English translation to
this article as Appendix 1. Translation into a modern tongue is useful
because the archaic German of Schlangenbuch makes it a difficult read
even for German speakers. Schlangenbuch is useful in its own right as
a treasure trove of European dragon folklore. However, during the
annotating of the translation we discovered that Schlangenbuch could

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 69

FIGURE 1
Natural history literature has both influenced and been influenced by changes
in popular conceptions of the dragon through the centuries. Particularly im-
portant developments in the evolution of the dragon are summarized here.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
70 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

FIGURE 2
The four dragon illustrations of Schlangenbuch. (A) Trio of dragons from the
first page of the dragon section. (B) A winged dragon from the last page of
the dragon section, based on an illustration from Belon (1557). Public domain
images.

also be useful in another way: its sources, if put in chronological or­

der, could serve as a guide to the conceptual evolution of the dragon
in the literature of natural history. This is because Gessner outdid
all previous authors in the comprehensiveness of his compilation of
previously published dragon information, which included informa-
tion from folklore and works of natural history. For the most part,
Schlangenbuch and the Latin volume contain the same pieces of in-
formation, in the same order. However, Schlangenbuch includes some
German folklore that the Latin volume omits, and the Latin volume
includes some Greco-­Roman dragon anecdotes that Schlangenbuch
omits. Despite these omissions, Schlangenbuch’s coverage of previously
published dragon information is comprehensive enough to reconstruct
the conceptual evolution of the dragon with some confidence. The
omitted anecdotes are not crucial to such a reconstruction because
they do not describe aspects of dragon biology. Here, therefore, we
present a history of the dragon’s evolution, drawn mainly from the
sources listed by Gessner in Schlangenbuch. We have omitted mention
of the sources with material that is tangential to the history of this
evolution. We refer anyone interested in those sources to our anno-
tated translation of Schlangenbuch (Appendix 1) or to Gessner’s Latin
volume (1587), in which he cites his sources.
Appendix 2 of this article is an annotated English translation of
the dragon section of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s Canon of Medicine. We have included
this translation here because Gessner and previous authors made

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 71

substantial use of the dragon section of the Canon, and because it has
not previously been translated into English.
It is important to note that the Occidental (West­ern) dragon is not
directly related to the Chinese dragon. The latter is a mythical creature
believed to have its own independent origin and evolution in art and
literature (Yang, Li, and Xu 1988). It seems to have no clear etymologi-
cal, his­tori­cal, mythological, or ancient iconographical connection to
the Occidental dragon (de Visser 1913; Yang, Li, and Xu 1988; Carr
1990). Its having been given the name dragon in European languages is
therefore a potential source of confusion. As shown below, Europeans
origi­nally conceived dragons as wingless and legless, but European
artists began adding wings and limbs to dragons during the Middle
Ages (Temple 1976; Alexander 1978), with the result that by the time
of Marco Polo the Occidental dragon had, quite by accident, come
to resemble the mythological creature that the Chinese had depicted
for a millennium as a winged, scaly quadruped.

Classical Literature: The Dragon as a Constricting Snake

Schlangenbuch draws from numerous ancient Greek and Roman works.
One of these is Homer’s Iliad, written probably in the ninth century
BC, the oldest known written work to use the word drakˉon. The drakˉon
is mentioned in six passages of the Iliad: (2.301–320; 3.33–37; 6.181;
11.38–40; 12.195–229; 22.93–97) (Monro and Allen 1920).2 In one of
these (12.208), it is also called an ὄφις (ophis: snake). That Homer uses
the term drakˉon in reference to a snake is consistent with the other
passages, which tell us that a drakˉon is small enough to fit beneath
an altar (2.310), is able to climb a tree (2.312–14), eats small birds
(2.314), can be carried by an eagle (12.200–203), is something an
eagle would bring to the nest to feed its young (12.222), and causes
observers to tremble in the wilderness (3.33–35). Homer speaks of a
silver decoration depicting a three-­headed drakˉon on an armor belt
(11.38–40)—three headed-­snakes are known from ancient Greek art
and include depictions of the drakˉon of the Hesperides (Ogden 2013).
Homer also tells us that the hind end of the Chimera is a drakˉon
(6.181)—the Chimera is consistently depicted with a snake for a tail
in classical art (Ogden 2013). Although Homer clearly uses the term
drakˉon for a snake, there is no indication that he means a specific

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
72 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

kind of snake. As Bodson (1975) points out, in ancient Greek works

the terms drakˉon and ophis are almost interchangeable, but drakˉon is
used more commonly in religious or mythical contexts, whereas ophis
is more common in ordinary contexts. The difference between the
usage of the terms serpent and snake in English is similar.
The drakˉontes/dracones of post-­Homeric classical mythology are also
snakes. One such creature guarded the golden fleece in Apollodorus’s
Library (1.9.16) (Frazer 1921). Similarly, another guarded the apples of
the Hesperides and was slain by Herakles (Library 2.5.11). A third was
slain by Kadmos (Library 3.4.1), and Apollo slew a fourth (Anonymous,
Hymn to Apollo, line 300) (West 2003). In each case classical artists
consistently depict the dragon as a snake (Ogden 2013; Senter 2013),
and in many cases ancient authors call the animal a dragˉon in one line
and an ophis in another (Iliad 12.202 and 12.208; Hesiod, Theogony lines
323 and 825 [Evelyn-­W hite 1914]; Library 2.5.11).
The earliest reference to the drakˉon in natural history literature is
a passing mention by Aristotle in History of Animals. As mentioned in
Schlangenbuch, Aristotle (384–322 BC) says that the eagle is an enemy
of the drakˉon because the eagle eats snakes (History of Animals 9.2.3)
(Cresswell 1902). As with Homer, Aristotle clearly uses the term drakˉon
for a snake, but there is no indication that he means a specific kind
of snake.
The Greek physician and poet Nikandros (of­ten Latinized as Ni­
cander) of Kolophon (sec­ond century BC) is the earliest classical au-
thor to provide a description of the drakˉon as a specific kind of snake.
He provides this in Theriaca, a series of poems describing venomous
animals and the effects of their bites and stings. The work includes en-
tries on several snake species, in­clud­ing one that Nikandros describes
as nonvenomous: the drakˉon. He describes it as green and blue, with
a yellow beard, and with a bite that hurts a man no more than the nib-
bling of a mouse. He adds that it eats birds and their eggs and is associ-
ated with Asklepios (Theriaca 446–57) (Gow and Scholfield 1953). The
only Greek snake with a yellow chin is the Aesculapian snake, Zamenis
longissimus (see fig­ure 3A). It is variable in color, but one of its color
forms that is found in Greece is olive-­green anteriorly and dark bluish
posteriorly (Kreiner 2007). It is nonvenomous, climbs trees, eats birds
and mammals (Valakos et al. 2008), and is among the species of snake
that scholars have suggested was the type of snake kept in the Greek
temples of Asklepios (Ogden 2013). Among those species, it is the

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 73

FIGURE 3
The dragon was a composite creature influenced by the traits of many animals:
(A) Zamenis longissimus, the Aesculapian snake, displaying the yellow lips and
chin—likely the “yellow beard” described by Nikandros—that are striking in
dark (top), medium-tone (middle), and light-colored (bottom) specimens; (B)
Python molurus, the Indian rock python, or Pliny’s Indian dragon; (C) Python
sebae, the African rock python, or Pliny’s African dragon, showing the fang-
sized anterior teeth (see Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s description) as well as three rows of teeth
(two upper, one lower) on each side, as is usual for a snake, and as is noted in
Nikandros’s dragon description; (D) Naja haje, the Egyptian cobra, with hood
partially spread—the cobra’s hood probably constitutes the “wings” of the
“winged serpents” described by Herodotus; (E) Macrovipera mauritanica, the
Moorish viper, or Al-Fasi’s north African dragon; (F) a stingray (we have not
identified the species), one of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s marine dragons; (G) and Muraena
helena, the Mediterranean moray, another of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s marine dragons. All
photographs by Phil Senter.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
74 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

only one with coloration that matches Nikandros’s description. That

Nikandros’s drakˉon is Zamenis longissimus is a reasonable conclusion.
Zamenis longissimus is a large constrictor, up to two meters in length
(Valakos et al. 2008), and by the time of Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79)
the name drakˉon/draco was applied to other large constrictors. Ac-
cording to Pliny (Bostock 1855), the draco is a serpens (snake) (Naturalis
historia 8.26) that is nonvenomous (29.21), kills by constriction (8.12),
is found in India (8.15) and Africa (29.21), and can exceed twenty cu-
bits in length (8.15). Ancient cubits varied from about eighteen inches
to about twenty-­one inches (Stone 2014), which makes twenty cubits
between thirty and thirty-­five feet (9.1 to 10.7 meters). Pliny’s Af­r i­can
and Indian dracones are pythons (fig­ures 3B and 3C). The Af­r i­can
rock python (Python sebae) and the Indian rock python (Python molurus)
both grow to lengths beyond twenty feet (Villiers 1950; Das 2010). As
Gessner notes, Pliny says that the draco kills elephants by constriction
(Naturalis historia 8.15). That is unrealistic for even a large rock python
but is an understandable exaggeration for a gigantic snake. Pliny does
not claim that the draco is large enough to eat an elephant. Instead,
after the dying elephant falls on it, the draco is crushed and dies as
well (8.14, 8.15).
As noted in Schlangenbuch, Pliny adds one detail that is odd about
the draco. He says that Af­ri­can dracones band together and sail across
the ocean, using their raised heads as sails (Naturalis historia 8.13). It is
possible that this bit of folklore is based on real Af­r i­can snakes that,
while holding their necks erect, flatten and spread their necks like
sails. Cobras (genus Naja) fit that description.
Identification of the term drakˉon/draco with the python appears to
have already occurred a century before Pliny, as illustrated through
the large sizes of the dragons in three works cited in Schlangenbuch. In
Aeneid (2.199–267), Vergil (70–19 BC) tells of mythical dracones that
are large enough to kill Laocoön and his sons by constriction. In the
mythical poem Metamorphoses (3.1–128) by Ovid (43 BC–AD 17/18), a
draco strangles Cadmus’s men to death (Magnus 1892). Strabo (64/63
BC–AD 24) notes in Geography (15.1.73) that drakˉontes were imported
from India during the reign of Augustus Caesar (27 BC–AD 14), who
displayed one that was fifty cubits long in an open square in Rome
(Meineke 1877). Although its cited size may be an exaggeration, this
is possibly a reference to the Indian rock python.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 75

The size of the drakˉon/draco is exaggerated in several subsequent

classical bits of folklore that are mentioned in Schlangenbuch. We con-
sider these accounts folklore and not natural history because they
include numerous unbelievable elements and seem to be narratives
created to illustrate moral points or glorify past leaders rather than
for the purpose of biological description. In a sec­ond-­century work,
Cassius Maximus (Maximus of Tyre) says that certain Indians kept a
dragon 500 feet long and fed it oxen (Dissertation 38) (Taylor 1804).
Aelian (AD 175–235) says that an Indian raised and fed two drakˉontes,
one eighty cubits and the other 140 cubits long, which Alexander the
Great desired to own (On the Characteristics of Animals 16.39); Aelian
also notes (15.21) that in India Alexander encountered a seventy-cubit
drakˉon that the locals worshipped and kept in a cave (Scholfield 1958).
The enormous sizes and Indian provenance suggest that pythons in-
spired these dragon stories. Aelian also relates the more believable
account that two living, Af­ri­can drakˉontes, one thirteen and the other
fourteen cubits long, were brought to live in the temple of Asklepios in
Alexandria during the reign (309–246 BC) of Ptolemy Philadelphus
(16.39). In another folkloric account from Aelian, a drakˉon protects
a human friend by killing his enemies by constriction (6.63), which
again suggests a python.
Characterization of the draco as a snake with characteristics of the
python continues into the third century AD in the work of Solinus,
another of Gessner’s sources. According to Solinus, the draco is a large
Af­r i­can snake that has a narrow throat and a forked, protruding
tongue, and that kills by constriction (De mirabilibus mundi 15.11–14;
30.12) (Latin Library 2012). Both Solinus (25.11–14) and Aelian (On
the Characteristics of Animals 2.21, 6.21) repeat Pliny’s description of
elephant constriction by the draco.
As shown above, by the first century AD it was common to apply the
term drakˉon/draco to the python. Even so, at least one area resisted such
usage. As Gessner notes, Pausanias (c. AD 110–180) reports that the
people of Epidauria, a region on the Peloponnese peninsula of south­
ern Greece, applied the term drakˉon only to a yellowish local snake
species that was sacred to Asklepios and refused to use the term for
the thirty-­cubit snakes of India and Libya (Description of Greece 2.28.1)
(Anonymous 1903). This passage from Pausanias illustrates that py-
thons were well known in the classical world, that the term drakˉon was

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
76 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

applied to them, and that it was also applied to Zamenis longissimus,

which was sacred to Asklepios and is yellowish-­olive in lighter-­colored
individuals.

Philostratus: Crests, Beards, and Mistranslations

Schlangenbuch quotes much from Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.6–7 (Cony­
beare 1912)—compiled by the Greek sophist Philostratus (c. 171–c.
248)—which describes Indian drakˉontes. Gessner considered Phi-
lostratus’s account reliable, but actually it is fraught with problems.
Philostratus claims that there are two kinds of dragons: a crestless
lowland kind and a crested and bearded mountain kind. His descrip-
tion of attributes of the alleged mountain kind is largely a repetition
of the Laocoön episode in Vergil’s Aeneid (2.199–267). In addition to
the problem of using a work of poetry as a source of information on
natural history, Philostratus perpetrates significant mistranslations
of Vergil’s Latin into Greek and adds attributes derived from hav-
ing taken figurative language in Nikandros’s poetry in Theriaca too
literally. Vergil’s mythical dragons hold their necks high, swim fast
across the sea, have red crests, have eyes that shine like fire, and their
backs are folded into sinuous curves (sinuatque immense volumine terga).
Philostratus repeats these attributes but mistranslates the “sea” as a
“river,” mistranslates “eyes that shine like fire” as “crests that shine like
fire,” and mistranslates “sinuously curved backs” as “serrated backs.”
Philostratus claims that drakˉontes have overhanging eyebrows, a liter-
alization of Nikandros’s poetic statement that the dragon’s eyes gleam
beneath its brows (Theriaca 443). He states that drakˉontes have bushy,
golden-­colored beards, which blends a literalization of Nikandros’s
yellow drakˉon “beards” (line 444) with an inexplicable statement by
Aelian (On the Characteristics of Animals 10.25) that the bushy beards
of “human dog-­faces” (probably baboons) resemble dragon beards.
Baboons do not have chin tufts resembling beards, and the compar­
able animals that do have prominent chin tufts—mandrills (Mandrillus
sphinx) and drills (M. leucophaeus)—are found only near the Congo
delta (Kingdon 1997) and were unknown to the Greco-­Roman world.
Philostratus’s claim that mountain dragons are crested contradicts
Pliny. In reference to a now-­lost work by King Juba II of Mauretania
(52/50 BC–AD 23), Pliny expresses surprise that Juba believes they

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 77

have crests (Naturalis historia 8.13). Aelian says that the male dragon
has a crest and beard, as does a rooster, in reference to a rooster’s comb
and wattle (On the Characteristics of Animals 11.26). In keeping with this,
Philostratus says that the marsh dragons resemble female dragons in
that they are uncrested (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.6).
Philostratus’s claim that Indian dragons are red is based on mythi­
cal dragons in Greek myths. The red color of the two dragons that
appear as omens in Homer’s Iliad (3.301–320; 12.195–229) is related
to their portending of bloody, war-­related events. The red drakˉon of
Revelation 12:3 has similar portent. The red color of such dragons
is probably unrelated to any natural snakes, for Europe has no solid
red snakes—although the leopard snake (Zamenis situla) has reddish
markings, and the orange-­brown color morphs of the asp viper (Vi‑
pera aspis) and the adder (Vipera berus) could be described as reddish
(Kreiner 2007).
To our knowledge, Gessner is the earliest natural history encyclo-
pedist to include dragon information from Philostratus. There is no
reference to Philostratus’s descriptions in the dragon sections of the
works of Solinus, Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), Ibn Sı̄nˉa (980–1037),
Vincent of Beauvais (1190–1264), or Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–1280).

