The Griffin

The Griffin (alternatives: Gryps, Gripes, Gryphon or Griffon) is a majestic mythical beast said to have the head, claws and wings of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion.

Roman depiction of a griffin

Hailing from mountain regions of the middle east, there are "thousands of griffins in art between 700 BC and AD 300" (Mayor 45).  The griffin is featured in Persian, Greek and Roman art as well as Roman and Medieval bestiaries, often appearing in family crests and coat of arms.  Griffin's were often associated with gold and the sun.  Some ancient accounts say that griffins guarded the gold of their mountain homes, attacking miners and other gold seekers.  The Greek historian Herodotus reported that the griffins were often at war with the nomadic one-eyed horsemen known as Arimaspians.  It is interesting to note, as Adrienne Mayor does in his article "What were the Griffins?", that "unlike other ancient monsters, the griffin does not interact with mythical heroes; instead it is encountered by real people of a distant land...The dissimilarity between the griffin and other mythical creatures, the consistency of the image over centuries, and the rather mundane details about nests and gold added by later writers, suggest that the griffin may have been based on something observed and verified over time by many people in a specific landscape" (48).

The ancient Roman scholar Pliny the Elder included the Griffin in his Natural History (AD 77), describing it's hooked beak, wings and ears.  Pliny is also the first to mention griffins nests which are said to be full of gold (Mayor 42).  Earliest accounts of the griffin describe it simply as a four legged beast with a beak. Some accounts even claimed that the griffin's wings were actually webbed, more like a bat's than an eagle's, and were used for gliding rather than flying.  According to Margaret Robinson in "Some Fabulous Beasts", it's only in the "seventh century, when Isidore of Seville tells the the story, the griffins are in the Hyperborean mountains and contain a rather higher proportion of lion in their composition than they did at first" (282).

A gryphon fighting a horse retrieved from http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast151.htm

By the Medieval period the griffin was still considered a fearsome beast, included in the Medieval Bestiary, right after Lynx and just before elephant, as "The gryphon is at once feathered and four-footed.  It lives in the south and in the mountains.  The hinder part of it's body is like a lion; its wings and face are like an eagle.  It hates the horse bitterly and if it face to face with a man, it will attack him."  Although some ancient scholars and naturalists, such as Pliny, believed that Griffins kicked up gold while burrowing their nests or lined their nest with gold and jewels as birds sometimes do with coins and bits of tinsel, and thus the griffin's fierce attacks were due to the protection of their eggs rather than the gold itself.  The griffin's legendary golden nests are most likely how they came to be associated with the sun.  According to legend griffins drew both the chariots of the Indian sun god and Apollo, although modern scholars believe that the lore surrounding griffins is most likely based on the discovery of the fossilized skeletons and gold-flecked fossil nests of Protocerotops found in the same mountains regions where tales of griffins originated.

The griffin's legacy continues in modern storytelling as a fearsome beast and creature misunderstood.  In Gail Carson Levigne's Two Princesses of Bamarre, Griffins are horrible, glutenous, wild beasts that plague the land of Bamarre attacking villagers and heroes alike.  In Jim Henson's The Storyteller, the story of the "Luck Child", a young hero much fetch the golden feather from a ferocious griffin that feasts on knights and heroes.  the griffin in this case however keeps one human companion because he is such a good cook and back-scratcher.  The griffin joins the side of the heroes in the Spiderwick Chronicles where the griffin, Byron, forms a bond with one of the Grace twins.


References and Works Cited:

Bestiary: Being an English version of the Bodleian library, Oxford M. S. Bodley 764 with all the original miniatures reproduced in facsimile.  Translated and introduced by Richard Barber.  The Boydell Press.  Woodbridge. 1999. Print.

Mayor, Adrienne and Michael Heaney. "Griffins and Arimaspeans".  Folklore , Vol. 104, No. 1/2 (1993), pp. 40-66. Web. September 4, 2013.

Robinson, Margaret. "Some Fabulous Beasts". Folklore , Vol. 76, No. 4 (Winter, 1965), pp. 273-287. Web. September 4, 2013.

Schimmrich, Steve. "Geomythology - Part III". 17 June 2011. Web. September 7, 2013. http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2011/06/geomythology-part-iii.html.