I was doing my new favorite thing to do when waiting in really long lines -- reading Ovid -- when it came high time to the hunt of the Calydonian boar. Okay, yeah, it's a boar. And it is big. So naturally, people want it dead.
It is so muuddled in average-large-animal-ness that it is a wonder that Hercules wasn't the one sent to slay it.
But, being the first time I've ever read all of Methamorphoses in very strict and close translated form (which I can verify, too, as I remembered several of the passages from my Latin courses), what should be stumbled upon other than the Cadydonian boar being big, strong, scary, crop-withering, and doing so with lightning!
I was taken aback at first, thinking it was normal Roman metaphor or metonymy or any of those other wacky literary effects. (My favorite is a zeugma. It sounds like booze.) I mean, lightning flashing out of its mouth could just be representing its powerful roar and oh! Its breath burned grass and withered vines. Huh.
Ovid goes on to use so much lightning (in its charge, its anger, its eyes) that methinks it will gain the Thunder type when it hops on the BD bandwagon.
Has anyone else ever read something about a creature (prolly a real something, not this digital garbage) that really threw you for a loop as odd, surprising, or unfitting? Sometimes, these guys just get a poor rap as only being a simple, limited thing and get outshined by those who slay them or the story as a whole.
Well, at least they get to eat a lotta people.
"When no one was looking, Luthor took forty cakes. He took 40 cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible." ~ DC's The Super Dictionary
LeeTupper
Posts: 158
Member #42
Jan 14, 2009 18:00
Really, I can't think of very many off of the top of my head.
Since I was mainly aquainted with the Orm/Tatzelwurm as cryptids, learning of their more mystic abilities was a small shock to me. (Fire breath for the Tatzelwurm, the death stench for the Orm.) Granted, that was back when I was in Jr. High, sooo... yeah.
The Lambton worm was another one. In the first version I read, it was just a big serpentine dragon. Then, a different (presumably more accurate one, since the rest of the source was more accurate on other things) story said that it could reattach broken body parts and due to this, needed to be fought in a stream where it would wash away.
Though not a BD creature, ever, the Medusa also hit me with this, by aparently being able to fly, IIRC.
And just randomly checking Wikipedia since I thought there was something about the Ceryneian hind, if it is to be trusted, the Stymphalian birds had toxic dung. THAT would be an interesting attack. Though still not quite as fun as the bonnacon version.
MintMan
Posts: 4061
Member #1
Jun 12, 2009 11:17
Medusa had wings, tho'. Brazen ones, at that, along with her claws. That really isn't all that interesting. I think the biggy is that people often only associate her with snakéd hair and neglect her other details.
I was reading more Ovidus Naso, and as it turns out, he uses the Boar-Thunder-Brongoron combo more. The one that took down that jerk Adonis (take that, legendary character~!) was also described heartily with lightning. I don't recall boars being sacred to Zeus or anything. Did ol' Ovid just like the idea of wild pigs and loud noises? Especially their tusks being the source of it?
Then again, the Romans are the ones who viewed giraffes as deadly creatures. Maybe we shouldn't take their natural wit all too seriously...
"No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise." ~ Rorschach, Watchmen
