Record #28
Chronos/Hercules
A primordial multi-headed dragon-being associated with the creation of the cosmos.
Original Text
The treatise Difficulties and Solutions of First Principles by the Neoplatonist Damascus (born about a.d. 48o) records a strange version of the theogony and cosmogony of Orphism, in which Chronos - or Hercules - is a monster:
According to Hieronymus and Hellanicus (if the two are not one), Orphic doctrine teaches that in the beginning there was water and mud, with which the earth was shaped. These two principles were taught to be the first: water and earth. From them came the third, a winged dragon, which in its foreparts had the head of a bull, in its hindparts the head of a lion, and in its middle the face of a god; this dragon was named the Unageing Chronos and also Heracles. With him Necessity, also known as the Inevitable, was born and spread to the boundaries of the Universe . . . Chronos, the dragon, drew from himself a threefold seed: moist Ether, limitless Chaos, and misty Erebus. Under them he laid an egg, from which the world was to hatch. The last principle was a god who was man and woman, with golden wings on its back, and bulls’ heads on its sides, and on its head a huge dragon, like all manner of beasts . . .
Perhaps because what is excessively monstrous seems less fitting to Greece than to the East, Walter Kranz attributes an Oriental origin to these fancies.
According to Hieronymus and Hellanicus (if the two are not one), Orphic doctrine teaches that in the beginning there was water and mud, with which the earth was shaped. These two principles were taught to be the first: water and earth. From them came the third, a winged dragon, which in its foreparts had the head of a bull, in its hindparts the head of a lion, and in its middle the face of a god; this dragon was named the Unageing Chronos and also Heracles. With him Necessity, also known as the Inevitable, was born and spread to the boundaries of the Universe . . . Chronos, the dragon, drew from himself a threefold seed: moist Ether, limitless Chaos, and misty Erebus. Under them he laid an egg, from which the world was to hatch. The last principle was a god who was man and woman, with golden wings on its back, and bulls’ heads on its sides, and on its head a huge dragon, like all manner of beasts . . .
Perhaps because what is excessively monstrous seems less fitting to Greece than to the East, Walter Kranz attributes an Oriental origin to these fancies.