Peryton
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The Peryton is a quasi-legendary creature combining physical features of a stag and a bird. Often depicted as a winged deer, the peryton was said to have the head, neck, forelegs and antlers of a stag, combined with the plumage, wings and hindquarters of a large bird. It was said to hail from the lost continent of Atlantis.
Legend has it that this odd hybrid cast an even more bizarre shadow. The shadow of a peryton, instead of being that of a winged deer, showed up as the shadow of a man. This led many scholars of the day to assume that these creatures were the spiritual manifestations of travelers who had perished far from the shores of home, the souls of murderers trapped in bestial bodies, or the ghosts of long-dead sailors.
While the appearance of perytons suggests a life of peaceful herbivory, perytons were far from gentle plant-eaters. This species was said to have a ravenous taste for human flesh, and was believed to have been instrumental in the fall of Rome.
One alleged account, which was chronicled by an unnamed rabbi in Fez during the 16th century, states that Publius Cornelius Scipio encountered these beasts near the Strait of Gibraltar sometime between 237 and 183 BC. According to this rabbinic historian, Scipio and his soldiers were attacked by flock of these animals, who seemed impervious to their weapons. The perytons descended upon the ships, attacking the sailors, tearing them up with sharp teeth, and wallowing in their blood. However, after completing this gruesome ritual, a peryton's shadow would become its own, and it would be free to fly away and live the rest of its life in peace. Each peryton had to kill one man before its soul would be set at ease, and this probably limited the slaughter. The outcome of the battle was unrecorded.
The earliest verifiable account of the peryton occurs in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings, in which he refers to a now-lost medieval manuscript as a source. The word is completely unknown in sources from Classical antiquity and from morphological and thematic characteristics one could conclude that if is not a completely modern invention, neither could it be of any origin earlier than the medieval period. The concept of the peryton seems to have become widely known due to its inclusion in the first edition Monster Manual from the popular role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.
In Borges' original Spanish edition, El Libro de los Seres Imaginarios, the word is given as peritio so the presumptive Latin original would be peritius, which happens to be the Latin name of the fourth month on the ancient Macedonian calendar, Περίτιος (Peritios, moon of January). The connection of this, if any, to the peryton is unclear.
