- Joined
- Jun 26, 2008
- Messages
- 9,413
- Location
- Νεφελοκοκκυγία
- Gil
- 3,746
- FFXIV
- Polyphemos Bromios
- FFXIV Server
- Moogle
- Free Company
- KupoCon
Ahhh. There are so many and there’s something interesting about most mythological creatures.
It’s sometimes valuable to consider mythological creatures within the historical context of the cultures that imagined them / adapted them. Yes, we do get some nonsensical monsters, but most monsters and creatures serve a purpose. A lot of them reveal insight into genuine fears of the period (or at times universal fears that we can still relate to). It’s a rare insight into the psychology of people as you can see what they considered to be horrifying.
Take the centaurs… The dreaded half-man, half-horse hybrid creatures. There were some friendly centaurs who acted as mentors, such as Cheiron (whose name literally means ‘handy’ in Greek, for he tutored Greek heroes such as Achilles and made himself quite handy!). But most centaurs were terrifying brutes who could gallop down from the mountains to trample you to death or rape you. It is sometimes thought that the idea behind the centaur goes back to the time when Greeks first encountered people on horseback and saw how efficient horseback combat could be. Perhaps centaurs came to represent barbarians who were known (and feared) horse-riding peoples such as the Thracians to the near-north of Greece, and the nomadic ‘Scythians’ from the enormously expansive steppes (these same 'Scythians', whose tribes included female warriors, may have inspired myths of the Amazons too).
Other monsters may say less initially about the thoughts and fears of people, but may have been based upon bones and fossils. There’s a convincing argument that the griffin was based on a misinterpretation of protoceratops bones (which look a lot like the earliest representations of griffins). These fossils are found in the Gobi desert today, and may have been found by 'Scythians' and nomads in antiquity along with fragments of gold. To ancient observers it would look like the ‘griffins’ had died guarding the gold, just as the earlier ancient writers who mention the griffin say that griffins spend their time doing... In near-enough the same location as these fossils pop up today. The idea that fossils only started to pop out of the ground in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] Century is inaccurate, it’s just that people didn’t have the scientific framework in which to fit them before that time! (There’s so much more to be said about this as well, but this thread maybe isn’t the space for it).
So… My favourite mythological creature? Maybe centaurs. Maybe griffins. Maybe satyrs / silens or Pan-like creatures like fauns. The hydra is a truly monstrous creature, representing a nightmarish scene where our troubles only multiply indefinitely whenever we try to conquer them. I don’t have a clear favourite as each creature usually serves a purpose.
I have to give a shout out to my pal Polyphemos the Cyclops though. He was already famous by the time that Homer’s Odyssey was composed as his name literally means ‘much-famed’. We know him from the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus and his crew are in his cave, getting eaten, and then Odysseus tricks him into drinking wine and falling asleep so that he can poke his eye and blind him. This is the purpose of the Cyclops, but it didn’t end with this story. Later ancient writers added an earlier tale (notably seen in Theocritus' Idylls) which humanised Polyphemos as a shepherd and cheese-maker, and as a lovestruck teenager who is in love with the sea-nymph Galatea but cannot be with her because she lives in the sea. I mention this because it is worth considering that although monsters are initially intended to be adversarial and fearsome, later poets / writers / etc can develop the story and make these monsters more relatable in a way (not unlike people making chibi Cthulhu plushies or making webcomics about Cthulhu in daily life situations!). Maybe that's the only way to truly beat a monster and prevent it from harming us. We slay them this way today, and the ancients did the same back in their day.
It’s sometimes valuable to consider mythological creatures within the historical context of the cultures that imagined them / adapted them. Yes, we do get some nonsensical monsters, but most monsters and creatures serve a purpose. A lot of them reveal insight into genuine fears of the period (or at times universal fears that we can still relate to). It’s a rare insight into the psychology of people as you can see what they considered to be horrifying.
Take the centaurs… The dreaded half-man, half-horse hybrid creatures. There were some friendly centaurs who acted as mentors, such as Cheiron (whose name literally means ‘handy’ in Greek, for he tutored Greek heroes such as Achilles and made himself quite handy!). But most centaurs were terrifying brutes who could gallop down from the mountains to trample you to death or rape you. It is sometimes thought that the idea behind the centaur goes back to the time when Greeks first encountered people on horseback and saw how efficient horseback combat could be. Perhaps centaurs came to represent barbarians who were known (and feared) horse-riding peoples such as the Thracians to the near-north of Greece, and the nomadic ‘Scythians’ from the enormously expansive steppes (these same 'Scythians', whose tribes included female warriors, may have inspired myths of the Amazons too).
Other monsters may say less initially about the thoughts and fears of people, but may have been based upon bones and fossils. There’s a convincing argument that the griffin was based on a misinterpretation of protoceratops bones (which look a lot like the earliest representations of griffins). These fossils are found in the Gobi desert today, and may have been found by 'Scythians' and nomads in antiquity along with fragments of gold. To ancient observers it would look like the ‘griffins’ had died guarding the gold, just as the earlier ancient writers who mention the griffin say that griffins spend their time doing... In near-enough the same location as these fossils pop up today. The idea that fossils only started to pop out of the ground in the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] Century is inaccurate, it’s just that people didn’t have the scientific framework in which to fit them before that time! (There’s so much more to be said about this as well, but this thread maybe isn’t the space for it).
So… My favourite mythological creature? Maybe centaurs. Maybe griffins. Maybe satyrs / silens or Pan-like creatures like fauns. The hydra is a truly monstrous creature, representing a nightmarish scene where our troubles only multiply indefinitely whenever we try to conquer them. I don’t have a clear favourite as each creature usually serves a purpose.
I have to give a shout out to my pal Polyphemos the Cyclops though. He was already famous by the time that Homer’s Odyssey was composed as his name literally means ‘much-famed’. We know him from the scene in the Odyssey where Odysseus and his crew are in his cave, getting eaten, and then Odysseus tricks him into drinking wine and falling asleep so that he can poke his eye and blind him. This is the purpose of the Cyclops, but it didn’t end with this story. Later ancient writers added an earlier tale (notably seen in Theocritus' Idylls) which humanised Polyphemos as a shepherd and cheese-maker, and as a lovestruck teenager who is in love with the sea-nymph Galatea but cannot be with her because she lives in the sea. I mention this because it is worth considering that although monsters are initially intended to be adversarial and fearsome, later poets / writers / etc can develop the story and make these monsters more relatable in a way (not unlike people making chibi Cthulhu plushies or making webcomics about Cthulhu in daily life situations!). Maybe that's the only way to truly beat a monster and prevent it from harming us. We slay them this way today, and the ancients did the same back in their day.