Augustine: The Dragon Can Fly

In Greek myths recorded by Apollodorus (c. 180–after 120 BC)
winged drakˉontes pulled the chariots of Triptolemos and Medea (Li‑
brary 1.5, 1.9) (Trzaskoma, Smith, Brunet 2004). Those dragons were
exceptional because other dragons in classical writings and art lacked
wings (Senter 2013). The Egyptian “flying serpents” of Herodotus and
their Indian counterparts mentioned by Megasthenes (c. 350–290 BC)
in Indika (now lost, quoted in Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Ani‑
mals 16.41 [Scholfield 1958]) were not called dragons until Gessner’s
text. Because the ancient Greeks and Romans did not consider wings
and flight to be the norm for dragons, Triptolemos’s and Medea’s
winged dragons fall within the category of composite creatures such
as Pegasus, the Chimera, satyrs, centaurs, and others from classical
myth. The assertion by Augustine of Hippo (354–430) that dragons
in general can fly (On Psalm 148: 7) (Coxe 1886) is therefore remark-
able. According to Augustine, dragons are the largest animals. They

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
78 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

live in subterranean caverns through which streams flow; they come

out of the caverns, fly through the air, and disturb the air as they fly.
This work by Augustine is an exposition on a psalm that mentions
dragons and is not meant as a work of natural history. Nevertheless,
his dragon passage is cited as authoritative in the dragon sections of
subsequent natural history encyclopedias, in­clud­ing those by Isidore of
Seville (Etymologiae 12.4) (Thayer 2013), Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum
naturae 20.19) (Vincentius 1964), and Gessner.
The statements that the draco can fly and is larger than any other
animal are unlikely to have been believed if familiarity with pythons
and Aesculapian snakes was common. Indeed, due to the rise of
Christianity—­and later to imperial decree—the temples of Asklepios
were closed by the end of the fourth century, and there are no records
of importation of pythons into Europe after the first century AD. These
circumstances allowed familiarity with the natural animals that had
been called draco to decline among the general populace, which in
turn allowed folkloric beliefs about them to flourish unchecked by
observation.
The psalm on which Augustine expounds does not suggest flight in
dragons, and it is not clear exactly what gave him the idea that dragons
habitually flew. One possibility is the fight between the Archangel
Michael and a dragon in Revelation 12, which takes place in the sky
and suggests that dragons fly. A sec­ond possibility is the use of draco
standards by Roman armies. Such standards, in use from the sec­ond
through the fifth centuries, resembled elongated windsocks and would
writhe and hiss as wind passed into their open mouths and through
their fabric torsos (Lofmark 1995). The fact that these were held aloft
may have contributed to the planting of the image of dragon flight
in the pub­lic mind.
European artists began to portray dragons with wings in the eighth
century (Alexander 1978), and winged dragons were standard fare in
the illustrations of medieval bestiaries (White 1954; Morrison 2007).
As dragon flight evolved in the popu­lar imagination, a connection
grew between dragons and fiery celestial phenomena. In his book On
Dragons the Syrian monk John of Damascus (675/676–749) recorded
that in his day some believed that lightning particularly targeted fly-
ing dragons, although he himself insisted that the drakˉon was merely
an ordinary, nonvenomous snake of very large size.3 The targeting
of dragons by lightning may be a corruption of Zeus’s targeting of

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 79

drakˉon-­legged Titans with thunderbolts in Greek myth. By the eighth

century Europeans were calling meteors “dragons” (Brown 1980), and
by the fourteenth century the Welsh used the same word (draig) for
dragons and for sheet-­lightning (Lofmark 1995). Fire production by
flying dragons was well-­established in European folklore by Gessner’s
time, although it was not until after Gessner that fire production in
flying dragons entered the literature of natural history, as shown below.

Pseudo-­A ristotle: The Dragon Is Venomous

Homer likens Hector to a drakˉon that lies in wait for a man after eating
noxious herbs (Iliad 22.91–94), apparently in reference to a folk ex-
planation for how a snake becomes venomous. He therefore does not
reserve the term drakˉon for harmless snake species, and it is likely that
in his day the term meant “serpent” generally. However, Nikandros
and Pliny declared that the dragon is a nonvenomous snake species,
and subsequent natural history authors such as Solinus and Isidore
of Seville followed suit. This changed after the twelfth-­century Latin
translation of a geological work titled De proprietatibus elementorum,
written under Aristotle’s name by a ninth-­century Arab (Vermij 1998),
which many subsequent authors—in­clud­ing Gessner—believed was
written by Aristotle. The work includes an apocryphal story in which
King Philip of Macedon enlists Socrates’s help to determine why a
certain mountain road poisoned people to death. Socrates found that
two dragons were holding their mouths open and poisoning the air.
After they were killed, the road was safe. Dragon poison thus made
its way into the literature of natural history. Subsequent authorities
such as Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum naturae 29) (Vincentius 1964)
and Albertus Magnus (De animalibus 25.27) (Kitchell et al. 1999) al-
lude to the story, saying that dragons infect the air where they live,
and Gessner repeats the story in Schlangenbuch.
According to Aristotle, a poisonous animal becomes more strongly
poisonous if it eats other poisonous animals (History of Animals 8.28)
(Cresswell 1902). Albertus Magnus, combining this idea with Homer’s,
says that all serpents eat poisonous flesh and herbs, and they become
more strongly poisonous by eating more poisonous things (De ani­
mali­bus 25.3) (Kitchell et al. 1999). He also states that the dragon’s
bite is bad because it eats poisonous things (De animalibus 25.26), im­-
mediately after insisting—contrary to his own subsequent statement

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
80 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

but in keeping with previous authors such as Pliny and Solinus and
Ibn Sı̄nˉa—that the dragon is nonpoisonous and its bite is bad not
because of any poison but because it creates a serious wound (De ani‑
malibus 25.25). In Schlangenbuch Gessner resolves the contradiction
by hypothesizing that the dragon is not usually poisonous, but in hot
areas it becomes so.
In support of the idea that dragons are poisonous in hot areas,
Gessner cites the travelogue of Al-­Hasan ibn Muhammad al-­Wazzan
al-­Fasi (c. 1494–c. 1554), whose work was published in Italian and other
European languages under the pen name Leo Af­r i­canus. According
to al-­Fasi, the dragons of the Atlas mountains of Morocco are venom-
ous and have a thick midsection but a narrow neck and tail (History
and Description of Africa 3.9) (Pory 1600). This is an apt description of
Moroccan vipers of the genus Macrovipera (fig­ure 3E) and is the earli-
est use of the name dragon for a specific kind of venomous snake in
the literature of natural history.
Gessner is the earliest natural history author to cite scripture in
support of poisonous dragons: “Their wine is the poison of dragons”
(Deuteronomy 32:33). However, Old Testament dragons are mistrans-
lations. In the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament
that was made by the sec­ond century BC, the Hebrew word tannîyn
is usually translated drakˉon (Exodus 7:9–12; Deuteronomy 32:33; Job
7:12; Psalm 73/74:13, 90/91:13, 148:7; Isaiah 27:1, 51:9; Jeremiah 9:11,
14:6; 51:34–37; Lamentations 4:3; Ezekiel 29:3). Tannîyn can mean a
jackal or a venomous, mythical sea monster. In the latter case a bet-
ter translation would have been κῆτος (kētos), the Greek word for sea
monsters and monstrous but real marine animals such as sharks, seals,
and whales (Scholfield 1958). The Latin Vulgate usually uses draco for
tannîyn. The Old Testament therefore provides support, via mistransla-
tion, for the idea that the dragon is venomous.
In the popu­lar imagination, dragons had already been venomous
for centuries. The dracones that strangled Laocoön and his sons were
venomous, according to Vergil (Aeneid 2.221) (Greenough 1900). A
venomous dragon appears in the tenth-­century manuscript of Beowulf,
a poem that many authorities believe to have been composed in the
eighth century and to contain stories from oral traditions earlier still
(Swanton 1997). And in the intervening centuries, several stories of
saints dispatching venomous dragons were composed (Godding 2000;
Ogden 2013). But it was not until the twelfth-­century translation of

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 81

De proprietatibus elementorum that European natural history literature

began to describe dragons as being venomous.

Ibn Sı̄nˉa: A New Description, and Marine Dragons

In the dragon section of Canon of Medicine by Abˉu ’Alı̄ al­-Husayn ibn
˙
’Abd Allˉah ibn Sı̄nˉa (of­ten Latinized as “Avicenna”), the description
of the tinn¯ın (Arabic for dragon) is drawn mainly from Nikandros and
Pliny. As we have seen, Nikandros and Pliny each describe a different
species under the name “dragon,” but Ibn Sı̄nˉa did not realize this.
His description therefore blends information on both species. In addi-
tion, some of the information from Nikandros did not translate well.
Paraphrasing Pliny, Ibn Sı̄nˉa says that the dragon is found in India
and Africa and that the Indian dragons are larger and can reach thirty
cubits. Paraphrasing—and misinterpreting—Nikandros, Ibn Sı̄nˉa says
that the dragon has large eyebrows, a black (an alternate translation of
Nikan­dros’s “blue”: κύανόν kyanon) and yellow face, three fangs (Nik­
an­dros mentioned three rows of teeth, as in fig­ure 3C), a protrusion
under the jaw (Nikandros’s “beard”), and thick hair on the edges of
the neck (possibly also derived from Nikandros’s “beard”) (A.U.B.
Libraries 2007). Subsequent authors such as Vincent of Beauvais,
­A lbertus Magnus, and Gessner would later repeat these details without
realizing that they were misinterpretations of Nikandros’s description.
Ibn Sı̄nˉa also adds a section on two marine animals that he says
belong to the tinn¯ın category. One is the smoraa, which appears to be a
cognate of σμύρος (smyros) and μύρος (myros), two names that Aristotle
uses for the moray eel in History of Animals (Cresswell 1902). The other
is the trogorn, which appears to be a cognate of τρυγών, trygon, Aristotle’s
term for the stingray (Cresswell 1902). Ibn Sı̄nˉa acknowledges that the
terrestrial tinnı̄n and the smoraa are nonvenomous whereas the trogorn
is not, and he lists a remedy for its venom.
Aristotle, Pliny, and Isidore had applied the term drakˉon/draco to
the venomous weever fishes of the family Trachinidae but did not clas-
sify these fishes within any category of serpents. Ibn Sı̄nˉa was the first
to classify morays and stingrays as serpents and specifically dragons.
Gessner, unaware that the smoraa and the trogorn were the moray
and stingray, which he himself had classified with the fishes, added
their traits to the list of dragon traits in Schlangenbuch and used the
marine dragons as examples of dragons with poison.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
82 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

Taxidermic Hoaxes: The Dragon Gains Feet

European artists began to portray dragons with legs and feet as early
as the eighth century (Alexander 1978), a practice that had become
common by the tenth century (Temple 1976). Meanwhile, works on
natural history continued to treat the dragon as a type of snake, leg-
less like the others, and as late as the thirteenth century Albertus
Magnus—who considered the dragon a type of serpent—stated cate-
gorically that “no genus of serpent whatsoever has feet” (De animalibus
2.83) (Kitchell et al. 1999). This changed in the sixteenth century,
when the making of taxidermic hoaxes of bipedal, usually winged
creatures, sold as “dragons,” became common in the Mediterranean
world (fig­ure 4). Schlangenbuch cites records by Gerolamo Cardano
(1501–76) and Pierre Belon (1517–64) of such specimens, and others
continued to be made well into the seventeenth century (Dance 1976;
Freedberg 2002; Senter and Wilkins 2013; Senter et al. 2013; Senter and
Klein 2014). Some hoaxers made “dragons” to sell by carving skates
and drying them in contorted configurations (fig­ure 4A; see Dance
1976). Such fakes, nicknamed Jenny Hanivers, were exposed for what
they were in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Serpentum et draconum historiae (1640).
A plethora of other specimens, winged and two-­legged composites
made of snakes with other animal parts attached, were billed as fly-
ing serpents or dragons. Cardano (1551) recognized that the ones he
saw in Paris were fake, while Belon (1557, 1558) thought the ones he
saw in Egypt were genuine (fig­ure 4C). Gessner accepted both sets
of specimens as genuine and reproduced Belon’s illustration of an
Egyptian specimen (fig­ure 2B).

Conrad Gessner and Afterward

Gessner’s encyclopedia set the standard for subsequent dragon de-
scriptions. It was the first to include dragon information from Aelian
and Philostratus, as well as numerous other classical and later authors.
Gessner used Philostratus’s recognition of different kinds of dragons
to resolve apparent contradictions in descriptions of dragons from pre-
vious literature (e.g., the dragon’s color, whether or not it was crested,
whether or not it had feet, and whether or not it had wings). Gessner
was the first encyclopedist to apply the term dragon to the bipedal
snakes manufactured by travelers’ tales and taxidermists’ hands. He
was also the first to consider Herodotus’s Egyptian flying snakes, of

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 83

FIGURE 4
Fake dragons that were made during the Renaissance: (A) a Jenny Haniver (a
mutilated and dried ray), sold as a “dragon,” from Aldrovandi (1640); (B) a
taxidermic composite made from a grass snake (Natrix natrix) with the torso
of a fish and the forelimbs of a common toad (Bufo bufo) (Senter and Wilkins
2013), from Aldrovandi (1640); (C) and another taxidermic composite (note
that the belly scales indicate the inclusion of a snake) displayed in Egypt, from
Belon (1557). Public domain images.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
84 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

which more will be said below, to be a kind of dragon. Subsequent

encyclopedists imitated him in all these respects (Topsell 1608; Al-
drovandi 1640; Kircher 1678).
The Egyptian flying serpents deserve further comment. Herodotus,
having heard of these creatures, traveled to a place near Buto, in the
Nile Delta in “Arabia,” and asked about winged snakes (Histories 2.75,
2.76, 3.107) (Hare 2010). As Anthon (1878) notes, among the ancient
Greeks “Arabia” included both present-­day Arabia and northeast
Egypt up to the Nile. There he saw heaps of snake bones and heard
that frankincense collectors used storax smoke to drive them out of
frankincense trees. He was told that each spring the winged snakes
fly toward Egypt but are killed by ibises before arrival. He does not
claim to have seen any live, winged snakes but records that they have
a μορφὴ (morphē: shape, form) like that of the ὕδρος (hydros: water
snake of the genus Natrix), with featherless wings resembling those
of a bat. Although the flight of the winged snakes may have been en-
tirely apocryphal, the snakes themselves might have been real. When
agitated, cobras spread the neck skin laterally from where shoulders
would be (fig­ure 3D), and the lateral spread of featherless skin invites
comparison to bat wings. Cobras are found in Egypt and readily climb
trees (Spawls and Branch 1995). Furthermore, Herodotus’s choice of
Buto as a place to ask about the snakes suggests cobras, because the city
was sacred to the cobra goddess Uatchet, and cobras were worshipped
there (Budge 1904).
Numerous classical authors mention Herodotus’s winged Egyptian
snakes (Senter 2013), and their legend was well known enough for the
sixteenth-­century Egyptian fakes that Belon saw to be believable and
unsurprising. The existence of such creatures had not yet been seri-
ously questioned when Gessner categorized them under the dragon
umbrella, and his doing so validated numerous claims of sightings
of flying dragons in Europe. From there it was but a short step to
the validation of flying dragons that produced fire. Part of Gessner’s
legacy, then, is support for claims that such creatures had been seen,
of which more will be said below.
Two major changes in the description of the dragon in natural his-
tory literature were introduced by the German Jesuit scholar ­Athanasius
Kircher (1601/1602–1680) in his geological treatise Mundi subterranei
(Kircher 1678). One is the claim that some dragons are quadrupedal,
in­clud­ing one allegedly slain by the knight Deodato of Gozon in the

