Manticore

Origin



Pictish depiction of a manticore and a man.





The manticore myth was of Persian origin, where its name was "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian مارتیا martya "man" (as in human) and خوار xwar- "to eat"). The English term "manticore" was borrowed from Latin mantichora, itself borrowed from Greek mantikhoras—an erroneous pronunciation of the original Persian name. It passed into European folklore first through a remark by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court of King Artaxerxes II
in the fourth century BC, in his notes on India ("Indika"), which
circulated among Greek writers on natural history but have not
survived. The Romanised Greek Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, recalled strange animals he had seen at Rome and commented,

“

The beast described by Ctesias in his Indian history, which he says is called martichoras by the Indians and "man-eater" by the Greeks, I am inclined to think is the tiger. But that it has three rows of teeth along each jaw and spikes at the tip of its tail with which it defends itself at close quarters, while it hurls them like an archer's arrows at more distant enemies; all this is, I think, a false story that the Indians pass on from one to another owing to their excessive dread of the beast. (Description, xxi, 5)

”

Pliny the Elder did not share Pausanias' skepticism. He followed Aristotle's natural history by including the martichoras—mistranscribed as manticorus in his copy of Aristotle and thus passing into European languages—among his descriptions of animals in Naturalis Historia, c. 77 AD.
Later, in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana Greek writer Flavius Philostratus (c. 170-247) wrote:

Manticore in a illustration from the Rochester Bestiary.

“

And inasmuch as the following conversation also has been recorded by Damis as having been held upon this occasion with regard to the mythological animals and fountains and men met with in India, I must not leave it out, for there is much to be gained by neither believing nor yet disbelieving everything. Accordingly Apollonius asked the question, whether there was there an animal called the man-eater (martichoras); and Iarchas replied: "And what have you heard about the make of this animal ? For it is probable that there is some account given of its shape." "There are," replied Apollonius, "tall stories current which I cannot believe; for they say that the creature has four feet, and that his head resembles that of a man, but that in size it is comparable to a lion; while the tail of this animal puts out hairs a cubit long and sharp as thorns, which it shoots like arrows at those who hunt it."[1]

”

Pliny's book was widely enjoyed and uncritically believed through
the European Middle Ages, during which the manticore was sometimes
illustrated in bestiaries. The manticore made a late appearance in
heraldry, during the 16th century, and it influenced some Mannerist representations, as in Bronzino's allegory The Exposure of Luxury, (National Gallery, London)^[2]— but more often in the decorative schemes called "grotteschi"— of the sin of Fraud, conceived as a monstrous chimera with a beautiful woman's face, and in this way it passed by means of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia into the seventeenth and eighteenth century French conception of a sphinx.
A manticore features as medieval sixteenth century graffiti on the wall of North Cerney church in Gloucestershire; it was seen as an unholy hybrid of the zodiacal signs Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius^[3]
[edit] In modern fiction


Canadian writer Robertson Davies wrote a novel entitled The Manticore, published in 1972. It is the second volume of his "Deptford trilogy," which begins with Fifth Business and concludes with World of Wonders. The manticore figures into protagonist David's psychoanalysis under Jungian
analyst Dr. Johanna Von Haller. Interpreted as a beast with a human
face, or as part beast part human, David's dream of the manticore is
reflective of himself and the roles he plays interacting with other
people and society.^[4] The manticore is also the creature that defeats Tarkus in the Emerson, Lake & Palmer opera. It was also in Rick Riordan's The Titan's Curse, the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Saga. Power Rangers: Mystic Force also has a Megazord called the Manticore Megazord, although that is not an actual manticore. J. K. Rowling references the manticore in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are searching for cases of maurading beasts to help Buckbeak the hippogriff. A manticore is an essential plot device in Piers Anthony's first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon
(and appears on the original paperback's cover). There is a Manticore
in the Warhammer tabletop battle game; however, it does not have a
human face, instead possessing a leonine body, the wings of a dragon
and a scorpion's tail. It is primarily associated with the Dark Elves, as many of their generals ride into battle atop these beasts. Manticores appear as a faery species in the Spiderwick universe, appearing as human-faced cougar-like creatures that eat roadkill in Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide and in The Nixie's Song. In the webcomic Penny Arcade, the character Tycho Brahe knows near everything about manticores^[5].
In The Fantastic Chronicles of England (2010 - 2012), manticores appear
in book # 1, book # 4, and book # 5, they potrayed as evil beasts that
follow the orders of Salvatore, they have the head of a cat, a cheetah, or a tiger and the body of either a scorpion, a mantis, or a wasp.

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