The Griffin from the Past
     The griffin is one of the oldest and grandest of fabulous animals. Like other wonder beasts, its appearance and its stories change from age to age, reflecting the values and beliefs of different societies.
     “Griffin” (griffon, gryphon, gryffon, etc.) comes from the Greek word gryphs, meaning “curled, curved, having a hooked nose.” The griffon-vulture is of the genus Gyps. The griffin and the eagle have shared a constellation with the phoenix.

Griffins of the Ancients
     A five thousand-year-old figure with the head and front feet of a bird of prey and the body of a lion walks on a cylinder seal from the ancient city of Susa, in what is now Iran. Other early forms of the griffin appeared in Egyptian tomb paintings and Mesopotamian cylinder seals.
     Graceful Cretan griffins protected kings and drew the chariots of goddesses. In the restored place of Minos, at Knossos, painted griffins with peacock crests guard the royal throne. The beast becomes more fierce in Greek art. Bronze griffin heads, with the decorative knob, feature a hooked beak, pointed ears and tongue. In Greek vase paintings, the griffin is often depicted attacking other animals or men, but the beast was also associated with the god Apollo and the goddesses Athena and Nemesis.
     A common ornamental figure in ancient art, the griffin made only brief appearances in early literature. In the best-known ancient story about griffins, the creatures guard gold up in wild, distant mountains and wage constant warfare with the one-eyed Arimaspi and others who would steal their treasure. An account of the tale, Herodotus said, was in an epic poem, The Arimaspia, written by Aristeas of Proconnesus. Both Pliny and Aelian also recount the story of the gold-guarding griffins.
     In his book on the wonders of India, Ctesias, a Greek physician to the Persian court, describes the griffin as a four-footed bird as large as a wolf, with legs and claws like a lion’s. This beast, he said, is covered with black feathers except for red feathers on its breast.

The Medieval Griffin
     The griffin was a complex animal during the Middle Ages. It was treated as both an agent of the Devil and as a beast of God.
     The bestiaries present the griffin as a violent, evil animal that attacks horses and tears human beings to pieces. Bestiary illustrations show the griffin gripping pigs and other animals in its claws. In Christian sculpture, the griffin is often a monster that devours sinners.
     A griffin envoy of the Devil snatches a king’s son from a feasting hall in the German epic, Gudrun. The boy, Hagan, escapes to a cave where he find three princesses who had also been abducted by the griffins but had eluded them. One day Hagan finds a dead knight washed up on the seashore, dons his armor, kills the griffins, and leads the maidens to safety.
     In another story, griffins pluck sailors from ships and carry them back to their nests to feast upon them. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela heard a version of the tale during his travels to the Far East. Prester John, the fictional Emperor of India, wrote that in his kingdom were great gryffon birds that carried horses and oxen to their nests. And in his Travels, Sir John Mandeville celebrates the strength of the rapacious beasts.
     But the griffin also had a more positive role in medieval symbolism. Church fathers made the lion-eagle griffin a symbol of the earthly and divine natures of Christ, and in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the griffin pulls the chariot of the Church. The iconography of St. Mark as a winged lion is very griffin-like.
     In St. Mark’s Church in Venice there is a scene from one of the most popular stories of the Middle Ages. Alexander the Great, looking for new worlds to conquer, wanted to journey into the sky. He built a chariot and harnassed griffins to it. Then he stuck meant on spears and held the meat above the beasts’ heads. To reach the food, the griffins began to flap their wings. The meat ever out of their reach, the flying animals carried Alexander up into the sky. The griffin is sometimes pictured on Alexander’s shield.

The Heraldic Griffin
     Long associated with rulers both of the earth and the sky, the majestic griffin was a natural choice as an heraldic beast. The griffin is among the most celebrated animals in heraldry. The sharp ears of the griffin distinguish it from the head of the heraldic eagle. In heraldry, only the female griffin has wings; the male often has spikes spreading from its shoulders like rays of light. The opinicus, with lion forefeet and a short tail like a camel, is a close heraldic relative of the griffin. The griffin is commonly depicted on the shields and helmets of knights in Hollywood movies.

The Griffin Challenged
     The seventeenth-century English writer, Sir Thomas Browne, rejected the traditional griffin lore in his Vulgar Errors (1646), as he denied ancient stories about the phoenix, the unicorn, and other animals we now regard as fabulous. The griffin, Browne wrote, is not an actual animal but a figure symbolizing the admirable qualities of a guardian. Also, he said, the beast is:

An Emblem of valour and magnanimity, as being compounded of the Eagle and the Lion, the noblest animals in their kinds; and so it is applicable unto Princes, Presidents, Generals, and all heroic Commanders, and so it is also borne in the Coat of Arms of many noble Families of Europe.

     Alexander Ross defended the griffin against Browne’s charges:

If any man say that there are now no such animals to be seen, I answer that that may be so, but simply because they are not seen does not mean they do not exist or that they have perished, for maybe they have moved to places that are more remote and safer because they are inaccessible to men.

Once again, though, Ross’s defense was no match for the New Science. Artistic and heraldic images of the griffin remained, but like the other wonder beasts, the literary griffin faded from the world for a time.



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