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 85

fourteenth century. The sec­ond is the addition of fire production to

the dragon’s physiological repertoire. Fire production by dragons was
already standard fare in European folklore but had not previously been
accepted in the literature of natural history. The ancient Greeks had
attributed fire-­breathing to the Chimera’s goat head and to the oxen
guarding the Golden Fleece (Trzaskoma et al. 2004), and the tannîyn
Leviathan breathes fire in the book of Job, but the earliest surviving
written mention of fire-­spitting by dragons is the fourth-­century text
Acts of Philip (Ogden 2013). In stories from subsequent centuries vari­
ous saints encountered venom-­spitting dragons, a few of which also
spat fire (Ogden 2013), as did a number of dragons in the thirteenth-­
century Legenda aurea (de Voragine 1993), after which fire-­breathing
became standard in European dragon stories.
The idea of fire-­breathing in dragons may be derived from a long-­
standing association of venom with fire, possibly because of the burn-
ing sensation that it produces. The venom-­spitting cobra Naja nubiae
inhabits Egypt (Baha el Din 2006), and Egyptian iconography from
as early as the New Kingdom (dating from the sixteenth to eleventh
century BC) shows cobras spitting arcs of fire drawn as a series of
tiny, round dots (Budge 1904). These arcs of dots match those that
denote flaming fuel that pours from braziers in Egyptian iconography
(Wilkinson 1992), indicating a connection between venom and fire
or burning in Egyptian thought. In the Old Testament, venomous
snakes are called sˉaraph, which means “fiery” or “burning” (Benner
2005), suggesting a connection between venom or fire and burning
in Hebrew thought.
Early (fourth century) written evidence of an association of dragons
with fire (Ogden 2013) predates early (eighth century) written evi-
dence of meteors being called dragons (Brown 1980). Association
of dragons with meteors is therefore more likely the result than the
cause of the association of dragons with fire. In any case, according to
Albertus Magnus, his contemporaries actually did mistake meteors for
fire-­breathing dragons: because of “the smoke that spreads like mist
at both ends in the shape of wings, the unskilled think this is a flying
animal breathing fire” (De animalibus 25.28) (Kitchell et al. 1999). This
apparently happened to one Christopher Schorer, who told Kircher
that in 1619 he saw a dragon, shooting out sparks, fly across the night
sky near Mount Pilatus in Switzerland (Kircher 1678). Kircher accepted
this as evidence of fire-­production in flying dragons and is, to our

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
86 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

knowledge, the only author to seriously suggest in a work of natural

history that dragons produce fire.
Gessner’s work was so well-­received that Topsell and Aldrovandi
used his volumes as models for their own encyclopedias, although in
their dragon entries both Topsell and Aldrovandi presented the infor-
mation in a different sequence, omitted much that Gessner included,
and included information that Gessner did not. For example, Topsell
included a few new anecdotes about alleged dragon sightings (Topsell
1608). Aldrovandi included a unique, lengthy section on a wingless,
bipedal dragon hoax (fig­ure 4B) that he described as a real animal,
shrewdly peppering the description with clues that he knew that it was
a taxidermic composite (Senter et al. 2013).
Encyclopedists through the sixteenth century accepted most pre-
vious written accounts as genuine. In contrast, their seventeenth-­and
eighteenth-­century successors typically replaced uncriti­cal compilation
of information with insistence on empirical confirmation by indepen-
dent observation. Members of the Lyncean Academy, the students of
Linnaeus, and others of similar mindset questioned the ancient au-
thorities and corrected many errors that Gessner and other previous
encyclopedists repeated. The new scientists dismissed the dragon as
altogether mythical (Linnaeus 1758; de Lacépède 1808). The exis-
tence of a fire-­breathing, venomous, crested, bearded, flying snake
that kills elephants strained credulity, especially after the exposure
of taxidermic dragon hoaxes (Dance 1976). Nevertheless, the origi­nal
dragons (Aesculapian snakes and pythons), as well as animals (moray
eels, stingrays, vipers, and cobras) and phenomena (e.g., meteors)
that later bore the name dragon, certainly exist. Before now, no one
has traced the role of natural history in fusing these entities into the
monster that, together, they became. We are therefore pleased to be
able to contribute this history of the making of a fabulous beast via
centuries of conflation, elaboration, fabrication, and of­ten mistrans­
lation, in the literature of natural history.

Appendix 1: Annotated English Translation of the Dragon

Section of Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch
Uta Mattox translated the German of Gessner’s Schlangenbuch into
English. Phil Senter provided minor editing. Eid E. Haddad provided
insight into the dragon section of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s Canon of Medicine for the

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 87

endnotes of this translation. For places in which the text of Schlangen‑

buch was unclear or included old German words that were unfamiliar
to us, we are grateful to two anonymous reviewers who contributed
translations of several words and other useful suggestions.
Below, notes in square brackets are explanations by us. Italicized
words or phrases not followed by brackets indicate words or phrases
that are set off by a change in font in Schlangenbuch, somewhat as one
uses italic font today. Here, notes enclosed in rounded parentheses are
from Schlangenbuch itself, in which they are also enclosed in rounded
parentheses.

About Dragons
Δράκων Trach, Track
Draco Lindwurm

About Their Size and Where to Find Them

The Greek word dragon4 refers to the animal’s good eyesight, 5 of­ten
also attributed to snakes in general. One should call Dragons especially
those snakes with bodies so big and heavy that they surpass all others
in size, hence the Greek saying: unless snakes swallow snakes and eat
them they will not turn into dragons. They are therefore to snakes as
the large whale fish [whales] are to other fish.
Augustine says that there are no animals larger than dragons to
be found on earth.6 In Italian they are called Drago and Dragone and
in French un dragon. Avicenna and Albertus7 count under this species
Albedelimon, Alhatraf and Haudern.
Aelianus writes that the land of the Moors has dragons thirty paces
long. Supposedly they do not have a separate name among the Moors
but are all called Elephant Killers, and they reach an old age.8
At the time of Alexander the Great, an Indian raised and fed two
large dragons, one of which was forty-­six and the other eighty cubits
long, that Alexander the Great desired due to their remarkable size.9
Egyptians claim (says Aelianus) that when king Philadelphus reigned,
two live dragons (one fourteen and the other thirteen cubits long) from
Ethiopia were brought to Alexandria. So also at the time of Energetes
three were taken there that measured seven and nine cubits in length;
the third was, at great cost and energy, raised and fed in the temple
of the idol Aesculapius.10

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
88 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

The island of Chios11 at one time supposedly had an immensely

large dragon in a thick shady forest whose hissing12 scared the inhabi-
tants there. And though neither the farmers nor the shepherds could
see its size they still could guess, based on the terrible hissing, that it must
have been a scarily large animal. At first they had to estimate its size,
but then they accomplished the miracle [size determination]. This is
because when a strong wind blew and the forest caught fire as a result
of the trees being thrown against each other, the fire surrounded the
dragon on all sides so that it could not run away and therefore burned
and expired. After the whole forest burned down the people of Chios
found its head and bones, which were remarkably large and ugly to
look at, indicating clearly how terrible and frightful it must have been.13
Aelianus14 also reports that Alexander the Great saw and met many
weird animals in India. Among them he also found a dragon there;
due to the requests by the Indians, for whom it was holy, he spared
it. They say it was seventy cubits long. When it heard Alexander come
closer it hissed15 so cruelly that all people were terribly scared by it. It
did not fully come out of the cave but only stuck its head out. Its eyes
reportedly were as big as large shields.
Maximus of Tyre writes that around the same time a dragon five
hundred feet long was kept by Indians and was fed oxen.16
Ethiopia breeds many dragons, especially in the south, due to
the nearness to the sun and great heat; 17 of­ten they are twenty cubits
long.18 Additionally, they also can be found in India, Nubia, Libya, and
other similarly hot countries in large numbers, and these can be up to
fifteen paces long with a girth no less than that of a wooden beam,19
yet the Indian ones are bigger and more monstrous than those grown
in the land of the Moors.20
In the wasteland where formerly the city of Babel stood, many
enormous dragons are supposed to have made their home.21
Leo Af­ri­canus writes that the holes or caves of the Atlas Mountains
are filled with large dragons that cannot move very well due to the
thickness and weight of the stomach (because the stomach or the
middle is large and fat, the head and the tail small and thin).22
Mr. Johann Stumpff 23 reports in his Chronicle that although Pliny
wrote that the dragons in India and the land of the Moors were tamed,
we have some of them living in our Alp mountains. Even though the
Alps receive a lot of snow, still in many areas they have rock faces and

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 89

caves toward noon [south], facing the gleam of the sun. There the
dragons at home, of­ten in the caves of the rocks, lie in the heat of the
sun to warm themselves thus.
Emperor Octavianus had a dragon that was fifty cubits long that he
would display on occasion to the people in Rome in an open square.24
Many other credible historic writers, whom I will not all mention,
testify to their large size. The smallest had a length of four or five
cubits.25

Differences among Dragons

They are primarily divided into two species. Those of one kind stay in
the mountains and mountainous areas, are large, speedy, fast, and have
a comb;26 the others live in bogs and swamps, are slow, lazy, and com-
fortable, and no comb grows for them. Philostratus writes: “In India
there are many wondersome dragons; yes, all mountains, swamps and
valleys are full. No hill can be found there that does not produce such
pests. But those that live in the swamps are so lazy and slow that they
barely lift their heads, and they reach a length of thirty cubits. They
are blackish on their backs and not as scaly as the others.”27
Homer writes about a dragon that he says has a red back;28 the
other poets say it has a comb. But those that stay in the swamps grow
no comb. In contrast, in the mountain dragons the comb appears
while they are still young, and as they get older it grows so big that
it will hang down on one side. The same dragons live in caves at the
bottom of the mountains; some higher up come down to the plains
and wait for food and tend also to scavenge it from dragons who stay
in the waters and take it away. Because they are much larger and cer-
tainly faster than any river, they therefore will not be robbed in water
or on land. Those that are fire colored are decorated with a beard or
dewlap in addition to the comb, lift their heads high, and their scales
gleam like silver. Their size is like that of a pig, but they are thinner
and more flexible and have a strong snout.29 Those that live on top
and bottom of the mountains vary in size, color, and shape.30
Depending on their habitat no small difference between them is
noticeable.
Many of them have wings, and many do not. Augustine says that a
dragon of­ten lies in its cave, but as soon as it feels the humidity of the

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
90 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

air it will come out and with the help of its wings becomes airborne
and flies off with great speed.31
Many slink along with their chest or stomach on the ground on
legs. Many have legs. Paulus Jovius says that in the kingdom of the
Georgians (in the east) one can find flying snakes that have goose
feet and creep foot by foot.32
They also differ in color. Many are black, many red, many the color
of ash, many yellow. Pausanias indicates that the type of dragon that
is yellow is harmless, may be tamed, may be made housebroken, and
may be dedicated to Aesculapius and made holy. The land of the Epi-
daurians alone is supposed to birth them; because of that they boast
of their dragons that they live only in their country. The others born
in India and Africa they refuse to call dragons.33
On the other hand, Lucian reports that the land of Macedonia
has remarkably large snakes (which they called Pellae) that were
quite tame and harmless and had been raised by humans. Yes, they
are also supposed to have been lying with children and been slow to
be provoked to anger.34

About Their Form

Dragons are mostly colored black and have a green chest, beautiful
to look at; some have scales on their whole body and large eyes. Their
eyebrows protrude far and cover their eyes. On the chin they have a
protrusion that is similar to a beard.35
Solinus and others say that dragons have a small mouth, which they
can’t open wide as they bite someone; instead it is like a narrow tube
or hole through which they pull in air and stick out the tongue. Their
tails are more powerful than their teeth; they harm and restrain with
the tail and then bite.36 On the other hand, Aetius37 and Avicenna38
write that they have a large, wide mouth and long canine teeth like
wild pigs. To explain these two opinions you have to know that there
are two different kinds of dragons. One is the Epidaurian kind, which
Nicander39 thinks has a small mouth like a tube, as mentioned. The
others, however, as in India, the land of the Moors, and born in other
similar places, have a large mouth, so large that they swallow birds and
other animals whole.40 Their tongues are split.41 The teeth are strong
and large, sharp and offset like a saw that is sharpened well.42 While
Pliny denies that such dragons [i.e. with comb and beard] have ever

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 91

been seen,43 many other trustworthy writers say that the males, espe-
cially of mountain dragons, are decorated with a comb and beard.44

About Their Nature and Needs

They have sharp eyesight and good hearing and rarely sleep, and be-
cause of that, poets call them guardians of treasures, who guard the
treasures so nobody else can approach them.
The air where a dragon lives is polluted by its hissing45 and poi-
sonous steam.46 It lives on a variety of dishes: apples, herbs, eggs, vari­
ous animals and birds.47 It may live for a long while without food, and
especially when it becomes old and has reached its natural size it will
go for a long time without food. But when it finds food and starts [to
eat] it will not be sated for a long time.48 In Phrygia one can see dragons
ten feet long (as Aelianus indicates) that stay by the Rhyndacus River
all day and eat outside their caves, support themselves on their tail,
lift up their entire body, straighten out their neck, and thus wait with
their mouth wide open so that they can attract birds that fly over them
with their breath and swallow them, no matter how fast the birds are.
Such they do until the sun goes down; after that they hide and lie in
wait for the animals that are being herded back, to rob and damage
the herd, and of­ten they also take the shepherds’ lives.49
In the land of the Moors four or five dragons will band together and
swim with erect heads (which serve them in place of sails) through the
ocean and other bodies of water,50 and those that have wings become
airborne to search for food.51 Otherwise they stay near the water or
under rocks, in crevices and caves, due to their inner heat as well as
the sun’s heat; in such countries toward the east (because one finds
them most in hot areas) they are rather large and miserable.52
With regard to their birth the Af­ri­cans generally say the eagle joins
or mixes with the female wolf, but she does not give birth; rather, she
is split in two, and thus is created the dragon with the beak and wings
like those of an eagle and the tail and legs like those of a wolf, with
a spotted snake skin.53 Because this birth is unbelievable, however, it
is therefore quite plausible to think that not only is the dragon not
born that way but has also never been seen in this shape anywhere.
When dragons eat a lot of apples, and due to that become disagree-
able, they tend to cure it with the juice of wild lettuce.54 They also
sharpen and improve their eyesight with fennel.55

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
92 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

