Talk:Dragons in Greek mythology

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Contents 1 "Pytho" != dragon 2 Ladon, the polyglot 3 Maybe a stupid question...but what's a dragon? 4 removed text from "Ladon" section 5 Split

[edit] "Pytho" != dragon

Pytho, the chthonic serpent of the oracle at Delphi is not normally confused with dragons, as someone has confused it here. Busy work without reading or consulting other Wikipedians is fingerpainting. --Wetman 12:38, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions for additional dragons here: dragons feature in the myths of Cadmus, Jason and Medea.

[edit] Ladon, the polyglot

"It was said that his heads spoke with a multitude of voices in many languages." I removed this dubious statement here. What ancient source suggests this? --Wetman 08:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't be too surpised if someone said this about Ladon, as this is a plausible description of Typhoeus, a creature quite simiilar to Ladon; but the question is who, if anyone, say that Ladon spoke many languages with many tongues... --Akhilleus (talk) 06:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maybe a stupid question...but what's a dragon?

The article never defines dragon. So how can I tell if Python was confused with a dragon or not?

One of the Greek words for "snake" is drakon. Python is a drakon (or in the Homeric Hymn, a drakaina--that's a female snake for you Greekless folks). So why isn't he a dragon?

Fontenrose's Python starts (p. 1):

Every god has his enemy, whom he must vanquish and destory. Zeus and Baal,
Coyote and Ahura Mazda, Thor and the Lord of Hosts, are alike in this: that each
must face a dreadful antagonist. Apollo's enemy was the great dragon Python,
whom he had to fight and kill before he could establish his temple and oracle
at Delphi.

Fontenrose goes on to discuss Typhon/Typhoeus, Ladon, the Hydra, and many other snaky creatures as variants of the adversary in the combat myth. To me, Python looks like a dragon, but without a definition, it's sort of hard to tell. Fontenrose doesn't actually give a definition of "dragon" as far as I've seen yet, nor does the Oxford Classical Dictionary and the other stuff I've got at hand. The Wikipedia entry on Dragon doesn't really help all that much. If "dragon" just means "really big snake" then Python fits the bill. --Akhilleus (talk) 06:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed text from "Ladon" section

I removed this from the "Ladon" section: "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"." That's a description of a novel by Jane Yolen, which isn't exactly a classical source. --Akhilleus (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Split

Please comment if you would think it to be appropriate to once again resurrect page Ladon (mythology) from being redirect to have the content what is currently here. Main argument for this is to get interwiki to work properly, which seems to be quite impossible while missing the article from en-wiki. Currently following wikis have articale about Ladon the Dragon: als, bg, br, cs, de, et, es, fi, fr, it, lt, nl, sl, sv and zh, but only als seems to have Dragons in Greek mythology. Most of those have an article about Python as well. My suggestion is that Ladon would be shown here in same manner than Python currently is. --Iwfi 08:47, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

As there hasn't been any comments, I have now proceeded with split. --Iwfi 05:28, 22 August 2007 (UTC)