When Zeus fought the great monster Typhon, Typhon’s blood fell on to Gaia, and from her, the Colchian Dragon arose. He was a huge beast: some said he was longer than a fifty oared long ship. He was fearsome and never needed sleep, and his great eyes never even blinked. He could breathe fire, and because of this, his breath was thick, heavy and hot. Due to his formidable nature, he was chosen to guard the golden fleece in the sacred grove of Ares. As a serpent, he was cold-blooded, and liked to lay in the sun to stay warm. Being unable to leave the fleece, he was unable travel during the day to find the warmest sunspots as he preferred to do. In Ares’ grove, the sun struggled to reach the ground through the canopy created by the trees, and the dragon often found himself shivering in the cool shade. The dragon tried many remedies to fix this: he buried himself deep in the undergrowth so the plants would protect him – but the cool earth only made him colder, he then spent the next day crawling around in circles trying to stay warm through movement – but this only made him sore; he even went so far as to force a woman to make him a coat to cover his great body and trap what little heat he could produce. This seemed the best option, but he found he could not move around as well as he would like, and upon seeing his reflection in a pond he saw how ridiculous he looked. He finally decided to drape himself in the highest branches of the oak tree that he was guarding, but he still could not reach the sun’s warmth. Eventually the dragon became so frustrated that he held his head up to the sky and let out a great roar, loud enough to be heard across the whole earth. Almost immediately, the air around him became warmer, where the suns rays fell, the heat was trapped underneath the thick cloud of breath that he had roared mightily into the sky. This kept him happy for a while, but over time he became accustomed to the warmth and decided he would like to be warmer. He again raised his head to the sky and let loose a huge breath of thick, heavy air and felt the air around him warm and trap more heat from the sun. Over time, heroes began trying to steal the fleece from the dragon – but all were met with failure, in his new state of warmth, the dragon was more agile than ever. Then along came Jason and Medea. With her powers of witchcraft, Medea put the great dragon to sleep. But even asleep, the great serpent’s thick breath is released through his nostrils and trails up into the sky, where it hangs like a heavy cloud – keeping more and more of the sun’s warmth trapped within it and constantly increasing the temperature.
Colchian Dragon disgorging Jason, Athenian red-figure kylix 5th B.C
Analysis
I chose to write my myth on the ‘origins’ of climate change, specifically global warming, as I think it is a very important issue that affects us all. It is caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases trapping the suns energy (and therefore heat) in the atmosphere, which to a certain degree is necessary for life on Earth, although the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 far surpasses the warming trend that would be seen without human influence. I wanted to create a myth that described this greenhouse effect, since that is a leading factor of global warming. I used the breath of the dragon to represent the greenhouse gases that gather and trap the heat from the sun within the atmosphere. The concept of ‘dragon breath’ was utilized to represent this as I thought it was a nod to the amount of methane attributed to livestock by-product, specifically from cattle. This was originally inspired by the fire-breathing bulls (also from Colchis) which are described by Medea as having “hot breath” (Ovid 7.29), and are cattle, so would have been mirrors of the climate crisis. I decided to use a giant serpent-like dragon instead of the bulls, because serpents were commonly associated with Ares, the god of war, and global warming is a war on the planet which can be hugely attributed to anthropogenic factors. When creating the narrative, I then attributed the concept of “hot breath” from the bulls to the Colchian dragon, which was plausible given his fire-breathing ability – the bulls have this same character.
