Manticore

Manticore illustration from The History of Four-footed Beasts (1607) by Edward Topsell

The manticore is a legendary creature, a kind of chimera with the head of a man—often with horns, gray eyes, three rows of iron shark-like teeth, and a loud, trumpet/pipe-like roar—the body of a (sometimes red-furred) lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion, which may shoot out venomous spines or hairs to incapacitate prey (thus confusing its imagery with the cryptozoology of a porcupine, though tarantulas do something similar with their hairs). Occasionally, a manticore will possess wings of some description. Size reports range from lion-sized up to horse-sized.

Origin

The manticore 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 mythology first through a remark by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court of King Artaxerxes II in the fourth century B.C.E., in his notes on India ("Indika"), which circulated among Greek writers on natural history, but have not survived.

The Romanized Greek Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, recalled strange animals he had seen at Rome and commented,

“

The beast described by Ctesias in his Indian history, which he says is called martichoras by the Indians and "man-eater" by the Greeks, I am inclined to think is the lion. But that it has three rows of teeth along each jaw and spikes at the tip of its tail with which it defends itself at close quarters, while it hurls them like an archer's arrows at more distant enemies; all this is, I think, a false story that the Indians pass on from one to another owing to their excessive dread of the beast. (Description, xxi, 5)

”

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 C.E.

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

Nowadays, the manticore is said^{[citation needed]} to inhabit the forests of Asia, particularly Indonesia. The manticore can kill instantly with a bite or a scratch and will then eat the victim entirely, bones and all. Whenever a person disappears completely, it is said that the locals consider it the work of the manticore. An authentic Eastern manticore tradition would clearly have to refer to the creature as a "manticore."

The manticore is also known as the "mantícora," the "mantichor," or by a folk etymology, even the "mantiger." Outside occultist circles, the manticore was still an arcane creature in the Western world when Gian Carlo Menotti wrote his ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore in 1956.

Appearance in Fiction

Comics

• A creature named Manticore appears in the anime Boogiepop Phantom. It feeds on people but does not devour them.
• The graphic novel series The Books of Magic originally created by Neil Gaiman, though carried on by others, features a character which is found to be a manticore, created by John Ney Rieber, Gary Amaro, and Peter Gross.

Film

• Manticore is the name of the yacht of the Janus Organization, in the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995). The real name of the yacht is Northern Cross.
• In the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, the protagonist Napoleon elects the liger as his favourite animal; however, as he attempts to sketch it, he produces a manticore.
• An old lion is enchanted to look like a Manticore in order to draw patrons to a witch's menagerie in the The Last Unicorn (1982).

Games

• Manticore is Monster in My Pocket #14. They appear in the oriental garden, stage 5, of the video game, hiding behind poles, throwing bones, and projecting a dangerous gaze.
• Manticores, both in name only and in full, appear in many videogames as both allies and enemies, in games such as Archon, Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne, Heroes of Might and Magic, Tales of Symphonia, Golden Sun, as Myth Units in Age of Mythology and its expansion pack Age of Mythology: The Titans. Manticores also appear in full as flying mounts in Total Chaos.
• The Caldari State's stealth bomber in MMORPG EVE Online is code-named "Manticore."
• Manticores also appear in the strategy game Heroes of Might and Magic III as creatures controllable by the Overlord and Warlock player classes.
• In the MMORPG The World of Warcraft they appear as an aerial mount. Though their appearance resembles a lot to the common manticore (lion body, scorpion tail and bat wings), they are named as Wyverns.
• The online flash game Which Way Adventure often ended with the player being killed by a manticore.
• In the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, players have the option to fight Manticores in various areas throughout the game.
• Also used in the Game Boy Advance game Golden Sun as a boss in a desert, midway through the game.
• A manticore is the boss of the Bloodpool level in ActRaiser for the Super Nintendo.
• The MMORPG City of Heroes features a superhero named Manticore, who appears in game and in a series of comics based on the game. His name probably derives from the fact that his costume is red with a type of metal mane around his head and neck, and his primary weapon is a bow and arrow.
• Manticores appear as enemies in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance) and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (Nintendo DS). In AoS, obtaining a manticore soul allowed the player to transform into a large, two-legged manticore which would charge forward automatically. In DoS, the manticore soul allowed the player to grow a scorpion tail which served as an extra weapon. The creature itself attacked by breathing fire or swinging its scorpion tail (which could poison the player on impact).
• In Harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban video game there is a beast card of manticore in set of of beasts card.
• In the Warhammer tabletop-game, a Manticore is a mount for Dark Elves. It doesn't look like the common Manticore though, with its lion-head instead of a human head. They have enormous bat wings and strong claws.
• In Knight Online they have Manticore's which have head of lion body of lion and tail of scorpion + wings of bird.
• The collectible card game Magic: The Gathering has a card named Masticore, which resembles the description of a Manticore.
• The manticore appears as an opponent creature in the table top roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons
• In the Birthright campaign setting, the Manticore is an honorable warrior, corrupted by the power of the dead god Azrai. He attempts to control the savagery within.
• The Manticore serves as a monstrous mount for the Dark Elves or Chaos Dwarfs in Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Music

