Myth of the Manticore

My next book unrelated to The Chronicle Gate is going to be about the Manticore, or at least that’s going to be the main creatures. So, I’d thought I’d discuss the myth of the Manticore.

One of the earliest mentions of the Manticore comes from the work titled Indica by Ctesias of Cnidus. Ctesias was a Greek historian of the 5th century BC.

Ctesias told a tail of a man-eating beast with the body of a lion. The fantastical nature of the beast wasn’t the size of the animal, but the fact that it has a face of a man and a tail similar to a scorpion.

Three scorpion like stings could be found on the tail. Each sting was over a foot in length. The poisonous nature of the stings was deadly to all whom they hit. The stings on the tail could be unleashed like an arrow from a bow, so the Manticore was deadly from a distant, but was also deadly at close range for the Manticore had a sting on its forehead, lethal claws and rows of sharp teeth.

Later writers would rewrite the Manticore myth and instead of a body of a lion it became a body of a tiger from stories of India.

The Manticore appears in several books and movies. In literature, it’s part of the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies.

In the Harry Potter universe, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. 

In the Onward animated movie. 

In 2005 Sci-Fi Pictures film titled “Manticore” and a 2022 Spanish film with the same title.

To find out more click on this link:   

https://www.greeklegendsandmyths.com/manticore.html

And here’s a cool video about the Manticore I found