>>49774575Yes, dragons are snakes.
>Abstract: Dragons, in the original sense of the word, are real animals.These iconic monsters of European folklore are the literary descendants
of ordinary snakes that evolved through the centuries with much help
from the discipline of natural history. Classical authors applied the term
dragon to large snakes such as Aesculapian snakes and pythons.
>Over time, so many fabulous traits accrued in the descriptions of these animals that by the Renaissance dragon descriptions strained credulity, and eighteenth-century scientists dismissed dragons as mythical. >Particularly important among dragon descriptions in the literature of natural history is that of Conrad Gessner in the snake volume of his animal encyclopedia Historiae animalium. Published in 1587, it incorporates a more comprehensive review of dragon lore and literature than any previous work. >Schlangenbuch draws from numerous ancient Greek and Roman works. One of these is Homer’s Iliad, written probably in the ninth century BC, the oldest known written work to use the word drakˉon. The drakˉonis mentioned in six passages of the Iliad: (2.301–320; 3.33–37; 6.181;
11.38–40; 12.195–229; 22.93–97) (Monro and Allen 1920).2
>In one of these (12.208), it is also called an ὄφις (ophis: snake). That Homer usesthe term drakˉon in reference to a snake is consistent with the other passages, which tell us that a drakˉon is small enough to fit beneath
an altar (2.310), is able to climb a tree (2.312–14), eats small birds (2.314), can be carried by an eagle (12.200–203), is something an eagle would bring to the nest to feed its young (12.222), and causes observers to tremble in the wilderness (3.33–35).