Aelianus tells numerous stories in which those who were loved by

dragons were rescued from grave dangers. Above we mentioned the
shepherd named Alena. To him a large dragon sneaked up, showed
itself friendly, licked his face, and brought him several times a share
of its prey.56
Similarly, large dragons have learned to love beautiful maidens,
as shown elsewhere.
Among the Jews in the time of Herod a dragon loved a maiden very
much, and even though it showed itself very friendly and loving toward
her, she still was scared of it and changed her shelter in the hope that
the dragon would forget her if she stayed for a month. However, its love
burned more over time and increased in her absence in such a way
that it could not find rest anywhere but stayed day and night where the
maiden’s home was previously. And because it could not find her, the
dragon was sad and distraught, just as a lover who misses his beloved.
As the maiden returned home again after some time, from that hour
on the dragon acted a bit like a stranger toward her, but with loving
gestures even though it had been disdained, wrapped itself around
her body and hit her hard around her legs.57
In Arcadia (which is in Greece) a young dragon was raised once
with a child, but when the young man grew up and came of age the
dragon also increased vastly in size. His friends were driven to discuss
what to do about it. Finally they agreed that because the dragon in
such a short amount of time had grown so incredibly large and fear-
some, but both of them still felt a lot of love toward each other, they
should carry the dragon along with the young man far away into the
wilderness while they were asleep. The young man, however, returned
back home after all of that and left the dragon in the wilderness. It
now stayed there. Perhaps it was more agreeable than the old lodging.
In the woods it ate herbs and what it found. When the more mature
young man was to travel through the approximate area in which the
dragon lived, several murderers attacked him, beat him, and hurt him
so much that he started to cry for help. The dragon heard (because
they can hear by nature), recognized his young man’s voice, became
very angry, and hissed58 so loudly that the villains were scared by it
and trembled, and one fled one way and another the other way, and
those that the dragon was able to capture and restrain it strangled,
and thus rescued its friend from danger. After this deed it returned
to its home to which it had been banned and did not blame the young

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 93

man that he left it in the wilderness and did not desert its old friend in
this case of need as humans of­ten tend to do. A similar story is shared
by Aelianus in the thirteenth book.59
Aelianus writes that King Laocoön in Macedonia begat a son
named Pindus. He was a courageous virtuous hero with great beauty.
Laocoön had more sons after Pindus, none of whom compared to
­Pindus with regard to beauty and virtues. They competed with him and
were jealous of him and therefore schemed how to subdue him and
to take his life. Pindus noticed the hatred and schemes of his broth-
ers. He left the kingdom that he owned, and that he had inherited
from his father. But he did not roam [apparently this means that he
found a place that he liked and stayed there]. Since he had an affinity
and pleasure for hunting, he went instead to hunt. One time when
he pursued deer and chased them in full speed on his horse, he got
so far away from the other hunters that he could no longer see them,
but the deer disappeared into a deep cave to get away from the hunt-
ers and to save their [the deer’s] lives. Pindus got off his horse, tied it
to a tree, and searched for the cave. As he searched for it he heard a
voice warning him not to touch the deer. The voice frightened him.
Puzzled, as he could not see anyone, he mounted his horse and rode
away. The following day he returned to the same spot but did not
crawl into the cave because he remembered the voice warning him
the day before. He started to doubt what kind of voice it could have
been and looked around to see if there were not shepherds or hunt-
ers there. Meanwhile, a monstrous dragon sneaked up on him, lifted
its chest and head (so the height was that of a human) and rushed
toward him. Even though Pindus was very surprised by it, he did not
flee, but after recovering a little bit he calmed the dragon by offering
birds and other prey from his hunt and threw those in front of it to
save himself. The dragon was impressed by the gifts and mellowed, so
it did not attack. The friendliness of this pleased Pindus so much that
from then on, as thanks and reward, he presented all the results of his
hunts. However, his generosity was well rewarded. Because everything
he did was charmed and went well, no deer he hunted got away, so he
was praised in all the country as to how he managed and hunted the
wild animals. In addition, due to his size and courage he was feared
by many. The women fell for his good looks, and love for him started
to burn. They rode to him on the hunt. Others who could not come
there wished that he would know their bodies and sleep with them. All

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
94 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

in all he was loved by everyone, valued, and pleasing to everyone. Only

his brothers hated him and schemed to take his life. They attacked
him one time when he was hunting by himself and led him to a spot
by the river where he neither could receive aid nor flee. They hit him
and murdered him. But when the dragon, who was lying nearby, heard
him cry, it hurried there and reached the villains with its tail and hit
them to death, and it did not move from the dead body until his friends
who were searching for him found him. When the dragon saw that
they mourned his death and cried but did not dare come close due to
their fear of it and could not bury him, it left so he could be buried.60
The eagle is a steady enemy to the dragon, because it eats snakes.61
Aelianus says the dragon does not fight the eagle but instead, as soon it
hears the sound of the wings, hides in its cave.62 It has a special liking
of the eagle’s eggs. That is why it hunts the eagle and attacks it: it coils
itself with many coils around its wings, until both fall to the ground
together. This is described by Nicander. He says:
When the dragon in the green forest
Attacks the young in the nest,
The eagle will pursue it.
To fight with it is stressful to him.
The dragon does not flee; it plans with tricks
How to take its prey,
The rabbit and young fowl,
Tears into them with its claws.
The eagle bites as well
To become the winner;
It grabs the prey with its claws
And thrashes them in the air.
Then the dragon’s railings no longer help,
Despite throwing itself from side to side.
From the fighting it must pause
And see how it disappears from the scene.63

Gyllius64 writes that when the dragon comes out of the bushes it will
easily take a sheep or rabbit from the eagle. Meanwhile, of­ten, how-
ever, because they fight with each other, the rabbit of­ten can escape.
Homer writes as well how they catch and damage each other.
He says:
The Trojans kept back
An eagle flying above them,

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 95

Which was holding in its claws

A dragon that was coiling quickly
And fought even though it was wounded.
Once it could tear itself away
It bit the eagle in the chest
So that it had to let go,
As the bite hurt so much
That it could not hold on any longer.65

The dragons also have an ongoing fight with the elephants. Ethio­
pia has dragons [as illustrated in fig­ure 2A] thirty paces long that have
no specific name except that they are solely called elephant killers.
When a dragon is aware that the elephants are grazing many trees
bare, it pays attention to that and then climbs that same tree, covers
its tail with leaves and branches, and lets its front part hang down
like a rope. Now when the elephant approaches to eat the uppermost
shoots it suddenly jumps into its eyes, tears out the eyes, and twists and
entangles it such that it has to stay in place. Often they lie next to the
paths the elephants commonly travel and, hidden, wait for them, let-
ting the first ones pass and attacking the last one so that those in front
may not be able to help it. They tie its legs with their tails so it can’t go
any further and strangle it.66 Pliny says they are so big that they can
wind around the elephant’s whole body and strangle it. The dragon,
however, at times will also be crushed and killed by the elephant. So
when they attack an elephant and are wound around its body, it will
rub against a rock or a tree and crush and grind the dragon, but to
preempt that the dragon uses another trick, winding itself around
its legs so it can no longer move forward. At times the dragon is also
supposed to jump on an elephant, bite it, and suck its blood until fi-
nally it is so weak that it will fall down, and as it falls it hits the dragon
and one kills the other, and so both die. From such enmity one can
see how those that are the same in nature search for and find each
other. Many say there is no other reason for the dragon to desire the
elephant’s blood so much than that its own blood is cold, and that the
dragon aims to cool its own heat. It hides therefore in the river to wait
until the elephant comes to drink. So then it comes, attacks at one
ear (since the elephant’s ear is not protected by its beak [trunk]) and
sucks blood from it. The elephant weakly will fall down. The dragon,
however, will suffocate from all that blood and die as well.67
The dragon shows also enmity toward the lion.68

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
96 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

The leopard is hated by all animals, and almost all animals will
flee from it, in­clud­ing the dragon.69

How and for What Reasons One Catches Dragons

The mountain dragons are caught by the Indians this way. In front of
their caves they spread a scarlet red cloth onto which golden letters
are woven. The words are supposed to have the power to magically put
dragons to sleep. Besides this the magicians use many words and are
so effective that the dragon will lie down on the cloth and fall asleep.
When that has occurred, they will cut off its head with an axe. At times,
though, they lack their magic and get swallowed by the dragon, in­
clud­ing their axe, but they endanger themselves thus and take their
prey in order to get the small stones that are supposed to be inside the
dragon’s head and capture those. They are splendidly fire-­coloured
and beautiful to look at and hold strong powers. It is said that Gyes
(whom Cicero remembers) carried one of those stones crafted into
his ring.70 Varro writes: “One takes or uses three things from a dead
dragon: the skin, the teeth, and the eyes that are the color of fire.”71
Their flesh is the color of glass, and cools things. Therefore the Moors,
who live in hot countries, consider it delicious food. For that reason
one can find traders who attract them, raise them or tame them, and
then take them to the land of the Moors.72

Several Types of Medication Which Are Used and Are from Dragons
The dragon’s fat, dried in the sun, heals growing wounds or sores.73 A
bone from the spine calms toothaches.74 Whoever receives a dragon
head is supposed to be safe from runny eyes.75 This fat, mixed with old
oil and honey, improves and sharpens weak eyesight. If you boil its [a
dragon’s] tongue with gall juice and wine and smear yourself with it,
it helps those who are suffering from incubi.76
One takes many other things from the dragon, which are not nec-
essary to recount, to use in magic potions and to accomplish other
idolatries.
Doctors in many places write about dragon blood, but it is not well
established what it is. Pliny stated (erring tremendously) that it was the
blood lost in a fight between the dragon and the elephant.77 Others
say that it is a rubber or resin flowing from a tree in Africa. Serapion

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 97

thinks this blood is the sap of some herb. Many call the blood stone
by that name; others name it differently.78
But to keep it short I will let rest my opinions and as explanation
only share something from the letters of Johannes Lang.79 He reports
that in Venice, rubber red in color and the size of a hazelnut was shown
by Geraldo, who told him: “Look, this rubber is the real dragon blood
and is from the new island named Porto Santo and was brought here.”
It is useful, as one mixes medications in the eye and amazingly the
blood sprinkled into wounds, also called Indian cinnabar. But it is a
different part of the plant than the mimium or mountain cinnabar,
dug in silver mines and formed with hammers and used as color for
painters. Pliny80 stated that dragon blood was collected from dragons
after their fight, and indicated also that this Indian cinnabar with
the mimium, which is mountain cinnabar (which is poison due to
the quicksilver it contains), should not be regarded as a plant. For the
very reason that this sanguis draconis [dragon blood] is found to be
a useful and healing Indian cinnabar, it is my opinion that neither
mountain cinnabar nor Dragon Sweat should be called Indian cin-
nabar because the true dragon blood, sanguis draconis, is nothing but
a sap that blooms like red dripping out of trees in India and the At-
lantic Islands, which neither Dioscorides,81 Pliny,82 nor Theophrastus83
recognized properly, since they did not mention anywhere that Indian
cinnabar was a sap or rubber. Doctor Lang’s opinion is confirmed by
Arrian84 and Aloisius, a Portuguese ship owner, who both testify that
the inhabitants of the island Porto Santo cut and injure at specific
times during the year the bark of this tree, from which in the follow-
ing year a lot of sap or rubber runs. They boil the sap in kettles until
it becomes thick and red like blood, which is the reason it is called
dragon blood. But one should be concerned that the sanguis draconis
that is sold in our areas in pharmacies is nothing but goat blood with
mountain cinnabar or service berries (with pieces of which it has been
adulterated by old people and therefore is of more use to painters than
to doctors), boiled thick.

About the Dragon’s Bite and Poison

Dragons have little or no poison at all, and because of that are consid-
ered among the snakes that are more detrimental due to wounds [bite
wounds] than their poison. Ardoinus,85 though, claims that they poison

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
98 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

and pollute the air of the places where they live. Also, they are ascribed
poison in the fifth book of Moses in the thirty-­sec­ond chapter.86
Therefore, it should be noted that dragons by their kind and na-
ture are not poisonous, but in some countries at times poisonous
dragons may be found, just as other snakes in cold countries are not
as dangerous as in Africa and other similar hot areas. Therefore, says
Lucanus:
You dragons that in the whole country
Until now have been known to be harmless
Are in Africa, however,
Poisonous and harmful everywhere.87

Leo Af­r i­canus writes that the Atlas dragons are so poisonous that
nobody bitten or touched by them can be kept alive.88 When they
pursue humans or animals and are rebellious they tend to first eat
poisonous herbs and roots.89 Otherwise they will do the most harm
with their tails rather than with their teeth, and whom they catch with
their tail they will strangle. Their bite is not large and painful because
their mouths are small, and they fight not much with biting but show
their strength primarily in their tail90 as is understood for the Epidau-
ric Dragon. And then there are others with large, curved teeth, same
as wild pigs have. And while those are not very poisonous their bite
is still harmful; they crush and bite what they can into small pieces.91
The bite of the male is more harmful than that of the female, but
both should be healed as open wounds.92 Therefore it is necessary to
guard against the poison and its effects; instead tend to it as if it is
another harmless bite.
Pliny writes that grass seed has been well proven to be useful against
a dragon bite.93 The sea-­barbel or redbeard [red mullet] placed on top
of the wound and also eaten withstands the poison of the scorpion
and bite of the dragon.94 It is also said that if one tops a bite with the
skinned head of the dog or dragon that did the biting, along with
a little castoreum, this would restore health.95 As mentioned above,
Avicenna and Albertus count three kinds of the species of dragons,
which are Albedestmon, Alhatraf and Haudem.96 Their signs of poison
and healing are given here according to Avicenna. The bite of Albedesi‑
mon (he states) is dangerous and worrisome because it tears the flesh
badly due to its sharp teeth and therefore should be treated as a bad

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 99

and dangerous wound.97 The bite of the other two kinds is followed by
severe pain, and the limbs and the whole body turn cold and become
stiff from it, so the wounded will die soon. This bite can be handled
as other bites from cold poison and withstood. Many say to drip tepid
vinegar on the bite, cover it with leaves of the laurel tree, and apply oil
in which costmary and pellitory root are applied. Similarly acts the oil
made from sea onions and nettles or prepared from others presumed
to be of similar power. In addition, the invalid may be given to drink
juice of leaves from the laurel tree with vinegar or myrrh peppers
and shoots each mixed equally well and the amount of four scrupel [a
measure of weight] administered in wine.98

Several Stories, Fables, and Sayings Based on Dragons

Here many rivers, mountains, towns, islands, herbs, fish, men, and
such, that have been named after dragons, could be introduced.
However, since learning about that will not serve the knowledge of
the nature and traits of the above-­mentioned dragons, most of it will
be skipped to make it shorter.
The holy scripture calls the devil a dragon in the Book of Job, as well
as in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation of John: And there appeared
(says Saint John) a great wonder in the heavens; and behold a great red
dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his
heads. And its tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast
them to the earth; and after the angel Michael fought against it, the
great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world. And in chapter 16 it says: And I saw
three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon,
and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false
prophet, etc. In addition, the dragon is mentioned of­ten in the holy
Biblical scripture. Malachi99 in the first chapter. Jeremiah in the fifty-­
first chapter. In the thirteenth chapter of Isaiah God says the owls shall
cry in desolate houses, and dragons in pleasant palaces. In Chapter
34 the Lord says that in Idumea will grow nettles and brambles in the
fortresses thereof; and it shall be a habitation of dragons and a court
for ostriches.100 David says in Psalm 44: Thou hast sore broken us in
the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death. The
scripture also describes their pitiful howling and complaints in chap-

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
100 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

ter 1 of Micah. I will make a wailing like the dragons, and a mourn­ing
as the young ostriches. Therefore says Job, lamenting his misery and
loneliness, now I am a brother to dragons, and a companion of young
ostriches. In Jeremiah chapter 14, speaks the Lord: And the wild asses
did stand on the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons;
that means they will have nothing to satiate their hunger and there-
fore die, due to a lack of food and drink, and find their end. Dragons
and other pests might well experience such hunger, when they are in
the fresh air, because they attract cold air due to their heated state in
order to diminish their inner heat and to cool down.
There is an herb drachenwurz [dragonwort] named for dragons.
There are (as Dioscorides says) two kinds, small and large. The large
has a stem two cubits tall that is straight, smooth, and quite thick like
a stick and sprinkled with brown-­black marks like a dragon; it has
leaves like mengelwurtz [sorrel, dock] wound into each other.101 Pliny
describes more variations; the fourth kind that he reports found in
Catalonia near Spain agrees with the one described now. The third
has leaves (so he says) larger than the Cornelian cherry and a root like
the ror [a type of plant] with as many rings as it is years old (this is the
watersnake herb that grows in Germany).102 Who covers himself with
dragonwort (says Tarentinus)103 does not have to worry about the adder.
Different from all of these is the Dragoncell (in Latin dracunculus
hortensis), which is eaten in salad. It is also used to prepare sauces and
gravy, tastes very pungent, and its leaves are long and narrow; it creeps
with the roots on the ground like grass. Many believe that this herb
does not grow on its own in nature but is made to grow through skill
just as flax seeds are placed into hollowed onions and then planted
like that. Many have tried it that way but they were not successful;
therefore I do not believe it to be the truth.
In the dragon’s head one can find a stone called dragon stone. But
this one should be found in them when they are killed on purpose and
then one cuts out the stone afterward. When the dragon perishes in
a different way the stone melts away and disappears in its brain. For
that reason they are pursued, their caves carefully watched; one throws
them herbs and other medicines that induce sleep and so when they
are fast asleep they will cut out the stone without much hesitation.
This stone is supposed to be well regarded and valued by the kings
of the Orient, with beautiful and lovely colors and notable virtues

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 101

and powers. It is so hard that it cannot be artificially polished or cut.

