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Manticore
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The manticore (Baricos in Greek) is a legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth (like a shark), and a trumpet-like voice. Other aspects of the creature vary from story to story. It may be horned, winged, or both. The tail is that of either a dragon or a scorpion, and it may shoot poisonous spines to either paralyze or kill its victims. The creature's feet may also be of a dragon.
manticore myth was of Persian origin, where its name was "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian martya "man" (as in human) and xwar- "to eat").
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Encyclopedia
The manticore (Baricos in Greek) is a legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx. It has the body of a red lion, a human head with three rows of sharp teeth (like a shark), and a trumpet-like voice. Other aspects of the creature vary from story to story. It may be horned, winged, or both. The tail is that of either a dragon or a scorpion, and it may shoot poisonous spines to either paralyze or kill its victims. The creature's feet may also be of a dragon.
Origin
The manticore myth was of Persian origin, where its name was "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian martya "man" (as in human) and xwar- "to eat"). The English term "manticore" was borrowed from Latin mantichora, itself borrowed from Greek mantikhoras—an erroneous pronunciation of the original Persian name. It passed into European folklore first through a remark by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court of King Artaxerxes II in the fourth century BC, in his notes on India ("Indika"), which circulated among Greek writers on natural history, but have not survived.
The Romanised Greek Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, recalled strange animals he had seen at Rome and commented,
Pliny the Elder did not share Pausanias' skepticism. He followed Aristotle's natural history by including the martichoras—mistranscribed as manticorus in his copy of Aristotle and thus passing into European languages—among his descriptions of animals in Naturalis Historia, c. 77 AD.
Pliny's book was widely enjoyed and uncritically believed through the European Middle Ages, during which the manticore was sometimes illustrated in bestiaries. The manticore made a late appearance in heraldry, during the 16th century, and it influenced some Mannerist representations, as in Bronzino's allegory The Exposure of Luxury, (National Gallery, London)— but more often in the decorative schemes called "grotteschi"— of the sin of Fraud, conceived as a monstrous chimera with a beautiful woman's face, and in this way it passed by means of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia into the seventeenth and eighteenth century French conception of a sphinx.
Legacy
Manticores appear frequently in fiction, invoked by authors as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Samit Basu, Madeline L'Engle, Piers Anthony, Robertson Davies, Rick Riordan and J.K. Rowling, among many others. They have appeared in films (e.g. Manticore (2005)), computer games (such as Final Fantasy XI, Archon, Golden Sun, Age of Mythology, and Heroes of Might and Magic 3), role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons), and music (for example, in Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Tarkus" suite).
In 1781, the scientific name Manticora was given to a group of large, flightless tiger beetles from Africa; they are voracious predators with large jaws.
Fictional allusions
Books
- In the book by Rick Riordan, The Titan's Curse, the manticore, named Dr. Thorn, is the headmaster of a military school. Thorn was later killed by the Greek god Dionysus.
- In Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, one of the characters has a short series of encounters with what he calls a manticore in the streets of Jahilia, an ancient Arabian town which is the setting of some of the flashback-dream sequences.
- In Dante's Inferno, Dante and Virgil descend to the 8th circle on the back of Geryon, a Manticore. Here the manticore is a symbol of fraud with a human face to depict the uniquely human nature of the sin.
- Piers Anthony's first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, features a manticore guarding the Good Magician Humphrey's magical demesnes, and poses one of the challenges protagonist Bink must pass to meet the wizard. The paperback printed by Del Rey features this scene with the manticore on the cover.
- Canadian writer Robertson Davies wrote a novel entitled The Manticore, published in 1972. It is the second volume of his "Deptford trilogy," which begins with Fifth Business and concludes with World of Wonders. The manticore figures into protagonist David's psycho-analysis under Jungian analyst Dr. VonHaller. David's dream of the manticore is reflective of himself and the roles he plays interacting with other people and society.
- In the Honorverse novels by David Weber, the Star Kingdom of Manticore is a fictional nation. The three habitable planets in the Manticore system bear the names Manticore, Sphinx, and Gryphon, references to chimerical beasts.
- In the Japanese series Boogiepop (as well as Boogiepop and Others and Boogiepop Phantom), the manticore is portrayed as a clone made by the Towa Organization. Manticore escaped from them, and sought to hide itself in Shinyo Academy by taking the form of a student, where it killed and devoured several others.
- A manticore appears in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. He is portrayed as having "enormous claws". He was described as "his face still human, but his body that of a huge lion. His leathery, spiky tail whipped deadly thorns in all directions".
- A manticore is one of the mythical creatures represented in Mommy Fortuna's carnival in the book The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The manticore is eventually revealed to be merely a lion with a magic spell placed on it to trick viewers.
- In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, while Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and, Hermione Granger are researching for the defense of Buckbeak the Hippogriff, Ron finds a case of a manticore savaging a person in 1296. The manticore was found "not guilty", due to the fact that everyone was too afraid to go near it.
- In A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin, Daenerys is attacked by a manticore. In this case, a poisonous insect or arachnid with a human-like face.
- In John Ney Reiber's version of the comic book The Books of Magic, The Manticore is one of Timothy Hunter's first and greatest foes. It wears a human skin as a disguise, but its triple rows of teeth are visible when it smiles. Though a fantastic creature itself, it employs cold logic to disprove the existence of magical creatures, killing them through banality and placing them in a museum. This latter methodology calls to mind the lethal force of Banality in the White Wolf game Changeling: The Dreaming. It should noted that Reiber's interpretation of the Manticore predates this game by several years.
- In the Spiderwick universe, manticores are cougar-like creatures with the heads of bearded men, tails of poisoned spikes and melodious voices. They are famous man-killers.
