Perseus

by H. F. Scott Stokes

and St. John (Revelation, xx, 2) speaks of “the Dragon, the old Serpent, which is the Devil and Satan,” while the Serpent that tempted Eve in Paradise has been familiar to us all since our earliest childhood; though commentators differ as to whether it appeared with a virgin’s head (as some say) and how it was enabled to speak, and in Eve’s own language; and why the event excited no surprise in her. (Milton tells us—Paradise Lost, ix, 550, and what follows—that it did, and that “not unamazed” she took up the matter with the Serpent, which explained that it had been elevated above all the “other beasts that graze” by tasting of the tree of knowledge. This answer at once satisfied Eve and lured her on to her fall. The whole account is circumstantial but undocumented.) Some say that Eve was inexperienced with animals, not having been present when Adam named them; Eugubinus suggests that the Serpent was a basilisk, at that time harmless; and the Emperor Julian said roundly that the whole story was a fable. However that may be, the dragon has been identified with nearly all the gods and devils of nearly all the religions of nearly all mankind—primitive man does not distinguish between the two, both being primarily non-moral beings of enormous and terrifying power—and Christian evidence is undivided in associating the dragon with the powers of darkness. And what could be more natural than that a dragon should take up its abode in or near Glastonbury, this region of hills and swamps? For it is universally admitted that dragons are to be found on the tops of mountains or in the depths of marshes, and it is a generally accepted test of evidence that what has been believed by all men everywhere in every age is true—absurd, perhaps, but not more absurd than the modern opinion that what one man has once believed is true.

We need not pause long over those other meanings of “Dragon” which so confused our forefathers and so delight our contemporary compilers of dictionaries: we do not propose to study that Dragon (Draco) who gave stringent laws to the ancient Athenians, nor the variety of carrier-pigeon known to natural history under that name, nor the star called Dragon, nor quicksilver, nor (directly) the sea-serpent, nor the flying lizard; nor have we any concern with the dragoons, who take their name either from the dragon wrought upon their guns or from the fact that they were originally mounted infantry, and so a kind of fabulous monster or “popular mystery.” Our subject is the common (or garden) dragon, one of the major vertebrates, blood-red or chameleon-hued, with huge snake-coils, web-feet, bat-wings, and the head of a lion or an eagle, capable of snuffing up the wind (Jeremiah, xiv, 6) and holding companionship with owls (Job, xxx, 29) though some say that the bird intended is the ostrich. It dwelt of old in mountain-caves, and lakes and marshes, and other inaccessible places (the fiercer sort favoured the mountains), and survives to-day only in heraldry, for instance, in the arms of the City of London, and of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. More peculiar and detailed descriptions of the animal will follow later, but it is well to note here its special partiality for water and for swallows (whence swallows flying low are to this day popularly supposed to herald rain), and its habit of guarding treasures—gold, pearls, and precious stones—and of emitting thunder and lightning. Eating its heart confers peculiar qualities, notably fertility and the gift of tongues, and the draconite or precious stone which lies embedded in its forehead has incredible properties in the way of medicine and magic, but only if you catch the animal alive and remove the stone without otherwise injuring it. (The recorded instances of this feat are remarkably rare, most authentic draconites having fortunately fallen from the head of the beast while in flight, very much as a meteorite might fall to-day.)

Without further theorizing or inquiry, we will pass on to the old Greek legend of Perseus, pausing only for the pleasant task of exploding one particularly absurd opinion about the origin of the dragon. Sceptics have suggested that it is nothing but primitive man’s hazy and terrified tradition of the antediluvian monsters which walked the early earth and which adorn the first pages of Mr. Wells’ Outline of History; but science now tells us that something like seven million years elapsed between the passing of the last of these and the first appearance of the first of our fairly human forebears.

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.