Manticore
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The manticore is a legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth, and a trumpet-like voice. Other aspects of the creature vary from story to story. It may be horned or not. The tail is that of either a dragon or a scorpion, and it may shoot poisonous spines to either paralyze or kill its victims.
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[edit] Origin
The manticore myth was of Persian origin, where its name was "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian martya "man" (as in human) and 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.
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)[1]— 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.
[edit] Legacy
Nowadays, the manticore is said by the natives to inhabit the forests of Asia, particularly Indonesia. The manticore is thought to have the ability to kill instantly with a bite or a scratch and will then eat the victim entirely, bones and all. The reason behind these beliefs are that the manticore is an extremely efficient hunter and is not seen or heard by its prey until it is too late. The poison, which is in each of the spines on the end of its tail, is extremely potent and fast-acting. Whenever a person disappears completely, it is said that the locals consider it the work of the manticore.
The manticore is also known as the "mantícora", the "mantichor", or by a folk etymology, even the "mantiger". Outside occultist circles, the manticore was still an arcane creature in the Western world when Gian Carlo Menotti wrote his ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore in 1956.
Manticores appear frequently in fiction, invoked by authors as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Samit Basu, Piers Anthony, Robertson Davies and J.K. Rowling, among many others. They have appeared in films (e.g. Manticore (2005)), computer games (such as Final Fantasy XI, Archon, Golden Sun, Age of Mythology, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3), role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons), and music (for example, in Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus" suite).
In 1781, the scientific name Manticora was given to a group of large, flightless tiger beetles from Africa; they are voracious predators with large jaws.
[edit] Fictional allusions
[edit] Books
- In Salman Rushdie's novel called The Satanic Verses, one of the characters has a short series of encounters with what he calls a manticore in the streets of Jahilia, an ancient Arabian town which is the setting of some of the flashback-dream sequences.
- In Dante's Inferno, Dante and Virgil descend to the 8th circle on the back of Geryon, a Manticore. Here the manticore is a symbol of fraud with a human face to depict the uniquely human nature of the sin.
- Piers Anthony's first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, features a manticore guarding the Good Magician Humphrey's magical demesnes, and poses one of the challenges protagonist Bink must pass to meet the wizard. The paperback printed by Del Rey features this scene with the manticore on the cover.
- 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 psycho-analysis under Jungian analyst Dr. VonHaller. David's dream of the manticore is reflective of himself and the roles he plays interacting with other people and society.
- In the Honorverse novels by David Weber, the Star Kingdom of Manticore is a fictional nation. The three habitable planets in the Manticore system bear the names Manticore, Sphinx, and Gryphon, references to chimerical beasts.
- In the Japanese series Boogiepop (as well as Boogiepop and Others and Boogiepop Phantom), the manticore is portrayed as a clone made by the Towa Organization. Manticore escaped from them, and sought to hide itself in Shinyo Academy by taking the form of a student, where it killed and devoured several others.
- A manticore appears in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. He is portrayed as having "enormous claws". He was described as "his face still human, but his body that of a huge lion. His leathery, spiky tail whipped deadly thorns in all directions".
- Grotteschi the Red is a manticore in the second novel in Catherynne M. Valente's The Orphan's Tales, In the Cities of Coin and Spice. The manticores sing and are born of the Upas tree as helpless babies, and are frequently captured and caged.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, while researching for the defense of Buckbeak, they find a case of a manticore savaging a person in 1296. The manticore was found "not guilty", because everyone was too afraid to go near it.
- In A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin, Daenerys is attacked by a manticore.
[edit] Television
- In the television show Charmed, manticores are vicious demons that, according to the Book of Shadows, have supernatural strength and venomous claws. They communicate in high-pitched cries and tend to travel in packs.
- "Manticore" was the name of the fictional military project/facility in the Fox Network's television series, Dark Angel. The name Manticore was chosen because the company was in the business of combining DNA from several species into a single being. The title character of the series was said to possess, amongst others, feline DNA.
- In March 2008 Stephen Colbert mentioned on his late-night talk show, The Colbert Report, that since acquiring his magical amulet he has not once been attacked by a manticore.
[edit] Films
- A manticore is one of the mythical creatures represented in Mommy Fortuna's carnival in the animated film, The Last Unicorn. The manticore is eventually revealed to be merely a lion with a magic spell placed on it to trick viewers.
- Manticore was the name of the yacht in the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye with Pierce Brosnan.
[edit] Video games
- Manticore is the name of a NPC and Contact in the MMORPG City of Heroes.
- There is a covert operation vessel and stealth bomber in the MMORPG EVE Online named a Manticore, made by the Caldari.
- It is a troop unit available for hire in Heroes of Might and Magic III
- In Titan quest there is a Manticore in Chapter 2 in a cave. It is characterized as a legendary beast.
- The Manticore is an enemy creature on the Sega Master System game Phantasy Star.
- The Manticore, along with several variations, are enemies in Golden Sun.
[edit] Miscellaneous
- In Stephen Sondheim's fairytale musical Into the Woods, the manticore is mentioned as a possibility for what destroyed the Baker's house. The Witch dismisses it as imaginary.
- Manticore is referenced by Clutch (band) singer Neil Fallon in the song "Circus Maximus" from the 2005 album Robot Hive/Exodus.
- Tycho Brahe mentions manticores in a strip of the webcomic Penny Arcade.[1]
- Leeds Surrealist Group, in the UK, published a four page A3 bulletin, called 'Manticore: Surrealist Communication' between 1997 and 2006 (eight issues).
[edit] Real Life Applications
In 2008, t-shirt enthusiast website Emptees.com featured several articles concerning the mythical Manticore. Members of the community adopted the Manticore as their official mascot, thusly The Manticores (an abbreviation for "The West Side Mordor Manticores") were created. Consisting primarily of artists' rights proponents, the group was originally founded by a UK based artist by the name of Godmachine in February of 2008 who subsequently designed the Manticore logo.[2] The objective of the Manticores is to expose instances of design thievery and douche baggery in the design community, namely to protect intellectual properties displayed, sold or otherwise promoted, be it on apparel, websites, portfolios, or anything else wherein the original artist goes unaccredited or is used without legal authorization.
Since their inception, the Manticores have succeeded in thwarting several instances of stolen work, by publicly shaming various individuals of ill repute in the design community.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ John F. Moffitt, "An Exemplary Humanist Hybrid: Vasari's "Fraude" with Reference to Bronzino's 'Sphinx'" Renaissance Quarterly 49.2 (Summer 1996), pp. 303-333, traces the chimeric image of Fraud backwards from Bronzino.
- ^ [http://emptees.com/posts/2183-the-official-manticore-thread Emptees submission on Manticores group.
- ^ [http://emptees.com/talk?person=&category=&order=&search=manticore Several articles posted about Manticore practices and attacks.
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