The Dragon From The Past
         In ancient Greek and Latin, “drakon” and “draco” simply meant “serpent.” They were related to terms such as “sharp-sighted” and “watchful.” The English term for dragon, “drake,” as in “firedrake,” also comes from the Greek word. “Worm” is an archaic word for serpent, snake, or dragon.
         ”Here Be Dragons” was a phrase sometimes used on the edges of old maps, referring to remote, unexplored areas and the oceans at the rims of the earth. It’s clear from the Western dragon’s history that “here” was many places and many forms. The great beast encircled the earth and wound through the heavens. It lived in myth and legend, in art, in bestiaries and in heraldry, and it even entered the Renaissance natural histories. In those serious zoological books, the dragon enjoyed one more period of credibility before it moved on to yet another stage of its long and varied history.

Heraldic Dragon
         The evil monster of the medieval stories became a noble and courageous figure in heraldry. The beginnings of the heraldic dragon were emblems on ancient shields and banners and the dragon-shaped windsock standards of Roman armies. Uther Pendragon, the father of the legendary King Arthur, used the figure because he had a vision of a dragon flaming in the sky. “Pendragon” means “head dragon,” or chieftain. The dragon image was handed down to Arthur, and became the battle standard of the British kings.
         The heraldic dragon has the toothed jaws and scaly stomach of a crocodile, pointed ears, the talons of an eagle, the ribbed wings of a bat, and a serpentine tail. Both its tongue and tail are often barbed. A wll-known representation of this beast is the red dragon of Wales. The wyvern is the two-legged variety of the four-legged dragon, and the cockatrice (basilisk) is similar to the wyvern except it has the head of a rooster rather than that of a dragon.



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