Demogorgon

The origins of the name Demogorgon are not entirely clear, though the most prevalent scholarly view now considers it to be a misreading of the Greek δημιουργόν (dēmiourgón, accusative case form of δημιουργός, 'demiurge') based on the manuscript variations in the earliest known explicit reference in Lactantius Placidus (Jahnke 1898, Sweeney 1997, Solomon 2012).

Boccaccio, in his influential Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, cites a now-lost work by Theodontius and that master's acknowledged Byzantine source "Pronapides the Athenian" as authority for the idea that Demogorgon is the antecedent of all the gods.

"[1] The name variants cited by Ricardus Jahnke include the Latin "demoirgon", "emoirgon", "demogorgona", "demogorgon", with the first critical editor Friedrich Lindenbrog (Fridericus Tiliobroga) having conjectured "δημιουργόν" as the prototype in 1600.

The French historian and mythographer Jean Seznec, for instance, now determines in Demogorgon an allusion to the Demiurge ("Craftsman" or "Maker") of Plato's Timaeus.

For a remarkable early text identifying Ovid's Demiurge (1/1, here) as "sovereign Demogorgon", see the paraphrase of Metamorphoses I in Abraham France, The third part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch (London, 1592), sig.

[8] According to Ariosto's lesser work I Cinque Canti,[9] Demogorgon has a splendid temple palace in the Imavo mountains (today's Himalaya) where every five years the Fates and genii are all summoned to appear before him and give an account of their actions.

When elements of Ariosto's poem supplied Philippe Quinault's libretto for Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera Roland, performed at Versailles, 8 January 1685, Demogorgon was king of the fairies and master of ceremonies.

The passage tells how the fairy, "Alcina", visits Demogorgon in his infernal palace: Aquí Demogorgon está sentadoen su banco fatal, cuyo decretode las supremas causas es guardadopor inviolable y celestial preceto.Las parcas y su estambre delicadoa cuyo huso el mundo está sujeto,la fea muerte y el vivir lucidoy el negro lago del oscuro olvido — (Libro II, estrofa 19)Demogorgon is mentioned in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene: A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by nameGreat Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night,At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight.

— (Canto I, stanza 37)and: Downe in the bottome of the deepe AbysseWhere Demogorgon in dull darknesse pent,Farre from the view of Gods and heauens blis,The hideous Chaos keepes, their dreadfull dwelling is.

— (Book IV, Canto ii, stanza 47)Demogorgon is the central character in Voltaire's 1756 short story "Plato's Dream" - a "lesser superbeing" who was responsible for creating the planet Earth.

[10] One of the lead characters pretends to be Demogorgon in Johann Karl August Musäus' literary fairy tale "Rolands Knappen" ('Roland's Squires') from Volksmärchen der Deutschen (volume 1, 1782).