Talk:Demogorgon

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Pronapides (Pronapides of Athens?) later claimed that Demogorgon was the ancestor of all of the Greek gods, a claim that was accepted by many medieval scholars. Later writers often conflated Demogorgon with Hades, or downgraded him to the status of a human magician. Can anyone make any sense of this? Sounds like Demonological doubletalk. Wetman 04:26, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

found a pic http://crpp0001.uqtr.uquebec.ca/w4/campagne/monsters/Demogorgon_600x727.png anyone know how to insert with the proper tags?

The link to the picture isn't working, any other pictures of decent quality that could be used?User:jimfox

I added this page into the category "Fakelore", although if anyone does not feel that it could be considered that, feel free to remove it.--69.205.162.73 00:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice article

Surely the computer game references are irrelevant under the "literature" section. I think this should be renamed or a separate section for non-literature should be created. ahpla 17:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Phantom"

This article should clear up the confusion on this subject, not be an example of it. Someone thoughtlessly deleted "phantom" in the descriptive first line. Please, in order usefully to edit this article, one must understand what a "phantom" is. The article explains how the misunderstanding that is "Demogorgon" came about. If you are not quite sure whether you do understand, read the article again, more slowly. The current version of the article as it is once again is the sensible, fully-exampled version — another someone demanded "references", when the article is essentially a string of references: it should be self-explanatory. --Wetman (talk) 08:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't exist? What in chthonic Greece!?

This is the first I've ever heard (after 3 years of high school Latin, 1 year of college, and a lively "hobbyist" interest in the classical-and-earlier world) of Demogorgon not existing, of his being "a grammatical error, become [a] god." Is the "oral tradition" of classical studies really that far off, or is there another side to the argument? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ex ottoyuhr (talk • contribs) 05:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What Latin text were you assigned in three years of Latin where Demogorgon appeared? --Wetman (talk) 05:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

None of my textbooks mentioned Demogorgon; but I stumbled across a reference to him somewhere and asked my high-school Latin teacher if he'd ever heard of him, and he said that he certainly had, that he was a major chthonic deity and it took until the 4th century for a writer, a Christian writer at that, to dare to mention his name in print. I seem to recall something that looked like a reference to him in Oedipus at Colonnus or maybe late in the Oresteia, but I wouldn't have any way of locating the passage even if I had access to the book. (There might have been a reference in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or somewhere, too.) This instructor was very intelligent, a passionate classicist and a former Catholic seminarian, very good with Classical Greek as well as Latin; so I'm pretty disconcerted to think that Demogorgon was more-or-less-universally recognized as a theological typo, and that the word hadn't reached him.

Then again, as I write this, I'm reminded about how a lot of people interested in the classics basically don't know about the Hittites, and don't realize that there's an academic debate as to whether the Carthagenians really practiced child sacrifice in the way the Romans said they did. (I didn't realize that anyone in the academic world had picked up the argument, which I first encountered in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Dead Past," until I saw the Wikipedia article on it...)

So I admit that there's a real possibility that Demogorgon never existed and I, my instructor, and the circles we've moved in just never happened to get the message; but the conventional reconstruction of Demogorgon strikes me as so compatible with Greek religion -- which was characterized by a pre-IE substrate ("cow-eyed" Hera, the Furies, the Pythian Oracle, Typhon, Athena, Theseus sowing dragon teeth, Demeter burning away an infant's mortality) almost as pronounced as the Celtic one -- that I want to see references -- not just Seznec, but someone with strong classical-era credentials (Seznac seems to have been more an art historian than a classicist), a serious understanding of classical and "para-classical" religion (Minoan, pre-Doric Greek, Etruscan, pre-Celtic, etc.), and no ideological axes to grind (Seznec edited an edition of Diderot), who agrees that Seznec had considered the evidence and wasn't just making fun of a late-Roman-era Christian author. (All the more importantly because late-Roman-Empire Christian authors are such easy targets that even conservative Catholics don't always resist the temptation to make fun of them; John Zmirak, in his admittedly irreverent The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living, describes St. Isidore of Seville in terms evocative of Durant or Asimov...) ExOttoyuhr (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)