Manticore

The ultimate source of manticore was Ctesias, Greek physician of the Persian court during the Achaemenid dynasty, and is based on the testimonies of his Persian-speaking informants who had travelled to India.

Ctesias himself wrote that the martichora (μαρτιχόρα) was its name in Persian, which translated into Greek as androphagon[9] or anthropophagon (ἀνθρωποφάγον),[10] i.e., "man-eater".

[16][9] Aelian citing Ctesias adds that the Mantichora prefers to hunt humans, lying in wait, taking down even 2, 3 men at a time.

[9] Pliny described the "mantichora" in his Naturalis Historia (c. 77 AD)[17] having relied on a faulty copy of Aristotle's natural history that contained the misspelling ("martikhoras").

[13] And for 1500 years afterwards, it was Pliny's account, also copied by Solinus (2nd century), which was held to be authoritative on matters of natural history whether real or mythological.

[13] In the advent of Christianity, writings in the Holy Scripture combined with Plinian-Aristotelian learning gave rise to the Physiologus (also c. 2nd century), which later evolved into the medieval bestiaries[13] some of which contained entries on the manticore.

[54][j] This created the groundwork for the beasts in adjacent chapters being confounded or amalgamated through scribal errors, as described below in the cases of bestiaries produced in France.

[57] Due to further mistransmission, "centicore" became the French misnomer for the yale (eale), a mythic antelope which should be a separate entry in the bestiaries.

[64][12] And Topsell wrote that in India they would "bruise the buttockes and taile" of the whelp or cub they captured, causing it to be incapable of using its quills, thus removing the danger.

The likeness of manticore or similar creatures by another name (i.e. mantyger) have been used in heraldry, spanning from the late High Middle Ages into the modern period.

above),[The manticore has] the face of a man, the mouth open to the ears with a treble row of teeth beneath and above; long neck, whose greatness, roughness, body and feet are like a Lyon: of a red colour, his tail like the tail of a Scorpion of the Earth, the end armed with a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quills.

Dante Alighieri, in his Inferno, depicted the mythical Geryon as having a similar appearance to a manticore, following Pliny's description where it has the face of an honest man, the body of a wyvern, the paws of a lion, and the stinger of a scorpion at the end of its tail.

[79] The heraldic manticore influenced some Mannerist representations of the sin of Fraud, conceived as a monstrous chimera with a beautiful woman's face – for example, in Bronzino's allegory Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (National Gallery, London),[80] and more commonly in the decorative schemes called grotteschi (grotesque).

[84] In the animated sitcom television series Krapopolis, the character of Shlub is depicted as a "mantitaur" which is a half-centaur, half-manticore creature where he was the result of a union between a female centaur and a male manticore.

[85] Citations And inasmuch as the following conversation also has been recorded by Damis as having been held upon this occasion with regard to the mythological animals and fountains and men met with in India, I must not leave it out, for there is much to be gained by neither believing nor yet disbelieving everything.

"There are," replied Apollonius, "tall stories current which I cannot believe; for they say that the creature has four feet, and that his head resembles that of a man, but that in size it is comparable to a lion; while the tail of this animal puts out hairs a cubit long and sharp as thorns, which it shoots like arrows at those who hunt it.