he was worse than the Kerkopes, worse than Eurybatos or Phrynondas or Aristodemos or Sostratos.” He writes, as translated by Lionel Casson: 180 CE) cites them in a list of notorious cheats and scoundrels in his satirical treatise Alexandros the False Prophet, chapter four. The Kerkopes were apparently well known in late antiquity as mythological tricksters, as evidenced by the fact that the Syrian satirist Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. A metope from the treasury at the mouth of the river Sele at Paestum, dating to the early sixth century BCE, depicts Herakles carrying the Kerkopes in this manner. Herakles chased them to the city of Ephesos in Asia Minor, where he caught them and tied them by their feet to a yoke, which he carried over his shoulders, leaving them dangling upside-down behind him. The story goes that the Kerkopes once stole Herakles’s weapons and ran off with them. Their name in Greek is Κέρκωπες ( Kérkōpes), which appears to be derived from the Greek second-declension feminine noun κέρκος ( kérkos), which means “tail.” The name therefore appears to mean “Tailed Ones.” (The Greek word κέρκος, however, was also a common slang word for “penis,” so make of that what you will.) Their name is sometimes Latinized as Cercopes. The Kerkopes were two mischievous monkey-like creatures who were said to inhabit Lydia and western Anatolia and were known for stealing things and causing trouble. Upon reaching the home of the deities, however, Trygaios discovers that the gods are all gone and they have given the rule of the cosmos over to War.ĪBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of an ordinary dung beetle Later in the play, Trygaios flies on the back of this giant dung beetle to the home of the deities to persuade them to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War. The slaves explain that their master has procured the dung beetle from the region around Mount Etna in Sicily. The play begins with a scene of Trygaios’s slaves feeding excrement to a giant, flying dung-beetle. The protagonist of the play is a middle-aged Athenian citizen named Trygaios. ![]() The hippalektryon is a strange creature, but an even stranger beast appears in Aristophanes’s comedy Peace, which was first performed in Athens at the City Dionysia in 421 BCE, shortly before the approval of the Peace of Nikias. 470 BCE, discovered in the Greek polis of Thebes, depicting a warrior riding on the back of a hippalektryon The name of this creature is sometimes Latinized as hippalectryon.ĪBOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a terra-cotta figurine dating to between c. Wondering what sort of bird the nimble hippalektryon is!”Īischylos: “You freaking idiot! It’s a symbol that’s written on the ships!”ĭionysos: “Oh, well, I thought that it was Eryxis, the son of Philoxenos.” This means, in my own English translation: The following exchange takes place in the play between the god Dionysos and the playwright Aischylos: He characterizes the hippalektryon as a strange-looking creature whose image adorned the sails of Athenian ships. 386 BCE) mocks the hippalektryon’s appearance in his comedy The Frogs, which was originally performed in Athens at the City Dionysia in 405 BCE, in lines 930–938. The ancient Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes (lived c. The hippogryph, however, has a much more obscure and much more ancient cousin: the hippalektryon, which has the front end of a horse and the back end of a rooster. The Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto famously invented the hippogryph, a creature with the front half of an eagle and the back half of a horse, for his epic poem Orlando Furioso, which he composed between 15. Here is a list of some truly bizarre creatures from ancient Greek folklore that definitely weren’t mentioned in D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. Even more bizarre and fascinating creatures can be found mentioned in obscure passages of Greek and Roman literature. ![]() The familiar creatures that everyone knows are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the strange beings that haunt the much broader world of ancient Greek folklore. ![]() This list, however, is not about any of those creatures. Nearly everyone has heard of the serpent-haired Gorgon Medusa with her stony gaze, the bull-headed Minotaur in its Labyrinth, the malicious harpies with the heads of women and bodies of birds, and so forth. Greek mythology is famous for its bizarre and fascinating creatures.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |