The origin of the dragon is such a mystery, even the exact etymology of its name is disputed. But you can mostly trace the meaning of dragon back to “serpent” (as with drakon in Ancient Greek and draco in Latin, for instance). If you dig deeper, its root derk- (or drk-) is the equivalent of “to see” in Ancient Greek—suggesting that drk-on also indicates “seeing one,” or “I see.”
Ironically, this power of sight was a one-way street: no one in the Western world could agree on what they saw of the dragon. As such, the earliest descriptions of them were fabulously inconsistent. Generally, dragons were titanic and powerful—but that was about where the common ground ended. Some accounts said that dragons were poisonous; others argued that they breathed fire; still others insisted that they were winged. In fact, if there was only one constant in ancient Western myths, it was this glaring certainty: dragons were stone-cold evil.
Back in the USSR
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I’ve just finished reading two books on Russia, well, actually the old
USSR, set 30 years apart — one in the 1960s, and the other in the 1990s
when the USS...
4 years ago
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