The Monstrefact: The Manticore

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the legendary Manticore…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures,
ideas and monsters in time. The gleam of my scarlet

(00:25):
hair mingles with the reflection of the great sands. I
breathe through my nostrils. The terror of solitudes. I spit
forth plague. I devour armies when they venture into the desert.
My claws are twisted like screws, my teeth shaped like saws,

(00:46):
and my curving tail bristles with darts, which I cast
to right and left, before and behind. See see These
are the words of the Manticore, as related in Gustave
Flaubert's eighteen seventy four dramatic poem The Temptation of Saint Anthony.

(01:09):
The monster itself, however, is no mere French literary creation.
It emerges from the pages and dreamscapes of antiquity and beyond.
By virtue of its depictions and mythic riddles. The sphinx
tends to enjoy far greater fame among fantastic lion human hybrids,
but the manticore is even more fabulous in form. While

(01:32):
it does possess the body of a lion and the
head of a man, it also boasts a tale of
fans spikes that may be launched at its adversaries like
venomous missiles. The monster's face makes it even more chimerical,
not perfectly human, but colored a deep red and possessing
a cavernous maw full of interlocking teeth that Pliny the

(01:55):
Elder compared to those of a comb. The Roman Pliny
was fighting the work of earlier Greek physician Cetasius, who
would have lived in Anatolia now part of Turkey during
the fifth century b c. E. He also states that
the creature's cry is like that of a flute and
a trumpet combined, and that above all else, it craves

(02:18):
the taste of human flesh. While the manticors popularity in
Western traditions and in the Christian Church would span centuries,
the creature's origins seemed to date back to ancient Mesopotamia,
perhaps as a distortion of the Persian mard cora, meaning
man slayer. Noted scholar Dorothea McEwen also pointed to some

(02:42):
of the similarities between the manticore and the Ethiopian Sebitat,
a human headed lion with serpents for tales. It lacks
only the teeth in its resemblance to the manticor, and
to be sure, plenty points to Ethiopian origins for the
Manticor as well. However, many sources speak of the manticore

(03:02):
as a creature of ultimate Persian origins, but the manticore
itself seems rather unconcerned with such distinctions. All human beings
are equal in its eyes, creatures worthy of mockery, hunting,
and ravenous consumption. Thanks to my son Sebastian for suggesting
this episode as he was reading through the Dungeons and

(03:26):
Dragons fifth Edition Monster Manual with me and had some
questions about this fabulous creature. Tune into additional episodes of
The Monster Fact each week. As always. You can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(03:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I
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