A Zoobiography of the Ancient Sea Monster (Ancient Environments)

Examining a vast corpus of literary references and artistic representations, this volume offers the first comprehensive study of the ketos - the sea monster imagined by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The chapters examine the three central traditions of thought that existed about this imaginary animal in Graeco-Roman culture.The first tradition concerns the ketos as a divinely associated monster: a force aligned with marine gods (chiefly Poseidon) and one which was fought by Heracles and Perseus.The second tradition features the ketos in more naturalised contexts, as depicted among ancient geographers and historians, as a type of monster roaming the distant waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.The third tradition concerns the fusion of the ketos with Leviathan and the other Old Testament sea monsters in the minds of early Christians.Accordingly, this classical sea monster became the image of the creature that swallowed Jonah, and, alternatively, a monster associated with the Devil a