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Dragonslayers may share ancient Roman
roots ATLANTA, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Dragonslaying legends from
fairy tales, classic operas and modern fantasy may find roots in an ancient
cult of Roman soldiers, according to a recent study from the University
of Georgia in Atlanta. "Stories about fighting monsters go back further
than anyone knows, but particular details of these stories can definitely
be traced back to this mystery religion," said lead researcher Don
Beistle, now at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The study focused on the father of all fairy tale princes,
the dragonslayer Siegfried, who is immortalized in Wagner's classic opera
"The Nibelungenlied." In ancient Germanic folklore, Siegfried
fought a dragon with a magic sword and a cloak of invisibility to win
a cave full of treasure and the hand of the sleeping beauty Brynhilde
-- a tale that has influenced countless other stories, including J.R.R.
Tolkien's modern fantasy epic, "The Lord of the Rings." Scholars have long suspected an even earlier source for
the Siegfried legend -- the classic Greek myth of Perseus, who donned
a helmet of invisibility to kill the monstrous Medusa and then later rescued
the princess Andromeda from a sea dragon. But until now, no one was sure
how the two heroes might have become linked across the millennia. Researcher Don Beistle believes he has found that bridge
-- the mysterious Roman cult of Mithras, which Beistle thinks brought
dragonslaying imagery into the Rhineland. "Mithraism can explain how this story leaps from
classical Mediterranean civilizations to Europe," Beistle said in
an interview with United Press International. "The whole layout of
the popular dragon fight that you see in everything from the operas of
Wagner to Tolkien, even stuff you see in video games -- the magic heirloom
sword, the beast in his underground lair -- all that goes back unwittingly
to this mythic paradigm from the Mithraists." Mithraism was a cult popular among Roman soldiers, whose
rites were secret to outsiders. The cult worshipped the youthful deity
Mithras -- who recent studies suggest is derived from Perseus -- with
ceremonies that celebrated their god's slaughter of a cosmic bull. In his study, Beistle theorizes that Roman troops stationed
on the northern fringes of the empire brought Mithraism to local German
tribes along the Rhine. Over time, elements of the Perseus tale were absorbed
into the local identity of Siegfried. "The monster-slaying story would have been a coming-of-age
tale for the Germans," Beistle told UPI. "The reflection of
a ritual whereby a youth became a young man -- alone and naked, armed
only with their bare hands or a single blade, he faced the most terrifying
thing in the universe, this ultimate chaos, the ultimate threat, and he
overcame it." The evidence for this connection? The cult's gem-studded
cave temple walls, which mimicked the starry heavens. These temples were
always near fresh springs and illuminated by sacred fires that flanked
the altar. "All of these things -- cave, flowing water, fire
and shimmering light glinting off gold and jewels -- also appear in medieval
Germanic descriptions of the dragon's lair in the Siegfried story,"
Beistle said. Jonathan Evans, director of medieval studies at the University
of Georgia, feels that Beistle makes a fairly strong argument. "The parallels really are there," Evans told
UPI. "My cautionary remarks would be that this is very ancient material,
and one of the pitfalls of folklore is over interpretation. Don saves
himself from that charge from careful and exhaustive research." "This research and others like it demonstrates that
even some of our most popular legends and icons are of extreme antiquity,"
he added. "The world didn't spring into existence a half-hour ago,
and these ancient myths still speak to us in very deep ways." Beistle recently presented his study at the International Medieval Studies Congress in Kalamazoo, Mich. |