Therefore its brilliance, color, and beauty are natural and unmarred
by handiwork.104
All famous physicians know a sickness called tragunculus. But since
it occurs only among inhabitants of Arabia and Egypt and is unknown
in our regions we will not describe it here.
Since olden times the old have pictured dragons in their flags and
banners. That is why flag bearers are called dragon carriers. Look at
Claudianus with which pomp and display the emperor Constantine
supposedly had such dragons carried ahead of himself.105 If it did not
show the name of the emperor or the mayor a dragon was painted
[on the flag].
On the island Delos106 the idol Apollo was worshipped in the shape
of a dragon.107
The Phoenicians, when they wanted to paint and picture their idol
Janum, asked for a dragon to be painted, which was pictured bent
around, gnawing at its own tail to show that the world sustains itself
and is influenced by the course of the heavens.108
The Egyptians also worshipped the sun and moon under the idol
Mercury’s staff, which was decorated with two entwined snakes. This
staff signifies that for the birth of humans, these dragons—that is,
the sun and moon—were helpful. While the dragon was compared
to those two planets and their strength attributed to it, a dragon was
always shown and painted in the picture of Aesculapius, to demon-
strate that as the dragon gains youth every year by shedding the skin,
so the human repeats himself and every year becomes strengthened
and refreshed through the power of the sun. Also, there is between
the sun and the dragon this comparison: that at certain times it will
come closer to us and other times its course will rise and, so to speak,
the dragon becomes younger again.109
The idol Minerva is of­ten pictured with a night owl and a dragon.
For that reason the well spoken man Demosthenes, as he left the land,
is supposed to have said: The goddess Minerva—which to him em-
bodied his home town, Athens—entertained herself in the meantime
with three gruesome wild animals and had them for pleasure, joy, and
entertainment: the dragon, the owl, and the buffalo.110
The excellent sculptor Phydias used to add a dragon to a depiction
of Minerva and with that secretly indicate and make understood that

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
102 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

virgins should be kept and honored, so their breeding and chastity

would not be stained. About this depiction of how to protect young
maidens the widely known Alciatus wrote this lovely poem:
Here stands painted the goddess Pallas,
Who always remains a pure virgin,
Her protection and coverage provided by a dragon,
An attentive animal. With this is indicated nicely
That virgins should never be left alone,
But with care protected,
Because the little Cupid
Exercises his tricks in many ways.111

The interpreters of the stars call the points where the moon takes
its track across and over the sun’s course a dragon. The upper part is
called the dragon head, the bottom part the dragon tail.112
Petrus Damianus113 writes about a farmer who started his work
early in the day one time, but then became tired. An immensely large
dragon lay ahead of him, which he took to be a rock and sat on it,
which angered the dragon, and it swallowed the farmer.
Pausanias reports of Ophelte (who was King Lycurgus’s son) that
when the wet nurse had first laid him down in the grass near the temple
of Jupiter in Nemea, he was killed by a dragon.114
Caelius115 writes that after the Greeks had apparently left Troy,
the traitor Simon was forgiven and taken in by the king, and that two
dragons from the island Tenedos swam across the sea and strangled
Laocoön together with his sons because they had stabbed the wooden
horse. Vergil says in the sec­ond book that both dragons fled after the
murder.
There in Minerva’s temple
Where both were hiding
Under her shield and feet,
The goddess allowed them under there.
There was a big scare for all of us
So that everyone was wondering in his thoughts
How he might have been guilty of it
When he stabbed the horse, etc.116

In the very beginning when the Swiss countryside was first settled
and cleaned, a terrible dragon was found there that chased away
people and animals near the village of Wyler (that is why the village
is now called Oedwyler [Empty Wyler]). And a countryman (named

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 103

Winckelriedt) who had been banned from the country due to man-
slaughter was gladly assured that he would be shown mercy and allowed
back should he succeed in killing the dragon. However, after he beat
the dragon he immediately and triumphantly raised his arm, in which
he held the bloody sword, celebrating victory, which caused dragon
blood to contaminate his body, of which he died, as Johann Stumpff
shows in his chronicle.117
During the times of King Philip a mountain road in Armenia (now
called Turcomania) was so poisoned and dangerous that nobody who
came across this mountain survived staying on that place. When King
Philip now asked what the reason was for that, Socrates installed a
mirror against the mountain and showed (as Aristotle indicates)118
in it two large dragons with their mouths wide open and with their
poisonous steam and breath polluting the air. Therefore, the king or-
dered that men should be sent there who should kill and strangle the
dragons. And so this road was carefully cleaned up, so that afterward
one could safely hike across the mountain.
Olaus Magnus writes: The Bishop named Sanctus Donatus is sup-
posed to have spat into a dragon’s mouth and thus killed it, which had
been so large that eight pairs of oxen could hardly pull it to the fire.
This same dragon is said to have lain near a bridge along a road and
swallowed goats, oxen, horses, people, and whatever else it could get.119
The poets write a lot about their idols and also of people and how
they were transformed into other shapes. Not that they considered
their fables as fables themselves but to admonish unchastity, excess,
and lust they introduce the transformation into dragons and other
such animals to scare people, so that out of fear of such an ending
they improve their ways. And the idol Jupiter’s lewdness, excess, and
unchastity also indicates this fable: that he was transformed into a bull
so that he wrongfully deceived Ceres. Just as when he begat a daughter
called Persephone or Proserpina, who grew up and became beautiful, he
is supposed to have transformed into a dragon and in this terrifying
shape slept with her as well. And from him she conceived a son who was
shaped like a bull. From this the poets wrote the poem of how a bull was
the father of a dragon and in turn a dragon was the father of a bull. In
the sec­ond Book of Moses in the seventh chapter it states that Aaron’s
staff, when he threw it, ordered by God, onto Earth, turned into a snake.
Ovid writes of Cadmus that under order of his idol he was to watch
a cow and where it was to lie down to build a town at that location.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
104 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

He followed the order and found a cow (as predicted) in the country
that is named Boeotia after the cow. As he now sent his comrades to a
well for water they were all strangled and killed by a dragon that had
its home nearby. Therefore, he went to the well himself, and when he
found his friends lying there miserably he killed the dragon. Pallas
the idol gave him this advice: to sow the dragon’s teeth. He did, and
from those teeth grew well equipped warriors (because warriors are
mostly raw, cruel, and bloody as the dragon’s teeth), who stabbed and
struck each other, leaving only five in the end, who made peace and
helped Cadmus build the town of Thebes.120
Also, he reports of Jason traveling to the island of Colchis for the
golden fleece, and with help of magic from Medea (who was the King’s
daughter) he overcame and defeated the fire-­spewing oxen, the giants,
and the dragon.121
The poets describe the dragons as guardians of the golden fleece
and the gardens of Hesperides, in which golden apples are said to
grow, so they would be protected by them (meaning the big danger
that money and goods bring with them). Of this dragon Ovid writes in
his seventh book, in which he knows and shows the manner in which
Jason falls asleep and captures the golden fleece, and says:

Jason had to face the large dragon,

Fight and defeat it.
It had sharp teeth and pointy claws.
Its fierceness inspired terror.
Its shape induced terror.
It had a three-­pointed tongue.
Its body was large and stout.
It guarded the tree of the golden apple
As also the golden fleece’s goods.
Jason poured juice over the dragon
From an herb the large powers of which
Served wonders at this place,
In addition to many blessings he did
From which the dragon died
And let Jason run to the golden apples
And harvest as many as he wanted
And also take the fleece of gold, etc.122

Diodorus Siculus123 tells this fable in this fashion: When Aeëtes

reigned in Pontus it was predicted that he would have to die when for-

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 105

eign guests would come across the sea and take away the golden fleece.
Now when the king (who already was a terrible tyrant) heard of this
he ordered all strangers who arrived to be killed and sacrificed so as
to warn off and deter all others with these terrible deeds. In addition
he had a wall built around the temple and ordered guards to guard
the fleece. Of these guards the Greek have rhymed curious fables
such as of strong oxen that spewed fire, as well as a dragon who took
care of the golden sheepskin (or uellus, called fleece for short), and
compared the guards’ strength with the oxen and the king’s cruelty
with spewing fire. The dragon, however, they saw as guardian, due
to its admirable, attentive manner and nature. Similar fantasies have
been fabricated and brought forth about the garden Hesperides. How-
ever, the dragon signifies nothing but our lust and wants. And since
Hercules, who is said to have fought it with his club and arrows and
strangled it, is said to have won and received three golden apples, they
demonstrate that through overcoming his desires he achieved three
things such as mastering his rage, abandoning his greediness well,
and overcoming his lust.124
We showed above that of­ten miracles and miraculous signs happen
through dragons and snakes, and major occurrences are signified
and demonstrated through them. Mamaea, the mother of Emperor
Alexander Severus, dreamed the day before the Emperor’s birth that
she would bear a small dragon.125 So were predicted and revealed for
Alexander and Publius Scipio Af­ri­canus their magnificence, force, and
power through the appearance of a dragon.126 Through a dragon it
was also foretold that Augustus would reach power and become em-
peror, because as his mother Atia visited the temple of idol Apollo at
midnight and fell asleep in her sedan-­chair (in which she let herself
be carried to the temple), a dragon sneaked up to her and lay with
her but disappeared again soon after. But when she awoke she saw on
her body the picture of a dragon that she could not get rid of. From
then on she no longer could go to a pub­lic bath.127
The Emperor Tiberius used to entertain himself with a dragon that
he had raised and that he himself fed, and when the ants devoured and
gnawed the dragon he was warned to be cautious and guard himself
against the power of the masses.128
Dragons have shown themselves to their victims and of­ten brought
them lots of luck and good tidings, but they of­ten predicted hardship
and the coming end to many others.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
106 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

One can read in old Roman chronicles about dragons and how
large those are that have been seen and brought there, because as of­ten
as the Tiber flooded, many snakes and dragons were gathered all the
way to Rome. Especially during the times of Emperor Mauricius129 this
miracle is said to have happened. At that time when the Tiber flooded
and flowed out of its bed many different kinds of snakes appeared, and
among them one saw a terribly large dragon going down the middle
of the stream, which was followed by many deaths across the region.130
In 1499, on the twenty-­sixth of May, a dragon was seen in Lucerne
swimming down the Reuss from the lake, which was seen by many
people who were puzzled by it.131
Dragons have also of­ten been sighted in German regions gliding
through the air in sunlight. First near Niderburg (not far from St.
Goar on the Rhine) the inhabitants there saw in three different sum-
mers during the bright daylight a dragon in the air as if it was hang­ing
there and shaking its tail.132 After that the town burnt for the third
time, and the accident was so serious that nobody could fight the blaze
and douse the fire. Almost at the same time, not far from the burned
town several dragons were seen, which bathed and washed there in
a well. From that the water was so poisoned that people and animals
who happened to drink from it immediately swelled and died. Once
that became known, it was realized that the poisoned and dangerous
well needed to be filled in so that others would not be endangered
unwittingly.133
Suetonius writes: Nero was kept alive for a period of time by a
dragon. Then, when several people—through urging by Messalina,
Claudius’s widow—were ordered to strangle and kill him, a dragon
who supposedly lay under Nero’s pillow scared them and chased them
away.134
Many of the ancients revered dragons as gods and prayed to them,
which also the Holy Scripture supports in the story of Bel. Those from
Babel prayed to a large dragon, into which Daniel, with the king’s per-
mission, thrust a cake made of pitch, fat, and hairballs into its mouth
and exploded it.
The Epidaurian dragons belonging to Aesculapius and raised
at great expense, we mentioned above. Lucian writes of a magician
who fed a dragon and claimed to people that he was Aesculapius and
therefore monkeyed [tricked] them with his idol and misled them.135

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 107

The Egyptians worshipped for a time (as Aelianus writes) a dragon

that had been given with its own tower and priests, who gave it food
and other necessities. Its servants used to prepare a table and every day
would serve cake or flatbreads made from flour and meat placed into
a dish, and then leave again. The following day they would not find
anything left in the dish. When one of them was curious and wished
to see the dragon, he entered by himself, and as soon as he prepared
and served the food he left the tower again, waited until it would come
forth to eat, and then quickly and forcefully opened the door and
saw the dragon, which, enraged, had backed away. Soon thereafter
the servant lost his senses, professed his misdeed first, then suddenly
became mute, fell down, and died.136
Near Lavinium in a banned forest close to the temple of idol Juno
was a dragon that was revered by the maidens, who fed him with their
own hands, from which they received information about many secrets
in return; especially, though, he supposedly attested about their virtue
and virginity.137
In Epirus was a blessed township (as indicated by Volaterranus)138
enclosed by walls and inhabited by dragons. The inhabitants wor-
shipped them and ordered naked virgins to feed them. If they behaved
in a friendly manner and finished the meals, a fertile and good year
was supposed to follow; in contrast, bad years were expected if they
were angry and refused all food.
The Greeks had a common saying that no dragon will emerge
from a snake unless it devoured many snakes previously. This means
that none could become a powerful king and a great man without
swallowing many other men and bringing them under his power, in
agreement with our saying that greatness requires much and much
finds room in greatness.
Andrea Alciatus also showed, at the end of his verses, in the picture
of a dragon that swallows the sparrow’s young under the title, that
great important deeds lead to eternal praise, and says:
A work supposed to endure many years
Requires lots of time and effort,
As Calchas reports to his Greeks
Who test him against a dragon
That ate a sparrow and its young
Nesting in a maple.139

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
108 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

About the Large Dragon Called Python

The poets write about this dragon Python which, after the Great Flood
of Deucalion, rose from the leftover moisture and was supposedly
killed by Apollo. Ovid writes about this dragon. He says there:
There grew the monster Python,
Unknown to the new population.
It brought great danger to the people
And was killed by Phoebus.
They armed themselves with great haste
For the fight with bow and with arrow.
He shot many arrows
Before he hit the worm.
But with that this story
Will not be forgotten over time.
He arranged for a fight
To be held without grudge.
This game was called Pythia
To remind of Python the serpent.
A large number gathered
Of young people everywhere.
Many tears sprang for Phoebus,
Many raced, fought, and wrestled,
And the one who won the fight
Received a beautiful wreath.140

Others interpret this fable in such a way: that Latona was impregnated
by the idol Jupiter and for this reason was hated by Juno and chased
everywhere, until in the end she arrived on the island of Delos and
there gave birth to Apollo. When Apollo came of age he supposedly
killed a wicked person named Dragon with a bow.141 Calepinus142 as-
sumes that this dragon called Python, which was subdued by Phoebus,
indicates the birth of worms and dragons, because πυθων [pythˉon]
stems from moisture and decomposition and indicates, therefore, that
the dragon stems from the moisture and wetness of the earth and is
overpowered by Phoebus, which is the sun (which through its heat di-
minishes all remaining moisture). Because of this deed Apollo is called
Pythius. And because of that the altar and temple built in honor of the
idol Apollo on the island of Delos were named Pythia and Delia. Just
as the name Pythia was given to the virgins or the idol’s priestesses,
so were also all those names thus who had the spirit of prophecy, who

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 109

brought their masters much gain with their predictions. The Greeks
and Romans have many sayings about the games called Pythia based
on it, but which are not common in our language.

