Heracles Dragon

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“The Gods, as they affirm, were not from the beginning, but every one of them has come into existence just like ourselves. And in this opinion they all agree. Homer speaks of

Old Oceanus,

The sire of Gods, and Tethys;

and Orpheus (who, moreover, was the first to invent their names, and recounted their births, and narrated the exploits of each, and is believed by them to treat with greater truth than others of divine things, whom Homer himself follows in most matters, especially in reference to the Gods)— he, too, has fixed their first origin to be from water:—

Oceanus, the origin of all.

For, according to him (Ὀρφεύς), water was the beginning of all things, and from water mud was formed, and from both was produced an animal, a dragon with the head of a lion growing to it, and between the two heads there was the face of a God, named Heracles and Kronos. This Heracles generated an egg of enormous size, which, on becoming full, was, by the powerful friction of its generator, burst into two, the part at the top receiving the form of heaven (οὐρανός), and the lower part that of earth (γῆ). The Goddess Gê; moreover, came forth with a body; and Ouranos, by his union with Gê, begot females, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos; and males, the hundred-handed Cottys, Gyges, Briareus, and the Cyclopes Brontes, and Steropes, and Argos, whom also he bound and hurled down to Tartarus, having learned that he was to be ejected from his government by his children; whereupon Gê, being enraged, brought forth the Titans.

The godlike Gaia bore to Ouranos

Sons who are by the name of Titans known,

Because they vengeance took on Ouranos,

Majestic, glitt'ring with his starry crown.”


- Orphic Fragment 57, translated by B. P. Pratten in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2. The original quote comes from a work by the 2nd century AD Christian philosopher Athenagoras the Athenian. (Translation taken from The Orphic Fragments of Otto Kern on HellenicGods.org)


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“If the absurdity of their theology were confined to saying that the Gods were created, and owed their constitution to water, since I have demonstrated that nothing is made which is not also liable to dissolution, I might proceed to the remaining charges. But, on the one hand, they have described their bodily forms: speaking of Hercules, for instance, as a God in the shape of a dragon coiled up; of others as hundred-handed; of the daughter of Zeus, whom he begat of his mother Rhea; or of Demeter, as having two eyes in the natural order, and two in her forehead, and the face of an animal on the back part of her neck, and as having also horns, so that Rhea, frightened at her monster of a child, fled from her, and did not give her the breast (θηλη), whence mystically she is called Athêlâ, but commonly Phersephoné and Koré, though she is not the same as Athênâ, who is called Koré from the pupil of the eye;—and, on the other hand, they have described their admirable achievements, as they deem them: how Kronos, for instance, mutilated his father, and hurled him down from his chariot, and how he murdered his children, and swallowed the males of them; and how Zeus bound his father, and cast him down to Tartarus, as did Ouranos also to his sons, and fought with the Titans for the government; and how he persecuted his mother Rhea when she refused to wed him, and, she becoming a she-dragon, and he himself being changed into a dragon, bound her with what is called the Herculean knot, and accomplished his purpose, of which fact the rod of Hermes is a symbol; and again, how he violated his daughter Phersephoné, in this case also assuming the form of a dragon, and became the father of Dionysus. In face of narrations like these, I must say at least this much, What that is becoming or useful is there in such a history, that we must believe Kronos, Zeus, Koré, and the rest, to be Gods? Is it the descriptions of their bodies? Why, what man of judgment and reflection will believe that a viper was begotten by a God (thus Orpheus:—

But from the sacred womb Phanês begat

Another offspring, horrible and fierce,

In sight a frightful viper, on whose head

Were hairs: its face was comely; but the rest,

From the neck downwards, bore the aspect dire

Of a dread dragon);

or who will admit that Phanes himself, being a first-born God (for he it was that was produced from the egg), has the body or shape of a dragon, or was swallowed by Zeus, that Zeus might be too large to be contained? For if they differ in no respect from the lowest brutes (since it is evident that the Deity must differ from the things of earth and those that are derived from matter), they are not Gods. How, then, I ask, can we approach them as suppliants, when their origin resembles that of cattle, and they themselves have the form of brutes, and are ugly to behold?


- Orphic Fragment 58, translated by B. P. Pratten in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2. The original quote comes from a work by the 2nd century AD Christian philosopher Athenagoras the Athenian. (Translation taken from The Orphic Fragments of Otto Kern on HellenicGods.org)


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The theology according to Hieronymus or Hellanicus, even if the latter is not the same personage, is as follows. In the beginning, he says, there were water and matter, from which earth was coagulated, and these he establishes as the first two principles, water and earth, the latter as capable of dispersion, and the former as providing coherence and (III 161) connection for earth. He omits the single principle (before the two) [on the grounds that it is] ineffable, since the fact that [Hieronymus] does not even mention it, shows its ineffable nature. But as for the third principle after the two, it arose from these, I mean from water and earth, and it is a serpent with the heads of a lion and a bull grown upon it, and in the middle the countenance of a god, and it has wings on its shoulders, and the same god is called Ageless Time, and Heracles. And Necessity is united with it, which is the same nature as Adrasteia, stretching the arms of its bimorph body throughout the entire cosmos, touching the very boundaries of it. I think that this is said to be the third principle that functions as their substance, except that they represent it as male-female in order to show that it is the generating cause of all things.” In my view, the theology in the Rhapsodies has omitted the two first principles together with the one before the two, which is transmitted through [their very] silence [about it], and begins from the third principle after the two, since that principle is the first principle that can be expressed in language, and is commensurate with the human capacity to hear.” For the highest principle in that theology was Ageless Time (Chronos), [who is] the father of Aither and Chaos.

Without question, according to this theology, too, Time (Chronos) as the serpent begat a triple offspring: Aither, which he calls “watery,” and indefinite Chaos, and third after these is misty Erebus. And the second triad is analogous to the first, although it is dynamic, as the first was paternal.’ And so the third member of it is also misty Erebos, and the paternal element and the one extreme is Aither, not unqualified, but moist, and the middle term is indefinite Chaos. (III 162) But in the midst of these principles [the traditions] says, Time (Chronos) begot an egg, and this tradition makes [the egg] the offspring of Time (Chronos), and as birthed among these gods, because the third intelligible triad also proceeds from them. What then is this third intelligible triad? It is the egg. The dyad consists of the two natures in the egg, male and female, and the multiplicity [corresponds to] the various seeds in the middle of the egg. And third after these is the god with two bodies, with golden wings on its shoulders, which has the head of bulls growing from his sides, and on the head a huge dragon likened to all manners of beasts. This must be understood as the intellect of the triad; the many kinds of being constitute the middle term, and the power is the dyad, but the egg itself is the paternal origin of the triad. And the third god belongs to this third triad, whom the theology celebrates as Protogonos and also calls him Zeus the disposer of all things and the entire world, and therefore he is also called Pan. And this is the account that this theology gives concerning the intelligible principles.


- Orphic Fragment 54, translated by Sara Ahbel-Rappe. The original quote comes from Problems And Solutions Concerning First Principles, a work by the 5th century AD Greek scholarch Damascius. Like the quotes above, this is written based on lost works by older authors.


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