01/11/2025
L865.00. Monsters: A bestiary of the bizarre. Christopher Dell. Hardcover. 192 pages. 6.69 x 9.45 inches
"Echidna conceived and brought forth fierce offspring: first she gave birth to Orthus, the hound of Geryones, and then... a monster called Cerberus who eats raw flesh, the hound of Hades, fifty-headed, relentless and strong. And she gave birth to a third, the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna... She was the mother of Chimaera, who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hindpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat..."
And so the monsters were born - according to the ancient Greeks, at least. This vivid passage comes from Hesiod's epic poem Theogony, composed in about 700 BC. The mother, Echidna, was herself a monster, half python and half nymph. Living underground, she was descended from gods, but the line had mutated. Her offspring are a mismatched jumble of parts, fit only for terrorizing people: the hellish Cerberus, the multiheaded Hydra, the deadly Sphinx. Though heroes soon came to destroy these beasts and to restore normality, it was too late: the monsters had already seized our imaginations.
Today they have multiplied beyond Hesiod's wildest dreams, and we are plagued by minotaurs, dog-headed gods, werewolves, centaurs, harpies, sea monsters, tentacled aliens, mermaids, trolls, ogres, devils, demons and cyclopes - to name just a few. Every single culture on earth has its own monsters, and the more that we learn about them, the more fascinating they become. [Usado, en buen estado].