About Flying Snakes, Which the Common People Also Call Dragons
In many places in India one can find snakes (as Megasthenes indicates)
that have wings like bats and fly by night and cause damage. Those
who touch the dripping urine that they drop become putrid and of­ten
their member rots off.143
In the mountains that separate the kingdom of Narsinga from the
peoples of Malabar, besides many other wild animals there are many
flying snakes that sit on the trees, that kill and poison those who come
near just by panting and glancing at them.144
In the spring of every year from Arabia and the land of the Moors in
Egypt arrive winged snakes in large numbers that poison the country
and cause much damage except where the birds called ibises meet
them at the borders and chase them away, for due to a special instinct
these birds attack them in the air and strangle them.145
Belon146 writes that he himself saw many that had feet and were
dried out, the drawing of which is shown here [see fig­ure 2B].
While such animals are unknown in France, during the reign of
King Francis, not far from Rochelle, such a flying snake was killed
and beaten with a spade by a farmer toward whom it was flying and
afterward taken to the king and was shown to him. And there it was
seen by many trustworthy and learned people who supposed that it
had been thrown across the ocean by windstorms and thus arrived.147
The large snakes that stay by the Pyrenees are also supposed to
have true wings.148
A bookseller from Steyrmarck once told to Mr. Froschowern149 that
in the forty-­third year of the current century150 near the Steyrmarck
many flying, four-­legged snakes, especially poisonous and similar to
lizards, were once seen.151
Cardanus writes: he has seen in Paris five dried-­out flying snakes
that were found at different times but were similar in shape. They had
two feet and such small wings (he says) that in his estimation they
would have barely been able to fly and become airborne with them.
The heads were small and formed like snake heads, light in color,
without feathers or hairs, the largest of which was as large as a rabbit.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
110 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

No human could have created or cut these fig­ures or bodies so identi-

cally. In addition, one would have given them larger wings without a
doubt, so that the fig­ure would cause less suspicion.152

Appendix 2: Annotated English Translation of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s

Al-­Qˉanˉun Fı̄ Al-­Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) 4.6.3, the
Dragon Section
This is translated from A.U.B. Libraries (2007) by Eid E. Haddad,
with annotations and minor editing by Phil Senter. Notes in square
brackets are explanations by us and are not in the origi­nal document.

Chapter on Other Snake Categories, Whose Bite Hurts and Causes

Wounds Without Venom; Which are the Very Big Snakes Such as
the Tinnı̄n
It is said that the length of the smallest of the tinn¯ın species, as some
have stated, is five cubits, and upward of thirty cubits for big ones.
It is said that the tinn¯ın has two big eyes, and a chin-­like protrusion
under the lower jaw.153 They have large fangs.154 People have said that
they live and reproduce in t​ he region of Nubia155 and India, that the
Indian one is larger,156 and that the Greek one that lives in the land
of Asiya157 [Egypt] is four cubits long. But the Indian one is said to be
the largest, as people have said and as we stated; they have yellow and
black faces,158 mouths of huge capacity, eyebrows covering their eyes,159
scaly necks, and in each jaw are three fangs.160 I say, we have seen them
like that with thick hair on both edges of the neck.161 It is said that the
tear from their bite causes moderate pain, then inflammation, and
the bite of the male is worse than that of the female. I say that it is true
that lands other than the land of India may have gigantic dragons.
It is said of the treatment that it is similar to the treatment for a bad
ulcer.

Chapter on Agathnimon and Alsier 162

Both are thought to belong to the tinn¯ın category. It is said that
someone with a bite wound from the agathnimon displays symptoms
typical of those bitten by tinn¯ıns. But the alsier is said to have strong
fangs and that its bite tears and dries the flesh, thus exaggerating the

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 111

tear and the laceration, and is in need of treatment similar to those

of very severe injuries or cuts.

Chapter on Bites of Marine Tinnı̄n

It is said that the area of their bites should be covered with a mixture
of sulfur and vinegar; it is said that it may benefit from bandages
made of alligator grease and the mullet fish and lead when rubbed
over the bite area. Other treatments are as mentioned in the chapter
on alratealla.163

Chapter on Two Marine Animals

These are mentioned by some scientists, and I think they belong to
the category of marine tinn¯ın. One of them is the smoraa.

Chapter on Smoraa164
It is claimed by a scientist165 that its bite wound makes the bitten one
display symptoms similar to those exhibited by snake bite wounds,
and its treatment may be similar to treatment of those by the other
serpent.166

Chapter on Trogorn167
It is said of the trogorn that the wound causes severe pain, severe
chills, numbness, and imminent death. Its therapy is similar to that
for coldness-­causing poisons. It is said that warm vinegar should be
spread over the wound, and the bite area wrapped with bay leaves and
spread over with costus oil and pyrethrum oil or similar oils or those
that have the powers of squill168 and nettle.

Of Potions for Treatment of Their Bites

Boiled bay leaves with lovage,169 vinegar, and rue. Or pepper, rue, and
myrrh mixed in equal amounts, taken as drakhmi.170 The potion with
the first antidote is described in the chapter on alratealla.171
Fayetteville State University
Fayetteville, North Carolina

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
112 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

Acknowledgments
For our translation we used the series of images of Schlangenbuch
(Gessner 1589) that were posted online as part of the EIRI Project by
personnel at Keio University, Japan, to whom we are very grateful. We
thank Christine Giannoni for supplying a copy of a page that was miss-
ing from the EIRI image series, and for supplying copies of Gessner’s
dragon illustrations. Darius Klein provided English translations of
relevant parts of works by Ulisse Aldrovandi and Girolamo Cardano.
Wolfgang Linke transliterated Gessner’s old German script to facili-
tate the translation. We also thank four anonymous reviewers, whose
suggestions greatly improved this paper and the appendices.

Notes
1. We have not determined whether the Latin version or the German version
was written first, nor are we certain who did the translating from one version
to the other.
2. For this and several other references (Bostock 1855; Meineke 1877; Bekker
1890; Magnus 1892; Greenough 1900; Anonymous 1903; Ihm 1907; Evelyn-­W hite
1914; Frazer 1921; Rolfe 1927, 1940) we used transcripts posted online in the
Perseus Digital Library (Crane 2013).
3. We used Migne’s (1864) Latin and Greek transcripts of On Dragons by John
of Damascus.
4. Here, Gessner actually uses the German word Track.
5. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (fifth century), Saturnalia 1.20.3 (Jan 1852).
Saturnalia is a collection of Roman lore.
6. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), On Psalm 148: 7 (Coxe 1886). No previous
work claims that dragons are the world’s largest animals.
7. Of the two, Gessner appears only to have consulted Albertus Magnus (c. 1200–
1280, De Animalibus 25) (Kitchell and Resnick 1999), whose Latinized terms dif-
fer greatly from the origi­nal Arabic of Ibn Sı̄nˉa (“Avicenna”: Abˉu ’Alı̄ al-Husayn
ibn ’Abd Allˉah ibn Sı̄nˉa, 980–1037, Canon of Medicine 4.6.3) (A.U.B. 2007). ˙ The
Canon was disseminated in many languages, so Albertus’s Latinized terms may
be derived from some language other than Arabic. Ibn Sı̄nˉa classes four animals
within the dragon (tinn¯ın) category: the agathnimon, alsier, smoraa, and trogorn,
of which the latter two are marine (Canon 4.6.3). Albertus appears to omit the
agathnimon or alsier and renders the other three animals’ names as ahedysymon,
alhartraf, and haudyon. It is difficult to identify these animals with certainty. Alber-
tus repeats Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s list of trogorn bite symptoms and ascribes the bite symptoms
to both the alhartraf and haudyon. Kitchell and Resnick (1999, p. 1719) identify
Albertus’s alhartraf and haudyon as the lamprey, whereas the A.U.B. translators
respectively identify the smoraa and trogorn as the moray eel and the stringray
(2007). Plausibly, these terms are cognates of the Greek smyros and trygon, with

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 113

which Aristotle respectively refers to the moray and the stingray in History of Ani‑
mals (Cresswell 1902). We therefore postulate the following: Albertus’s draco = Ibn
Sı̄nˉa’s tinn¯ın; Albertus’s ahedysymon = Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s agathnimon or alsier; Albertus’s
alhartraf and haudyon = Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s smoraa and trogorn = Aristotle’s smyros and trygon
= moray and stingray.
8. Claudius Aelianus (c. 175–235), On the Characteristics of Animals 2.21 (Scholfield
1958). Here and elsewhere, Gessner’s “land of the Moors” is not the Maghreb but
is Africa south of Egypt.
9. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 16.39 (Scholfield 1958), one of many
apocryphal stories of Alexander and immense Indian snakes, probably inspired
by Indian rock pythons (Python molurus). Aelianus actually says 140 and 80 cubits,
not 46 and 80.
10. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 16.39 (Scholfield 1958). The only
Af­r i­can snake this large is the Af­r i­can rock python (Python sebae).
11. Chios is a Greek island near the west coast of present-­day Turkey.
12. Greek: συριγμόν (syrigmon), which can mean hissing or whistling but here
refers to serpentine hissing. In Schlangenbuch it is rendered pfeyffen (blowing or
whistling). Here and in subsequent paragraphs, we have rendered it as “hissing.”
13. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 16.39 (Scholfield 1958). This story
may be based on a fossil find.
14. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 15.21 (Scholfield 1958), another
apocryphal story.
15. See note 12.
16. Cassius Maximus (sec­ond century), Dissertation 38 (Taylor 1804). According
to the story, the Indians kept the dragon in a cave and fed it sheep and oxen.
17. Gaius Julius Solinus (third century), De mirabilibus mundi 30.12 (Latin Li-
brary 2012). Some of Solinus’s dragon description is partly derived from Pliny
the Elder, but this tidbit is Solinus’s own.
18. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder, 23–79), Naturalis historia 8.13
(Bo­stock 1855). Pliny’s is the earliest prose work of natural history to include a
detailed entry on the dragon.
19. The Latin version cites Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos (fourteenth
century), writer of Historia ecclesiastica. We have not been able to locate a copy of
the work for verification.
20. Pliny, Naturalis historia 8.13 (Bostock 1855). See note 18.
21. Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190–c. 1264), Speculum naturae 29 (Vencentius 1964);
probably based on Jeremiah 51:37.
22. Al-­Hasan ibn Muhammad al-­Wazzan al-­Fasi (c. 1494–c. 1554), History and
Description of Africa 3.9 (Pory 1600). Al-­Fasi says the Atlas “dragons” are venom-
ous and therefore differs from others in applying the term dragon to a venom-
ous snake. His description (venomous, thick midsection, narrow neck and tail)
matches the large, Moroccan vipers of the genus Macrovipera.
23. This is not in Johann Stumpff’s (1500–c. 1578) Schwytzer chronica (1544), a
short version of Stumpff’s 1548 work Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnoschafft Stetten, Landen
und Voelckeren Chronick wirdiger thaaten Beschreybung. It may be in the longer work,
which we have not been able to locate for verification.
24. Strabo (64/63 BC–AD 24), Geography 15.1.73 (Meineke 1877). An ambassador
from India brought Octavianus a five-­cubit serpent, among other gifts.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
114 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

25. Ibn Sı̄nˉa, Canon of Medicine 4.6.3 (A.U.B. Libraries 2007), in a paragraph
on non-­marine dragons (tinn¯ın) that conflates Pliny’s pythons, Nikandros’s
Aesculapian snake (from which Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s assertion that the dragon has a black
and yellow face is arguably derived), and Philostratus’s conflations of other con-
flations (see note 29).
26. Here and below, this refers to a coxcomb.
27. Lucius Flavius Philostratus (c. 171–c. 248), Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.6
(Conybeare 1912), generally thought to be a largely fictitious account.
28. Homer (ninth century BC?), Iliad 2.308 (Monro and Allen 1920). This is the
earliest surviving written work with a cognate of “dragon.”
29. This is a misunderstanding of Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.7)
(Conybeare 1912), in which Philostratus says that the teeth of dragons are like
those of the largest swine, but slenderer and more flexible.
30. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.6–7 (Conybeare 1912), a short
passage that is a singular comedy of errors of mistranslation, conflation, and
amalgamation of vari­ous sources. The attempt to separate dragons into a crest-
less lowland kind and a crested and bearded mountain kind is a naive attempt to
treat descriptions in mythic poetry as if they are descriptions in natural history
literature. The mountain dragons are based largely on the dragons that attack
Laocoön and his sons in Vergil’s Aeneid (2.200–230) (Greenough 1900). Vergil’s
dragons hold their necks high, swim fast across the sea (which Philostratus mis-
translates as a river), have red crests, have eyes that shine like fire (which Philo­
stratus mistranslates as crests that shine like fire), and their backs are folded into
sinuous curves, which Philostratus mistranslates as their having serrated backs.
Philostratus’s dragons’ overhanging eyebrows are a corruption of Nikandros’s
poetic statement that the dragon’s eyes gleam beneath its brows (Theriaca 443
[Gow and Scholfield 1953]). Philostratus’s bushy and golden-­colored dragon
beards blend Nikandros’s (Theriaca 444) reference to the dragon’s “beard” of
yellow color—which identifies Nikandros’s dragon as Zamenis longissimus (the
Aesculapian snake)—with Aelian’s statement that the bushy beards of baboons
resemble dragon beards (On the Characteristics of Animals 10.25 [Scholfield 1958]),
itself probably a corruption of Nikandros. Philostratus’s insistence on crests and
beards in dragons may also have been encouraged by the fact that snakes with
rooster combs and wattles are common in Greco-­Roman art.
31. Augustine, On Psalm 148: 7 (Coxe 1886). Augustine’s passage is the earliest
to assert that flight is a property of real dragons, as opposed to mythical dragons,
e.g. Medea’s and Triptolemos’s dragons, which—like the flying horse Pegasus—
were unusual in that they flew.
32. Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), Historiarum sui temporis 18 (Giovio 1550). Giovio’s
passage is actually not on Georgia but is on a region of sub-­Saharan Africa that
Giovio calls Gog. His passage echoes Pliny’s (Naturalis historia 11.112) inexplicable
statement that some snakes have feet like geese.
33. Pausanias (c. 110–180), Description of Greece 2.28.1 (Anonymous 1903). The
yellowish Epidaurian dragon is most likely Zamenis longissima (Aesculapian snake),
in which the color varies but is yellowish-­olive in lighter-­colored individuals
(Valakos et al. 2008).
34. Lucian (125–180), Alexander the Quack Prophet (Casson 1968), a fictional
satire that Gessner seems to have mistaken for history.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 115