- Manticores make several appearances in Roger Zelazny's Amber Series.
- Grotteschi the Red is a manticore in the second novel in Catherynne M. Valente's The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice. The manticores sing and are born of the Upas tree as helpless babies, and are frequently captured and caged.
- In Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game, one of the Battle School armies is named Manticore.
Television
- In the television show Charmed, manticores are vicious demons that, according to the Book of Shadows, have supernatural strength and venomous claws. They communicate in high-pitched cries and tend to travel in packs.
- In the Power Rangers Mystic Force series the Legend Mode's Megazord is called the Manticore Megazord and has the body of a lion and the head of human.
- "Manticore" was the name of the fictional military project/facility in the Fox Network's television series, Dark Angel. The name Manticore was chosen because the company was in the business of combining DNA from several species into a single being. The title character of the series was said to possess, amongst others, feline DNA.
- In March 2008 Stephen Colbert mentioned on his late-night talk show, The Colbert Report, that since acquiring his magical amulet he has not once been attacked by a manticore.
- The Character King Moonracer from the Rankin/Bass Christmas Special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is a Manticore.
Films
- There is also a Sci-fi Channel Original Movie called Manticore.
- A Manticore appeared on the early scriptment for James Cameron's "Avatar" being described as a "black six-limbed panther from Hell, the size of a tractor trailer, with an armored head, a venomous striking tail, and massive distensible armored jaws. Its shiny black skin looks like polished leather, and is banded with thin stripes of yellow and scarlet. It has four powerful legs forming a base for a torso which angles up, centaur-like, to a powerful shoulder girdle. Folded against its chest are two long forearms like the striking limbs of a praying mantis. Curving up over the back is a muscular scorpion tail which ends in a scythe-like stinger, over a foot long."
Video games
- Manticores are enemies encountered in Cadash.
- Manticore is the name of a NPC and Contact in the MMORPG City of Heroes.
- It is a troop unit available for hire in Heroes of Might and Magic III
- It is a neutral creature in Heroes of Might and Magic V
- In Titan Quest there is a Manticore in Chapter 2 in a cave. It is characterized as a legendary beast.
- The Manticore is an enemy creature on the Sega Master System game Phantasy Star.
- The Manticore, along with several variations, are enemies in Golden Sun.
- In Descent: FreeSpace - The Great War, the Manticore is a class of Shivan interceptor, and is the fastest ship in the game.
- Manticore appears as a boss monster in the Super Nintendo game Final Fantasy V.
- Manticore is the name of a (L) unit in Vrael@USEast's Feyvern RolePlay on the online game StarCraft: Brood War.
- Manticores and variations appear as monsters in the MMORPG game Final Fantasy XI.
- Manticore is the name of one of the more powerful civilian / privateer vessels in the PC & Mac game from Ambrosia Software, Escape Velocity Nova.
- Manticores were present in an early Windows video game entitled "Castle of the Winds: A Quest for Vengeance" and in its sequel "Castle of the Winds: Lifthransir's Bane"
- Manticores were also used in Electronic Arts "Archon" 1984 which was available on several computer systems and game consoles including Atari and Commodore .
- Sony Entertainment's Everquest Also used the Beasts In Mid Level Zone.
- Manticores appear as flying mounts in Total Chaos.
- A Manticore is a creature in the Castlevania video game series. It has the tail of a scorpion, wings of a bat and the body/head of a lion.
- Manticores also appear in the popular computer game Age of Mythology and Age of Mythology: The Titans Expansion Pack.
- In Disgaea : Hour/Afternoon of Darkness a manticore type creature appears as an enemy, when once defeated can be used as an ally
- Manticores appear in the Online games called 'Which Way?' and 'Get lost'
- A Manticore appears at the end of stage 2-1 of the Super Nintendo game ActRaiser
- In the card-based action role-playing game Lost Kingdoms II there is a manticore card.
- In the MMORPG EVE Online there is a Caldari Stealth Bomber class ship called "Manticore"
- Manticores also make a random appearance in the RPG Tales of Eternia.
- In the role-playing game Valkyrie Profile for Sony's PSX, the Manticore is a recurrent enemy at Lezard's Tower dungeon.
- Manticores are tamable monsters in the RPG Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World
- Manticores occasionally appear in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, as Dark Elf pets for instance.
Miscellaneous
- The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore is the title of a cantata by Gian Carlo Menotti The three creatures described in the story are depicted as fanciful and benign, not as monsters.
- In Stephen Sondheim's fairytale musical Into the Woods, the manticore is mentioned as a possibility for what destroyed the Baker's house. The Witch dismisses it as imaginary.
- Manticore is referenced by Clutch (band) singer Neil Fallon in the song "Circus Maximus" from the 2005 album Robot Hive/Exodus.
- Tycho Brahe mentions manticores in a strip of the webcomic Penny Arcade.
- Leeds Surrealist Group, in the UK, published a four page A3 bulletin, called 'Manticore: Surrealist Communication' between 1997 and 2006 (eight issues).
- Manticore Records is the name of the record label launched by the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer during the early 70s. It is derived from the inner gatefold sleeve of the album Tarkus by ELP and shows a series of pictures depicting battles between Tarkus and other half-mechanical creatures, until its eventual defeat by a manticore. "Tarkus" then becomes "Aquatarkus", an aquatic version of the land-bound original.
- In the Star Wars expanded universe, Imperial Admiral Daala commanded a small fleet of Star Destroyers whose names were taken from various legendary creatures: Manticore, Basilisk, Hydra, and Gorgon.
- In the Warhammer Fantasy setting, Manticores are vicious creatures of Chaos. They are sometimes ridden into war by the Dark Elves, who see Manticores as holy creatures of their god Khaine.
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