Rationalizing Mythic Monsters in Antiquity

Abstract This chapter describes the problems posed by mythical monsters when measured against strict standards of historical and biological plausibility. The fantastic forms of monsters were held up by ancient authors (e.g. Plato, Palaephatus, and Galen) as prominent obstacles to making myths accord with a ‘doctrine of present things’. In this way, the monsters of the distant mythic past resembled the strange creatures found in reports of far-off lands, in that both challenged the reader’s sense of what was possible. The chapter uses examples of interpretations of creatures encountered by Heracles from Pausanias’ Guide to Greece and elsewhere to illustrate the various methods by which monsters could be rationalized. These include explanations of monsters as misunderstood descriptions of normal animals; explanations which assume that people might have had the names of animals; aspersions of poetic exaggeration; aspersions of primitive naïvety; and bolstering plausibility through analogies with strange creatures that do exist.