Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite: The Science of Monsters by Matt Kaplan Read Free Book Online Page A

monsters proved common throughout most of ancient and medieval history.
    Among the most notable are the Manticore of Persian myth, a beast that had the head of a human, the body of a lion, and a tail covered in venomous spikes that it could launch at its foes like arrows. There were also the many-headed monsters, like the reptilian Hydra that battled Hercules, and the three-headed houndCerberus who guarded the gates of Hades. And some blends just mixed and matched animal traits without any sort of logic, like the Griffin, which had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, and the Cockatrice, which was part rooster and part dragon. Yet few beastly blends are as well known today as Chimera of Lycia.
    First mentioned in Homer’s Iliad, Chimera is described as “a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle.” As if being part lion and part goat with a snake for a tail were not disturbing enough, Homer added that it had the ability to breathe a “terrible flame of bright fire” as well.
    Some descriptions were far bolder. Hesiod suggested in his Theogony that Chimera had multiple heads, one of a “grim-eyed lion,” another of a goat, and a third of a serpent, which some translations describe as a dragon. As for its body, its front portion was leonine, the hind portion reptilian, and the torso goatlike. Hesiod, like Homer, suggests that the monster was capable of breathing fire, but contrary to what modern audiences might expect, it is the goat rather than the dragon head that seems to have done the fire breathing.
    Chimera of Arezzo. Bronze, Etruscan, c. 400 BC. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence. Art Resource, NY.
    Ancient artists went wild with Chimera. Some portrayed it as Homer described, with a snake for a tail, a goat’s torso, and a lion head with lion forelimbs, while others followed Hesiod’s description, placing three heads on the front of the beast, with lion forelimbs, reptilian hind limbs, and, occasionally,dragonlike wings sticking out from its back. Some artistic representations of the monster fall in between the two, portraying a beast with a goat head awkwardly stuck out of the creature’s spine with reptilian and leonine traits mingled throughout the rest of the body.
    Yet as often as Chimera appears in Greek art and literature, the fears that it represented are not as straightforward as those presented by the merely monstrous animals discussed earlier. It seems logical that Chimera partially stood for the unknown dangers beyond civilized lands since it was said to dwell in the land of Lycia, around 500 miles east of Athens, in what today is southeastern Turkey. Even so, the dangers posed by wild beasts were well presented in more mundane monsters like the Nemean lion and Calydonian boar. Chimera had much more to it, but why? What was it that drove people to fear a fire-breathing creature with such a blend of unusual animal traits?
Morphological mess
    It is a challenge to conceive of the possibility that Chimera’s creation was the result of a misinterpreted animal encounter. It just does not make sense. Female lions work in groups to attack prey at night, so it would not be unlikely for a survivor to come away claiming to have been attacked by a lion with multiple heads. But with a snake for a tail?
    Snakes are not known for teamwork, even within their own species, and the idea of a snake being associated with a lion attack is hard to believe. It is conceivable that a poor soul might have been ambushed by both a viper and a lion at the same time during some unlucky evening. But it is a stretch to conceive that this was common enough to create a myth.
    And then there is the goat. Who came up with this? Goats are eaten by lions. 16 There is no getting around it: The concept of an animalencounter creating Chimera just doesn’t make sense. So if the idea of ecology inspiring Chimera is illogical, could there have been something biological