Another rather interesting Roman attitude towards mythological creatures was the one they had towards the immortality that the legendary Phoenix bird supposedly brought. In fact, it is said that Elagabalus ordered the search for said bird to devour it and obtain its immortality. This search ended with servants offering the Emperor a cooked bird that they believed was the legendary Phoenix. After eating it, Elagabalus was not sure if he had achieved immortality, so the Praetorians decided to help him verify it...
Let's be honest, guys. If Julius Caesar had found a dragon during his journeys, he only would have needed 5 minutes to turn it into his most deadly weapon
I just love those early modern depictions of elephants, which are accurate enough that you know the artist knew someone who saw an actual elephant once, but which are just off in the weirdest little details like the shape of the ears, or the toes
I believe that the Romans actually met komodo dragons through asian trade routes. In fact, in the novel "I, Claudius", Tiberius has a komodo dragon as his pet, which dies eaten by insects during a cancelled trip of the Emperor to Rome, shortly before Tiberius is assassinated by Caligula
My man got got by Big Gnome. RIP, you were one of the real ones. Seriously though this topic is super fascinating. Like, the fact that their histories just... casually incorporate dragons and other mythical beasts is kind of insane, and really demonstrates just how supernatural people accepted the world was back then. You get bits and pieces of that today, like folks in Ireland who know the fae is real in the same way they know gravity is, it's just a fact to them, but an entire legion just fighting a dragon mid-war is next level. Also that they apparently had 'classic tactics' for fighting them, like putting on spiked armour, which is fantasy as all hell. It's kinda cool that we've been telling these same stories for nearly 3000 years, if not longer. I wonder why the water motif is so common? Maybe it's just that that's the only reason you'd ever engage with a dragon willingly. That account of dragons from Arabia sounds an awful lot like a cobra though - if you see a big snake and someone was describing their 'wings', fleshy like a bats, that came out across their head and body? Yeah, that description roughly fits what he means. A little bit like how Marco Polo describes rhinos but thinks they're unicorns.
It seems like a cursory acceptance of the supernatural to us, but from their perspective it hardly seems irrational. An elephant from Africa is brought into Rome one day. It's a fantastical creature unlike anything you've seen prior. Someone tells you there's also large serpent creatures in Africa. You're likely inclined to believe the story.
Salt water crocs are also candidates for many dragon legends, and other crocs I guess like nile crocs, but somewhere I read something of salt crocs getting into the Egean and sparkling legends till the medieval times. Actually that would explain why they are guarding water sources.
But the Romans had seen crocodiles before. Those weren't unique or rare in their travels to Africa. They also knew the difference in serpents and lizards. They were not as ignorant as we might think. They were very intelligent. They would have described it as a crocodile if it looked like one. They didn't.
Another theory for the encounter in the punic war is it may have been a misidentified whale that the soldiers found beached or fought at sea before sending the skin to rome
Romans bearing dragon & serpent legends from the Greeks who may have been bearing legends from the Phoenicians… All dragons must have leading desires to vanquish Rome. Junius Romulus Rufus Tolcius sadly could not publish his findings on the existence of the Gnomus that reside in the caverns of forests and hidden enclosed valleys found in the Middle Roman Empire
I know you explicitly state that to the Romans, dragons were more serpentine, but could the reptile guarding access to water perhaps reference a crocodile? I know the ancient Egyptians worshipped them and the Greeks were likely familiar, but during the Punic Wars most of the men serving have probably never even been outside of Italy, so a large crocodile would definitely be a monster to them. Then again, crocodiles aren't found in North Africa afaik, but perhaps a released/escaped pet that got really large. It would explain the once-off encounter too...
@@kinanshmahell8065Exactly. I think many people attribute a bit too much ignorance to these great people. They were incredibly intelligent and probably knew more about animals by experience with them in the wild than we do today. This creature was something that shocked them, the same people who fought battles against warriors riding elephants.
They are still around, but they have shrinked considerably. Wikipedia (Draco (lizard)): *_Draco_* is a genus of agamid lizards that are also known as *flying lizards, flying dragons* or *gliding lizards.* These lizards are capable of gliding flight via membranes that may be extended to create wings (patagia), formed by an enlarged set of ribs. They are arboreal insectivores.
I've seen a green tree snake take a rainbow lorikeet on the wing. And I've seen a python which extended from one side of a small creek bed, to the other. I've never seen such a large snake before or since. It's diet must have primarily been rock wallabys given the location.
Libya having big flightless dragons is interesting because most Africa Dragons are basically that, so much so they're basically the same as categories of hostile serpents which also exist there.
