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The Dragon: Book

Southey, in his Commonplace Book, pityingly alludes to this passage, saying, "He believes in dragons and griffins as having heretofore existed."

Draco of the Romans, the Egyptian dragon, and the Nâga of the Sanscrit have no such limited signification, and appear to have been sometimes applied to any serpent, lacertian, or saurian, of extraordinary dimensions, nor is it always easy to determine from the passages in which these several terms occur what kind of monster is specially indicated.

Thus the dragon referred to by Propertius in the quotation annexed may have been a large python. "Lanuvium* is, of old, protected by an aged dragon; here, where the occasion of an amusement so seldom occurring is not lost, where is the abrupt descent into a dark and hollowed cave; where is let down-maiden, beware of every such journey-the honorary tribute to the fasting snake, when he demands his yearly food, and hisses and twists deep down in the earth. Maidens, let down for such a rite, grow pale, when their hand is unprotectedly trusted in the snake's mouth. He snatches at the delicacies if offered by a maid; the very baskets tremble in the virgin's hands; if they are chaste, they return and fall on the necks of their parents, and the farmers cry 'We shall have a fruitful year.' ''† To the same class may probably be ascribed the dragon referred to by Aristotle.‡ "The eagle and the dragon are enemies, for the eagle feeds on serpents"; and again,§ "the Glanis in shallow water is often destroyed by the dragon serpent." It might perhaps be supposed that the crocodile is here referred to, but this is specially spoken of in another passage, as follows ||: "But there are others which, though they live and feed in the water, do not take in water but air, and produce their young out of the water; many of these * From the context, Lanuvium appears to have been on the Appian Road, in Latium, about twenty-fives miles from Rome. † Propertius, Elegy VIII.; Bohn, 1854. ‡ History of Animals, Book ix., chap. ii. § 3; Bohn. § Ibid., Book vi., chap. xx. § 12. || Ibid., Book i., § 6. animals are furnished with feet, as the otter and crocodile, and others are without feet, as the water-serpent."