• The rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer used the name "Manticore" for their own Atlantic Records releases. Prior to this, they featured the Manticore in their "Tarkus" suite battling another made-up creature (an armadillo/tank). Additionally, their four-CD compilation box is called Return of the Manticore. [1]
• Canadian heavy metal band 3 Inches of Blood released a bonus track on their Japanese release of Advance and Vanquish CD called "Quest for the Manticore."
• There is a punk/metal band from Minneapolis (now of San Francisco) known as The Martichora.
• MC Andrew mentions the manticore several times in his song, "Monstrous Manual."
• The manticore in mentioned by the American rock band Clutch in the lyrics of its song "Circus Maximus," from the 2005 CD release Robot Hive/Exodus: "From the fiery depths of the planet’s core / The never sleeping for want of eating unholy stench of the manticore."

Literature

• There is an entry on the manticore in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings.
• A manticore appears as a character in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
• The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling includes manticores in its bestiary. In one novel, manticores are crossbred with Fire-crabs to create a new manticore/arthropod species called "Blast-Ended Skrewt." It is also referenced offhand in Prisoner of Azkaban when Hermione Granger is looking for historical cases of out-of-control beasts being let off. A manticore was let off... but only because the Ministry of Magic was afraid to get near it.
• The manticore appears in Indian fantasy author Samit Basu's 2005 novel, The Manticore's Secret.
• In Canadian writer Robertson Davies' "Deptford Trilogy," the middle novel is entitled The Manticore.
• The manticore appears as an entry in Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Magical World Around You, a spin-off of the Spiderwick Chronicles.
• The manticore appears in The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by Eric Rucker Eddison.
• The manticore appears in the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, including the cover of the book A Spell for Chameleon (1977).
• The manticore appears in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin.
• A manticore appears in Madeleine L'Engle's novel Many Waters.
• The manticore appeared as creatures of chaos in Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber.
• In David Weber's Honorverse science fiction universe, Manticore is the homeworld of the Star Kingdom of Manticore, the primary faction and home nation of the primary protagonist, Honor Harrington.
• In the short story collection Hellboy: Odder Jobs, Hellboy faces a manticore summoned by a bullied student in Ray Garton's A Full and Satisfying Life.
• There's an independent bookstore in Orillia, Ontario, called Manticore Books.

Television

• In 2005, the Sci Fi Channel showed a television movie called Manticore. It is about American soldiers in Iraq who discover and must fight against a real manticore. The monster kills and devours anyone who gets in its way and it goes on a rampage in a Iraqi town. [2][3]
• The television show Dark Angel featured a government initiative known as Manticore that created supersoldiers by splicing together the genes of animals and humans.
• The manticore appeared in the television series Charmed in the episode Little Monsters, however, it is nothing like the mythological creature, only sharing the name.
• When the Mystic Rangers acquired Legend Armor to become Legend Warriors, they got a new Megazord called the Manticore Megazord which makes its first appearance in part 3 of the Power Rangers: Mystic Force three-part story, "Dark Wish."
• The Manticore was featured as a Hades Beast in the Japanese Super Sentai series, Mahou Sentai Magiranger. It had the power to use itself as an instrument to make people dance, leaving them helpless so that it could devour them.
• In the original He-Man series (1983) episode “Orko's Favorite Uncle,” Adam, Cringer and Orko stumble into a cave and disturb a manticore in his lair. They incapacitate the territorial manticore and flee from his cave. Taking some creative liberties on the creature, this version of a manticore is 20 feet or so tall and bipedal but slouched in posture, and as it was originally scripted, he was to actually breathe fire, but that part was never animated.
• In an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy a manticore fought Dean Toadblatt.

Other

• Gian Carlo Menotti's above-mentioned ballet, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore.
• The manticore was one of four contenders in a campus-wide vote for a new Swarthmore College mascot. The school also has a student band named Manticore.

References

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