I read somewhere that the verb drakein in Greek means something like "to stare". Like the belief that a snake will hypnotize its prey with a stare. Or a basilisk will turn its victim to stone with a stare.
I really enjoyed this video. It is surprising how common the dragon motif is in European art and culture. Regarding Constantine V, I believe that the dragon-slaying happens in AD758 when the aqueduct is repaired, long after the civil-war in 741-743. Although, I don't know where the story falls in the Neapolitan source.
Maybe. Or, maybe we haven't documented them in nature yet. There are still incredibly remote places on earth human beings haven't set foot. We've only explored 10% of the oceans too. We have no idea what's out there in the wilderness or depths.
I understand the difficulties of such a hypothesis but "humongous Reptilian monsters with noxious breath"? We have these, they are called Komodo dragons. Obviously their location in a relatively isolated area of Asia makes it difficult for them to be found much further, but then again there used to be lions in Greece as late as the bronze age and, more famously, elephants in north Africa up to Roman times. I cannot speak to the likelihood of it, but when you have 15 ancient historians talking about the same beast, i doubt they were all pranksters, liars, or gullible idiots.
I think we ought to assume Romans were very intelligent and clearly knew the difference in a creature like a Komodo dragon or crocodile and whatever this creature was. They were not Amazonian tribes practicing cannibalism. These were educated and experienced human beings.
Adrienne Mayor's fantastic book The First Fossil Hunters is a really great for anyone interested in the topic of mythological creatures in the ancient world. It totally changed how I think about myth, ancient history, and paleontology.
Of course dragons aren't real. It's just a coincidence that basically every single culture on the planet developed the concept of flying scaled/feathered beasts with dangerous breaths completely independentenly.
💯 This cannot be coincidence. How many species go extinct? The dodo bird and Tasmanian tiger are just a couple in the last 100 years. Now how many species have gone extinct or have become incredibly rare over the last 2200 years?
"The Hellenic tradition obviously forms the basis of the classical belief in serpentine monsters" The Greek legends about dragons come from the proto-Indo-European and Middle Eastern mythology. The belief in giant serpents associated with water occurs all around the world and may by tens of thousands of years old
I would pay for a action set peice where a roman (or any ancient army really) fights a dragon. It would be a lovely change of pace to have an organized army take down the deadly beast instead of a lone knight.
Prior to the 19th century, dragons could mean any large reptile or serpant, flying or walking, slithering, whatever. We're way more specific nowadays in everything Edit: Sorry, you're on point as usual. Its the same with unicorns. What we call unicorns today is totally different from what people referred to as unicorns before the 20th century, like the single horned Rhino is still called unicorn officially, but nobody knows this. When ancient and medieval people mention unicorn, they're not talking about magical horses, but very real normal animals that just have a single horn somewhere on their head, of which theres a few different species.
The myths and legends of gods slaying serpentine monsters or primordial deities were quite widespread and many “Dragon slaying deities” are more or less related to thunder and lightning. Such as Zeus,Baal Hadad,Indra,etc.
1:46 baseline roman knowledge of dragons 2:30 Plenty the Elder North African dragons vs elephants hypothesis. 8:03 The Eastern part of Rome had a lot of Snake cults. 11:11 Romans and their God damn endless civil wars 🤦
I've seen plenty of historical accounts about magic, multiple gods creating the universe instead of just one and more wild stuff, but that don't necessarily make it true. I want to believe, but then where are their bones? We got Dino and mammoth bones, far older thsn 2000 years. Yet we ain't got dragon bones from 2000 to 1000 years ago. We got tons of historical records on vampires.
Science isn't a person or a court of law that decides arguments. Science is merely a process of learning through observation. What we know changes constantly. There are often incorrect observations made by biased, mistaken, uninformed, presumptuous, dishonest, or afraid humans. In short, humans are wrong a lot.
The fact that many today dont want to acknowledge is that a few types of dinosaurs survived into the ancient era thru very small populations. These were what created the idea of dragons.
@@ManiacMayhem7256 The Romans, Huns, Chinese, Persians, Scythians, Babylonians, Aswar, Central Asia, Turks, and Japan all believed in the existence of dragons.
@@user-cg2tw8pw7j Coincidentally, the larger historical range of crocodiles, large snakes and even komodo dragons encompassed those areas. And we all got bones of those today as well as living specimens
@@ManiacMayhem7256 There is actually quite a bit of evidence that small populations of dinosaurs survived and lived along with humans. For instance there are still sighting of small long neck dinos among indigenous ppls in the congo to this day, ppl who have never heard of dinosaurs. And throughout history we have plenty of artwork of supposed dragons who just happen to look exactly like dinosaurs. Do your research before you make claims about there not being any evidence.
