Dragons in Greek mythology

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Topics in Greek mythology

Gods

Primordial gods and Titans
Zeus and the Olympians
Pan and the nymphs
Apollo and Dionysus
Sea-gods and Earth-gods

Heroes

Heracles and his Labors
Achilles and the Trojan War
Odysseus and the Odyssey
Jason and the Argonauts
Perseus and the Gorgon
Oedipus and Thebes
Theseus and the Minotaur
Triptolemus and the
Eleusinian Mysteries

Related

Satyrs, centaurs and dragons
Ancient Greek religion

Dragons play a role in Greek mythology.

Ladon

Ladon was a dragon-like beast that was slain by Heracles in the garden of the Hesperides during the Twelve Labours required by Eurystheus. He is the hundred-headed dragon that guarded the Garden. He is variously described as the offspring of Phorcys or of Typhon and Echidna. He was also said to have come in contact with Odysseus as a teenager in the form of a hundred-headed serpent as keeper and protector of "The Serpent Maze".

Python

In Greek mythology Python was the earth-dragon of Delphi, always represented in the vase-paintings and by sculptors as a serpent. Pytho was the chthonic enemy of Apollo, who slew it and remade its former home his own oracle, the most famous in Greece.

There are various versions of Python's birth and death at the hands of Apollo. In the earliest, the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, little detail is given about Apollo's combat with the serpent or her parentage. The version related by Hyginus [1] holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not be delivered wherever the sun shone. Thus when the infant was grown he pursued the python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi, and dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill it with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod. The priestess of the oracle at Delphi became known as the Pythia, after the place-name Pytho, which was named after the rotting (πύθειν) of the serpent's corpse after she was slain.

Others

Other dragonlike beasts were Lernaean Hydra with the ever-growing heads and many other serpentine creatures. Generally, dragons were used to guard treasures such as the golden fleece or the orchard of the Hesperides. Echidna was said to be the mother of all beasts, as she mated with the Titan Typhon: Cerberus, Orthrus, Sphinx, Ladon (amongst others) were all offspring of Echidna.

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