35. Ibn Sı̄nˉa (Canon of Medicine 4.6.3) (A.U.B. Libraries 2007), repeating the
problematic description of Philostratus (see note 29).
36. Solinus, De mirabilibus mundi 30.12 (Latin Library 2012). Restraining with
the tail may be a reference to constriction.
37. We have not identified which of the vari­ous authors named Aetius is quoted
here.
38. Ibn Sı̄na (Canon of Medicine 4.6.3) (A.U.B. Libraries 2007) mentions the
large mouth and fangs of the tinn¯ın (see note 7), but does not mention pigs. The
mention of pigs may therefore be from Aetius. The comparison with pigs is prob-
ably derived from Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.7) (Conybeare 1912).
39. Solinus (De mirabilibus mundi 30.12) (Latin Library 2012) says this, not
Nikandros.
40. Pliny, Naturalis historia 14.36 (Bostock 1855); Aelian, On the Characteristics of
Animals 2.21 (Scholfield 1958).
41. Solinus, De mirabilibus mundi 30.12 (Latin Library 2012). The split tongue
is characteristic of snakes.
42. This statement may be derived from the myth of Talos. According to Apol-
lodorus (c. 180–after 120 BC), Talos is said to have invented the first saw by sawing
through a thin piece of wood with a snake’s jawbone (Library 3.15.6) (Trzaskoma
et al. 2004).
43. Pliny, Naturalis historia 8.13 (Bostock 1855). Here Pliny expresses surprise
that King Juba II of Mauretania believed that dragons were crested.
44. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.7 (Conybeare 1912). See note 29.
Gessner’s “other trustworthy writers” merely quote Philostratus.
45. See note 12.
46. The Latin version cites De proprietatibus elementorum. This work was written
not by Aristotle but by an Arabic pseudo-­A ristotle (Vermij 1998).
47. Aristotle (384–322 BC), History of Animals 9.7.4 (Cresswell 1902); Nikandros,
Theriaca 451–455 (Gow and Scholfield 1953); Aelianus, On the Characteristics of
Animals 6.4 (Scholfield 1958).
48. Thomas de Cantimpré (1201–1272), Liber de natura rerum 8.16 (de Cantim-
pré 1973).
49. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 2.21 (Scholfield 1958). No snake
from Phrygia (central Turkey) is actually large enough to fit this description.
50. Pliny, Naturalis historia 8.13 (Bostock 1855), folklore possibly inspired by
cobras’ hoods.
51. This is possibly based on Augustine (On Psalm 148).
52. This assertion comes from Solinus, De mirabilibus mundi 30.12 (Latin Li-
brary 2012).
53. Al-­Fasi, in History and Description of Africa 3.9 (Pory 1600), inexplicably calls
a griffin-­like creature a dragon.
54. Aristotle, History of Animals 9.7.4 (Cresswell 1902), an interesting but scien-
tifically inaccurate belief. No snakes are herbivorous.
55. We have not identified Gessner’s source for this statement.
56. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 8.11 (Scholfield 1958).
57. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 6.17 (Scholfield 1958), an apocry-
phal account, evidently inspired by constriction.
58. See note 12.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
116 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

59. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 6.63 (Scholfield 1958).

60. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 10.48 (Scholfield 1958).
61. Aristotle, History of Animals 9.2.3 (Cresswell 1902). This, the earliest dragon
reference in natural history literature, shows that the Greeks understood the
dragon as a type of snake.
62. Aelianus does not say this. We have not identified Gessner’s source for this
statement.
63. Nikandros, Theriaca 446–457. Gessner’s translation of Theriaca is poor. For
a better one see Gow and Scholfield (1953).
64. Petrus Gyllius (Pierre Gilles, 1490–1555). Gyllius (1535) here quotes from
Nikandros’s Theriaca.
65. Homer, op. cit. 12.200–205 (Monro and Allen 1920). This, the earliest Greek
reference to the drakˉon, also calls the animal an ὄφις (ophis: snake), showing that
the Greeks understood the drakˉon as a type of snake.
66. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 6.21 (Scholfield 1958), probably a
corruption of Pliny’s account.
67. Pliny, Naturalis historia 11.32, 12.33–34 (Bostock 1855). This passage exag-
gerates the dragon’s size but shows that Pliny understood the draco as a huge,
constricting snake of Africa and India, i.e. a python.
68. Peter Damian (c. 1007–1072/3), Letter 100 33 (Blum 1998). According to the
story, a lion daily brought sailors prey that it had caught, in gratitude to them for
having freed it from the coils of a constricting dragon.
69. Anonymous (probably sec­ond century), Physiologus 30, which actually states
that the dragon flees from the leopard, but all the other animals follow the
leopard (Curley 2009).
70. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.8 (Conybeare 1912). This story is
reminiscent of what one would expect from a confidence trickster trying to sell
an ordinary stone.
71. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC). We have not identified the work
quoted here.
72. Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 8.16 (de Cantimpré 1973).
73. Pliny, Naturalis historia 30.39 (Bostock 1855). Pliny lists traditional remedies
derived from a variety of animal body parts.
74. Pliny, Naturalis historia 32.26 (Bostock 1855), a passage on a marine fish,
not a snake.
75. Pliny, Naturalis historia 29.38 (Bostock 1855). See note 73.
76. Pliny, Naturalis historia 30.24 (Bostock 1855). See note 73.
77. Pliny, Naturalis historia 33.38 (Bostock 1855). See note 73.
78. Serapion the Younger (probably twelfth or thirteenth century), Simplicibus
medicinis 331 (Serapion 1531). He was apparently correct that “dragon blood”
was botanically derived.
79. 1487–1548, a German theologian.
80. Pliny, Naturalis historia 33.38 (Bostock 1855). See note 73.
81. Dioscorides (AD 40–90), in On Medicine.
82. Pliny, in Naturalis historia.
83. Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BC), in History of Plants.
84. This is incorrect. Porto Santo, in the Madeiras, was not discovered by humans
until the fifteenth century and was therefore unknown to Arrian (c. 86–160).

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 117

85. Sante Ardoini, De venenis 6.27 (Ardoini 1562). Here, Ardoini quotes Vincent
of Beauvais in Speculum naturae 29.
86. Here and below, Old Testament dragons are mistranslations. In the Greek
Septuagint the Hebrew tannîyn—which can mean a jackal or a venomous, mythi­
cal sea monster—is translated drakˉon (a better Greek equivalent for the marine
tannîyn is kētos), and the Vulgate retained this mistranslation in Latin as draco.
The conflation continued in the Arabic language, with dragon as tinn¯ın, which
may have influenced Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s choice to include marine fishes in the tinn¯ın
category (see note 7).
87. Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39–65), Bellum Civile 9.727–729 (Latin Library
2012), a metaphor, not meant literally.
88. Al-­Fasi, History and Description of Africa 3.9 (Pory 1600). See note 22.
89. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 6.4 (Scholfield 1958), relating an
ancient Greek explanation for snakes’ toxic bites.
90. Solinus, De mirabilibus mundi 30.12 (Latin Library 2012). The tail of an Af­
ri­can rock python is indeed prehensile and strong.
91. Gessner’s Latin version lists the reference as Aetius, but we haven’t identified
which of vari­ous authors named Aetius this is.
92. Ibn Sı̄nˉa, Canon of Medicine 4.6.3 (A.U.B. Libraries 2007), on the tinn¯ın (see
note 7).
93. This may refer to Pliny’s (Naturalis historia 22.58) (Bostock 1855) statement
that barley meal and vinegar alleviates snakebite.
94. Dioscorides makes this claim in On Medicine 2.24 (Osbaldeston 2000).
95. Ferdinando Ponzetti (1444–1527), Libellus de venenis 3.3 (Ponzetti 1521), a
work on venoms.
96. See note 7.
97. Ibn Sı̄nˉa says this of the agathnimon (see note 7).
98. Ibn Sı̄nˉa says this of the marine trogorn (see note 7).
99. Actually Micah.
100. The Old Testament formula tannîyn and ya’en (Job 30:29, Isaiah 34:13,
43:20; Micah 1:8), which refers to places so desolate that the only sound is the
howling of jackals (tannîyn) and owls (ya’en), is of­ten mistranslated “dragons
and ostriches.”
101. Dioscorides says this in On Medicine 2.196 (Osbaldeston 2000).
102. We did not find Pliny’s reference to this.
103. We have not identified this author.
104. This paragraph mixes statements from Pliny (Naturalis historia 37.57)
(Bostock 1855) and Solinus (De mirabilibus mundi 30.12) (Latin Library 2012).
105. Claudius Claudianus (370–404) actually wrote this about the general
Flavius Stilicho (359–408), who served under emperors Theodosius I and Hono-
rius, in Against Rufinus 2.171–177 and The Third Consulship of Honorius 135–141
(Hawkins 1817).
106. Delos is a small Greek island near the larger island of Andros in the Ae-
gean Sea.
107. Gessner’s Latin version cites Alexander of Alexandria for this statement,
but we have not identified the cited work.
108. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.9.12 (Jan 1852). See note 5.
109. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.20.1–3 (Jan 1852). See note 5.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
118 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

110. Gessner’s Latin version cites Lilius Gr. Gyral for this statement. We have
not identified that author.
111. This is poem 22 of Andrea Alciato’s (1492–1550) Emblemata (Alciato 1550).
112. We have not identified Gessner’s source for these statements.
113. Peter Damian (1007–1072/3). We have not identified the cited work.
114. Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.15.2 (Anonymous 1903), a work full of lore
from vari­ous areas in Greece.
115. Possibly Caelius Rhodiginus (Lodovico Ricchieri, 1469–1525), author of a
commentary on Vergil. The strangulation is a reference to constriction.
116. Publius Virgilius Maro (70–19 BC), Aeneid 2.199–267 (Greenough 1900).
Gessner’s translation is extremely abbreviated.
117. Actually from an older work by Petermann Etterlin (d. 1509), Kronika der
loblichen eydtgenossenschaft (Etterlin 1764).
118. Actually an Arabic pseudo-­A ristotle (see note 46).
119. Olof Månsson (1490–1557), Historia gentibus septentrionalibus 21.44 (Måns-
son 1562). The motif in which oxen have difficulty dragging a dragon is present
also in British dragon lore (Westwood 1985).
120. Publius Ovidus Naso (43 BC–AD 17/18) records this myth in Metamorphoses
3.1–128 (Magnus 1892).
121. Ovidus records this in Metamorphoses 7.1–158 (Magnus 1892).
122. An extreme abridgement of Ovidus, Metamorphoses 7.1–158 (Magnus 1892).
123. Diodorus Siculus (first century BC) records this myth in His­tori­cal Library
4.47.1–3 (Bekker 1890).
124. Herodorus (late fifth–early fourth century BC), On Herakles 14 (Trzaskoma
et al. 2004), explaining the myth allegorically.
125. We have not identified Gessner’s source for this statement.
126. Aulus Gellius (c. 125–after 180), Attic Nights 6.1 (Rolfe 1927), a work on
such disparate subjects as grammar, philosophy, and history.
127. Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (69–after 122), De vita caesarum: Augustus 92
(Ihm 1907). Greco-­Roman heads of state commonly accrued dragon legends.
128. Suetonius, De vita caesarum: Tiberius 72 (Ihm 1907). See note 127.
129. Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus, Byzantine Emperor 582–602.
130. Pietro Crinito (1475–1507), De honesta disciplina 20 (Crinito 1543). It is
unclear where Crinito got this information.
131. Etterlin, Kronika der loblichen eydtgenossenschaft (Etterlin 1764). Etterlin says
that as it swam under a bridge, people saw that the dragon was shaped like a
comet with the head of an ox.
132. Possibly a comet. Albertus (De animalibus 25) says meteors were also com-
monly called dragons (Kitchell and Resnick 1999).
133. The Latin version lists the source as “Iustinus Goblerus ad Gesnerum,”
which suggests personal correspondence to Gessner from Justin Göbler (1504–
1567). The account is based on an inscription on a stone slab in Vienna, accord-
ing to which a nearby well had been filled with soil in the thirteenth century to
prevent people from being poisoned by a basilisk that had taken up residence
within. An investigation by geologist Eduard Suess (1831–1914) located the
“basilisk”: a lump of sandstone resembling a rooster (Ley 1959). This basilisk was
illustrated as a rooster-­headed, eight-­legged, serpent-­t ailed monster in sixteenth-­
and seventeenth-­century books (Münster 1550; Aldrovandi 1640).

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 119

134. Suetonius, De vita caesarum: Nero 6 (Ihm 1907). See note 127.
135. Lucian, Alexander the Quack Prophet (Casson 1968). See note 34.
136. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 11.17 (Scholfield 1958).
137. Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 11.16, in which Aelianus says La-
vinium when he means Lanuvium (Scholfield 1958).
138. Rafaello Maffei (Raphael Volaterranus, 1451–1522). The source of this para-
graph is actually Aelianus, On the Characteristics of Animals 11.2 (Scholfield 1958).
139. This is poem 127 in Alciato’s Emblemata (Alciato 1550).
140. Ovidus, Metamorphoses 1.435–455 (Magnus 1892), a poor translation by
Gessner.
141. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.15.51 (Jan 1852). See note 5.
142. Ambrogio Calepino (1440–1510), Lexicon (Calepino 1530), a work on the
meanings and origins of words.
143. Megasthenes (c. 350–290 BC), Indika (now lost), quoted in Aelianus, On
the Characteristics of Animals 16.41 (Scholfield 1958), where it is worded more like,
“When they drop urine, when it falls on anyone’s skin it becomes putrid and
causes sores.”
144. Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), Exotericarum exercitationum 183.5 (Sca-
liger 1607). This may be a corruption of Megasthenes’s account.
145. Ammianus Marcellinus (325/330–after 391), Rerum gestarum 22.15.25–26
(Rolfe 1940), an elaboration of Herodotus’s (c. 484–425 BC) ibises eating Egyp-
tian snakes that have membranous wings (probably cobras) in Histories, 2.75,
2.76, 3.107 (Hare 2010).
146. Belon (1588) described taxidermic dragon hoaxes, which were common
at the time (Dance 1976; Senter and Wilkins 2013; Senter et al. 2013; Senter and
Klein 2014).
147. Jean Brodeau (d. 1565), Miscellaneorum 3.1 (Brodeau 1555), possibly de-
scribing another taxidermic hoax.
148. Scaliger, Exotericarum exercitationum 183.3 (Scaliger 1607). It is unclear
where this idea originated.
149. Christoph Froschauer, printer of Historia animalium.
150. 1543, as confirmed by the Latin version.
151. In the Latin version, Gessner cites himself as the reference here.
152. Cardano’s (1551) description resembles the hoaxes that Belon (1588)
describes. Gessner’s disbelief that faked dragons could look identical is a naïve
underestimation of the talent of taxidermic artisans. Gessner’s disbelief also
differs from Cardano’s report, which expresses the opinion that such specimens
were artificially constructed.
153. This appears to be a literalization of Nikandros’s statement in Theriaca
443–444 (Gow and Scholfield 1953) that the dragon has a yellow beard. Nikan­
dros was referring to a figurative beard of yellow color, but the Greek word πώγων
(pˉogˉon) can also refer to a hairy beard, a reptilian dewlap, or a rooster’s wattle. As
a result, subsequent authors such as Aelian, Philostratus, Ibn Sı̄nˉa, and Conrad
Gessner mistook Nikandros’s statement for a description of a hairy beard or
dewlap on the dragon.
154. As shown below, one of Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s sources is Pliny the Elder. We have dem-
onstrated in our article that Pliny’s draco is based mainly on Indian and Af­r i­can
rock pythons (Python molurus and P. sebae). These species are nonvenomous, but