A lot of the background for my myth came from Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, as it contained much of the information that I wanted to have in my myth, and I found other inspiration building from it. The Colchian dragon was chosen as the main character for my myth since there was limited mythologies surrounding it, so I could make up a story without having to be concerned with too many contradictions to other mythological stories. I also thought that my myth would fit in well with the existing mythologies anyway and so instead of having to justify contradictions I would be able to use the existing elements of the myths to my advantage to create a well-rounded and cohesive story. There are several myths that detail the dragons parentage; some say he was begotten from Typhoeus and Gaia, and some say it was Typhoeus and Echidna (Hyginus 151). I decided that his mother should be the Earth (Gaia) as described in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica, since the myth is about global warming (of the Earth) and by the dragon coming from the Earth, it is more plausible that his actions would have long lasting and significant impacts. I chose to use the version of the myth where Medea puts the dragon to sleep instead of the one where Jason kills him; this version of the myth is seen in Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Library (1.132), the Argonautica (Apollonius Rhodius, 4.121), and Philostratus the Younger (11). There are also many versions where Jason puts the dragon to sleep (Ovid and Lycrophon), and a few where he kills the dragon which can be found in Pindar. Medea in some versions of the myth uses magic to put the dragon to sleep, and sometimes poisons him or uses a remedy to sprinkle in his eyes for him to sleep; this detail was not as relevant to the plot of my myth, so I opted for magic since that is how it was described in Rhodius’ Argonautica. I chose to base it on the version of the myth where he is put to sleep so that not only the origin of global warming is described, but also it gives a continued explanation for the warming of the planet, otherwise the warming should have ended when the dragon died. If he continues to breathe out ‘greenhouse gases’ in his sleep, then it fits the current fact that the Earth is being continually warmed.
The location of Colchis is appropriate for this myth, not only because of both the fire-breathing bulls and the Colchian dragon, but it is also described as being the place where Prometheus was imprisoned after sharing the secret of fire with men. Forest fires, or specifically, the burning of wood is an efficient way of releasing carbon into the atmosphere, which is a major greenhouse gas that is a contributor to global warming today. The location of Prometheus on “the mountains which lie above Kolkhis (Colchis) and the Euxine [Black Sea] are the mountains which the Greeks named Kaukasos (Caucasus)” (Strabo 11.5.5). This location is also described in the Argonautica. The dragon’s devotion to the fleece is due to it being gold, Philostratus discusses the nature of dragons and their obsession with gold as seen in the case of the Colchian dragon, as well as Ladon who guards the golden apples of the Hesperides (2.17.6). The positioning of the dragon in the branches of the oak tree in my myth is taken from the primary sources, he is described as “hanging from an oak tree” (Pseudo-Apollodorus, 1. 109), and as “spread on the leafy branches of an oak” (Apollonius Rhodius, 2. 1267).
The Athenian red-figure pottery attached depicts the dragon as he disgorges Jason from his mouth before Medea puts him to sleep. I chose this as a relevant image to represent my myth as it depicts all of the ‘characters’ in the myth as they interact, as well as showing the golden fleece in the background on the oak that the Colchian dragon occupies. It also shows the dragon in a much better size scale than other depictions do. Many show him to be smaller than the pictured people, despite his description being “far surpassing in length and breadth a ship of fifty oars” (Pindar, 4.24). His size is relevant to the narrative as to be able to breathe out a big enough breath, he needs big lungs, so I chose an image that adequately shows his relative size.
One thing my myth does not address is how the greenhouse gases came into being in the first place, I think that this is a difficult concept to capture in a myth since the existence of an atmosphere would be a difficult thing to imagine without modern science. It can be inferred that the initial (normal) concentrations of GHG in the atmosphere is from average global activity (humans, livestock, forests, etc), and the dragons influence is the abnormal annual addition of GHG to the atmosphere.
Works Cited
Apollodorus. The Library. Translated by Sir James George Frazer Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica. Translated by George W. Mooney. London. Longmans, Green. 1912.
Hyginus, Fabulae. Translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies, no. 34. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960.
Lycophron, Alexandra. Translated by Translated by Mair, A. W. & G. R. Loeb Classical Library Volume 129. London: William Heinemann, 1921.
Ovid, Metamorphosis. Translated by A.D. Melville. Oxford World’s Classics Reissue Ed. London: Oxford Paperbacks, 2008.
Pindar, Pythian Ode. Edited and translated by William H. Race. Loeb Classical Library 56. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Philostratus the Elder, Philostratus the Younger, Callistratus. Philostratus the Elder, Imagines. Philostratus the Younger, Imagines. Callistratus, Descriptions. Translated by Arthur Fairbanks. Loeb Classical Library 256. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931.
Strabo, Geography. Translated by Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. Loeb Classical Library 49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917.
Valerius Flaccus. Argonautica. Translated by J.H. Mozley. Loeb Classical Library 286.Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, 1928.
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