Chapter II: Of Dragons in Classical Antiquity

There were numerous dragons in old Greece, “gorgons and hydras and chimæras dire,” and all the best heroes had at least one apiece to their credit; but they were a confusing and unfriendly lot, and we will confine ourselves to the central legend of Perseus.

“An oracle warned Acrisius, King of Argos, that he would surely die by the hand of his daughter Danæ’s son. To prevent this, he locked the fair maiden in a tower of brass, which he built for the purpose. But Zeus, king of Heaven, visited her in the disguise of a golden shower of rain, and, much to Acrisius’ annoyance, she bore a son, Perseus. Acrisius then shut them up in a chest and cast them into the sea; but, far from being drowned or inconvenienced by the motion, the babe slumbered as in a rocking cradle, and in due course the chest was drawn safely ashore on Seriphos by Dictys, brother to Polydektes, king of that island, who took the pair under his protection. Time passed, and Polydektes sought to marry the unwilling Danæ, and, to get rid of Perseus, now a strapping lad, sent him off to kill Medusa and bring home her head. Medusa was a kind of dragon called a Gorgon, who, though mortal herself, had two immortal sisters. Their parentage, though obscure, was extremely distinguished, whence their troubles; for as half-castes they had no lot or portion with gods or men, which to three lively young women (as they then were) was insufferably dull. Their speaking countenances betrayed the depth of their more than human suffering, so much so that in course of time they became so terrible to look upon that any man who should see them would be turned to stone at sight. In this awkward predicament Perseus was fortunate in possessing friends in high places. The goddess Athene gave him a mirror, to strike the creature after the manner of a man shaving, without directly looking on her――an awkward and unconvincing manœuvre. The god Hades gave him a helmet of invisibility, apparently of a higher class than the device adopted by Old Peter in the Bab Ballad. (He, you will remember, duly became invisible, but his clothes did not; whence divers inconveniences.) Or perhaps the hero travelled in primitive simplicity (but that wouldn’t account for his weapons). The god Hermes gave him his own winged shoes, and the god Hephæstus a mortal blade. Armed with these contrivances, and luckily finding the Gorgons asleep, Perseus completed his task and started for home with the head in a travelling-bag with which he had prudently provided himself (for the head was still fatal to view). On his way he turned Atlas to stone (and you can see the Atlas mountains to this day), either out of pity for his sufferings――he had to hold up all heaven on his head, and heaven was, as in early Christendom, completely solid――or, as some say, in revenge for some trivial rudeness. If so, it is a regrettable blot on his otherwise unsullied escutcheon; for even Medusa had longed to die. Flying on, he next beheld Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus king of Ethiopia, bound to a rock and waiting to be devoured by a dragon. This dismal scene had been staged by Zeus to appease the Old Man of the Sea, because the king’s wife had boasted that she (or, some say, her daughter) was more beautiful than the nymphs of the sea. Perseus rapidly appreciated the situation, pressed the terrified damsel to marry him (about which in her distress she made no difficulty, though already betrothed to her uncle Phineus, who was safely under cover at home), killed the instrument of divine vengeance when it lumbered up clumsily from the sea, so that the waves ran red with its blood――and duly married Andromeda. The skulking uncle made a regrettable scene at the ceremony, and the bloody fight was terminated only by Perseus producing the fatal head of Medusa, which turned his enemies to stone. Returning home with his bride, he restored his grandfather, who had been dethroned by a wicked brother, and reached Seriphos in time to save his mother from Polydektes, whom he replaced by the faithful Dictys. Shortly afterwards he was throwing the hammer at some sports organized by a neighbouring monarch, when his aged grandfather unluckily got in the way and received a fatal blow on the head; and the old oracle was fulfilled. Perseus inherited his kingdom, and begot a numerous progeny; but this idyllic scene was overshadowed by the gloom of the accident, and he found no peace until he exchanged thrones with the king of Tiryns, where he lived to a ripe old age, and died, universally lamented, in the bosom of his family.”

Such is the old Greek legend: two dragons, a supernatural birth, supernatural weapons, faithful and wicked brothers, a rescued maiden, and the inexorable doom of Fate. We shall come back to this in our conclusion.