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
120 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

it is correct to say that they have fangs. As Senter has personally observed, the
anteriormost several teeth of members of the genus Python are relatively as long
as the venom-­conducting fangs of members of the cobra family, Elapidae.
155. Nubia includes the region around the Nile in south­ern Egypt and north­
ern Sudan.
156. Pliny, Naturalis historia 8.13 (Bostock 1855). The Af­r i­can and Indian rock
pythons are both huge, but the verified record length is greater for the Af­r i­can
than the Indian species (Villiers 1950; Das 2010).
157. According to Arab tradition, Asiya was the name of the wife of the Egyptian
pharaoh during the time of Moses.
158. This is apparently another reference to Nikandros’s Theriaka, in which
Nikandros says (line 438) that the dragon is dark-­colored (χύανόν: chyanon, which
can be interpreted as “black”) with a yellow “beard” (lines 443–444).
159. This is based on a literalization of Nikandros’s poetic statement that
beneath the dragon’s brows are gleaming eyes (Theriaka line 443). Philostratus
(Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3.7) (Conybeare 1912) makes the same mistake, claim-
ing that Indian mountain dragons—his description of which is a corruption of
Nikandros’s dragon description—have eyes that are sunken beneath an over-
hanging eyebrow-­like protrusion. Ibn Sı̄nˉa’s literalization probably occurred
independently, rather than being based on Philostratus’s work, because the lack
of any mention of crests or red coloration or serrated backs (Philostratus, Life
3.6–7) in the Canon indicates that Ibn Sı̄nˉa did not use Philostratus as a source.
160. This is derived from a misreading of Theriaka lines 441–442, in which
Nikandros says that the dragon has three rows of teeth. Snakes in general have
two upper rows and one lower row of teeth.
161. See note 7.
162. Ibn Sı̄nˉa here recognizes two kinds of non-­marine dragon. There is no
etymological indication that these correspond to Philostratus’s mountain dragons
and lowland dragons. It is therefore unclear what two types of real animal, if any,
correspond to the agathnimon and alsier.
163. This refers to a pharmacological section of the Canon.
164. Apparently the same as Aristotle’s σμύρος or μύρος: smyros or myros, the
moray eel (Cresswell 1902).
165. This could also mean “by the world.”
166. In effect, the other of the two marine species.
167. Apparently the same as Aristotle’s τρυγών, trygon: the stingray (Cresswell
1902).
168. Eurasian medicinal plants of the genus Scilla.
169. The Eurasian plant Levisticum officinale.
170. An old Arabic measure of weight, approximately equivalent to 3.5 g.
171. See note 17.

References Cited
A.U.B. Libraries. 2007. “Contents of Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine in English.”
Accessed on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015. http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/saab/avicenna
/contents-­eng.html.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 121

Alciato, Andrea. 1550. Emblemata. Lyons: Guliel Rovilium.

Aldrovandi, Ulisse. 1640. Serpentum et draconum historiae. Bologna: M. Antony
Berm.
Alexander, J. J. G. 1978. Insular Manuscripts, 6 th to the 9 th Century. Lon­don: Harvey
Miller.
Anonymous. 1903. Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio. Leipzig: Teubner.
Anthon, Charles. 1878. A New Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography,
Mythology, and Geography. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Ardoini, Sante. 1562. De venenis. Basel: Henry Peter and Peter Pernam.
Baha el Din, Sherif. 2006. A Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Egypt. Cairo:
Ameri­can University in Cairo Press.
Bekker, Immanuel. 1890. Diodori Bibliotheca Historica. Leipzig: Teubner.
Belon, Pierre. 1557. Portraits d’oyseaux, animaux, serpens, herbes, arbres, hommes et
femmes, d’Arabie & Egypte, observez par P. Belon du Mans. Paris: Guillaume Cavellat.
———. 1588. Les observations de pleusieurs singularitez et choses memorables, trouvees
en Grece, Asie, Iudée, Egypte, Arabie & autres pays estranges. Paris: Guillaume
Cavellat.
Benner, Jeff A. 2005. The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible. College Station: Vir-
tualbookworm.com.
Blum, Owen J. 1998. The Letters of Peter Damian 91—120. Wash­ing­ton, DC: Catholic
University of America Press.
Bodson, Liliane. 1975. Hiera zoia: Contribution à l’étude de l’animal dans la religion
Grecque ancienne. Brussels: Academie Royale de Belgique.
Bostock, John. 1855. The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. Lon­don: Taylor and
Francis.
Brodeau, Johannes. 1555. Miscellaneorum. Basel: Johannes Oporinus.
Brown, Alan K. 1980. “The Firedrake in Beowulf.” Neophilologus 64 (3): 439–43.
Budge, E. A. Wallis. 1904. The Gods of the Egyptians. Chicago: Open Court.
Calepino, Ambrogio. 1530. Lexicon. Basel: Valentin Curio.
Cardano, Girolamo. 1551. De subtilitate. Paris: Jacob Dupuys.
Carr, Michael. 1990. “Chinese Dragon Names.” Linguistics of the Tibeto-­Burman
Area 13 (2): 87–189.
Casson, Lionel. 1968. Selected Satires of Lucian. New York: W. W. Norton.
Conybeare, F. C. 1912. Philostratus. The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the Epistles of
Apollonius and the Treatise of Eusebius. Lon­don: William Heinemann.
Coxe, A. Cleveland. 1886 St. Augustin: Expositions on the Book of Psalms. Vol. 8 of A
Select Library of the Nicene and Post-­Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Edin-
burgh: T and T Clark.
Crane, Gregory R. 2013. “Perseus Digital Library.” Accessed Sep­tem­ber 15, 2015.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu.
Cresswell, Richard. 1902. Aristotle’s History of Animals in Ten Books. Lon­don: George
Bell and Sons.
Crinito, Pietro. 1543. De honesta disciplina, poëtis latinis, et poëmaton. Lyons: Sébas-
tian Gryphius.
Curley, Michael J., trans. 2009. Physiologus: A Medieval Book of Nature Lore. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Dance, Peter. 1976. Animal Fakes and Frauds. Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK: Samp-
son Low.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
122 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

Das, Indraneil. 2010. A Field Guide to the Reptiles of South-­East Asia. Lon­don: New
Holland.
de Cantimpré, Thomas. 1973. Thomas cantimpratensis. Liber de natura rerum. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter.
de Lacépède, Bernard. 1808. Histoire naturelle des ouadrupèdes ovipares et des serpens.
Paris: Académie Royale des Sciences.
de Visser, M. W. 1913. The Dragon in China and Japan. Amsterdam: J. Muller.
de Voragine, Jacobus. 1993. The Golden Legend. Translated by William Granger
Ryan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Etterlin, Peterman. 1764. Kronika von der loblichen eidgnoschaff. Basel: Johann
Jakob Sprengen.
Evelyn-­W hite, Hugh G. 1914. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English
Translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Findlen, Paula. 1996. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture
in Early Modern Italy. Berke­ley: University of California Press.
Frazer, James G. 1921. Apollodorus. The Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Freedberg, David. 2002. The Eye of the Lynx. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gessner, Conrad. 1587. De serpentibus. Zurich: Christoffel Froschouer.
———. 1589. Schlangenbuch. Zurich: Christoffel Froschouer.
Giovio, Paulo. 1550. Historiarum sui temporis. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentini.
Godding, Robert. 2000. “De perpétue à caluppan: Les premières apparitions du
dragon dans l’hagiographie.” In Dans la guele du dragon, edited by Jean-­Marie
Privat, 145–57. Sarreguemines: Pierron.
Gow, A. S. F., and A. F. Scholfield. 1953. Nicander: The Poems and Poetical Fragments.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greenough, James B. 1900. Vergil. Bucolics, Aeneid, and Georgics of Vergil. Boston:
Ginn.
Gyllius, P. 1535. Ex Aeliani historia. Sebastian Gryphium.
Hare, John Bruno. 2010. “Internet Sacred Text Archive.” Accessed Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015.
www.sacred-­texts.com.
Hawkins, A., 1817. The Works of Claudian, Translated into English Verse. Lon­don:
J. Porter.
Ihm, Maximilian. 1907. De Vita Caesarum. Leipzig: Teubner.
Jan, Ludwig. 1852. Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii. Saturnaliorum. New York: Bass.
Kingdon, Jonathan. 1997. The Kingdon Field Guide to Af­ri­can Mammals. Lon­don:
A and C Black.
Kircher, A. 1678. Mundi subterranei. Amsterdam: Johannes Janssonius.
Kitchell, Kenneth F., Jr., and Irven M. Resnick. 1999. Albertus Magnus. On Ani‑
mals. A Medieval Summa Zoologica. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kreiner, Guido. 2007. The Snakes of Europe. Frankfurt: Chimaira.
Latin Library. 2012. “The Latin Library.” Accessed Sep­tem­b er 1, 2015. www
.thelatinlibrary.com.
Ley, Willy. 1959. Exotic Zoology. New York: Viking.
Linnaeus, Caroli. 1758. Systema naturae per regna tria naturae. 10th ed. Stockholm:
Lawrence Salvius.
Lofmark, Carl. 1995. A History of the Red Dragon. Llanrwst: Carreg Gwalch.
Magnus, Hugo. 1892. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Gotha, Germany: Friedrich Andreas
Perthes.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Senter, Mattox, and Haddad    Snake to Monster 123

Månsson, Olaus. 1562. Historia gentibus septentrionalibus. Antwerp: Jean Bellère.

Meineke, Augustus. 1877. Strabo. Leipzig: Teubner.
Migne, Jacques Paul. 1864. Patrologiae Graecae. Vol. 94. Paris: Imprimerie Catho­
lique.
Monro, David B. and Thomas W. Allen. 1920. Homeri Opera in Five Volumes. Ox-
ford: Oxford Classical Texts.
Morrison, Elizabeth. 2007. Beasts Factual and Fantastic: The Medieval Imagination.
Los Angeles: Paul J. Getty Museum.
Münster, Sebastian. 1550. Cosmographiae universalis. Basel: Henri Petri.
Ogden, Daniel. 2013. Drakˉon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman
Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Osbaldeston, Tess Anne. 2000. Dioscorides. de materia medica. Johannesburg: Ibidis.
Ponzetti, Ferdinando. 1521. Libellus de venenis. J. Mazochii: Rome.
Pory, John. 1600. History and Description of Africa of Leo Af­ri­canus. Lon­don: George
Bishop.
Rolfe, John C. 1927. The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
———. 1940. Ammianus Marcellinus. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Scaliger, Julius Caesar. 1607. Exotericarum exercitationum. Frankfurt: Claudium
Marnium.
Scholfield, A. F. 1958. Aelian: On the Characteristics of Animals. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Senter, Phil. 2013. “Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs in Greek and Roman Art and Lit-
erature? An Investigation of Young-­Earth Creationist Claims.” Palaeontologia
electronica 16 (3.25A): 1–16.
Senter, Phil, LaRhonda C. Hill, and Brandon J. Moton. 2013. “Solution to a
440-­Year-­Old Zoological Mystery: The Case of Aldrovandi’s Dragon.” Annals
of Science 70 (4): 531–37.
Senter, Phil, and Pondanesa D. Wilkins. 2013. “Investigation of a Claim of a
Late-­Surviving Pterosaur and Exposure of a Taxidermic Hoax: The Case of
Cornelius Meyer’s Dragon. Palaeontologia electronica 16 (1.6A): 1–11.
Senter, Phil, and Darius M. Klein. 2014. Investigation of Claims of Late-­Surviving
Pterosaurs: The Cases of Belon’s, Aldrovandi’s, and Cardinal Barberini’s
Winged Dragons. Palaeontologia Electronica 17 (3.41A): 1–19.
Serapion the Younger. 1531. Simplicibus medicinis. Strasbourg: George Ulricher
Andlanus.
Spawls, Stephen, and Bill Branch. 1995. Dangerous Snakes of Africa. Sanibel Island,
FL: Ralph Curtis.
Stone, Mark H. 2014. “The Cubit: A History and Measurement Commentary.”
Journal of Anthropology 2014: 1–11.
Stumpff, Johannes, 1544. Schwytzer chronica. Zurich: Christoffel Froschouer.
Swanton, Michael 1997. Beowulf. Rev. ed. New York: Manchester University Press.
Taylor, Thomas. 1804. The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius. Lon­don: R. H. Evans.
Temple, Elzbieta. 1976. Anglo-­Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066. Lon­don: Harvey Miller.
Thayer, Bill. 2013. “Isidorus Hispalensis.” Accessed Sep­tem­ber 1, 2015. http://
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Isidore/.
Topsell, Edward. 1608. The Historie of Serpents. Lon­don: William Taggard.
Trzaskoma, Stephen M., R. Scott Smith, and Stephen Brunet. 2004. Anthology of
Classical Myth. Indianapolis: Hackett.

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
124 Journal of Folklore Research Vol. 53, No. 1

Valakos, Efstratios D., Panayiotis Pafilis, Konstantinos Sotiropoulos, Petros Lym-

berakis, Panayiota Maragou, and Johannes Foufopoulos. 2008. The Amphibians
and Reptiles of Greece. Frankfurt: Chimaira.
Vermij, Rienk. 1998. “Subterranean Fire: Changing Theories of the Earth during
the Renaissance.” Early Science and Medicine 3 (4): 323–47.
Villiers, Armand. 1950. Les serpents de l’Ouest Africain. Dakar, Senegal: Institut
Français d’Afrique Noire.
Vincentius Bellovacensis. 1964. Speculum Naturale. Graz, Austria: Akademische
Druck.
West, Martin L. 2003. Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Westwood, Jennifer. 1985. Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain. Toronto: Granada.
White, Terence H. 1954. The Book of Beasts, Being a Translation of a Medieval Bestiary
from the Twelfth Century. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Wilkinson, Ricahrd H. 1992. Reading Egyptian Art. Lon­don: Thames and Hudson.
Yang, Xin, Yohua Li, and Naixiang Xu. 1988. The Art of the Dragon. Boston:
Shambhala.

Phil Senter teaches zoology and anatomy courses at Fayetteville State

University (Fayetteville, North Carolina). He has published over fifty
peer-­reviewed articles on dinosaur paleobiology, the natural history
of Af­r i­can snakes, Renaissance dragon hoaxes, and the creation-­
evolution debate. He has studied several European and Asian lan-
guages. ([email protected])

Uta Mattox is a certified birth doula and RN who is interested in

customs and traditions of cultures around the world, having lived on
three and traveled on four continents. She is fluent in German and
English, speaks rudimentary Spanish, and has studied French and
Latin. She lives in North Carolina. ([email protected])

Eid E. Haddad is a physiologist with interests in vaccine research and

development. He teaches zoology courses at Fayetteville State Uni-
versity. He has published fourteen peer-­reviewed articles on vaccine
discovery and development for animal applications. He is fluent in
English and Arabic. ([email protected])

This content downloaded from 165.123.34.86 on Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:13:02 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions