While the above image is what fantasy gamers typically think of when they hear the name, the appearance of the manticore has varied wildly in art over the past centuries. The only thing that remains consistent about the various depictions of the manticore, at least in pre-modern art, is that it has the body of a lion or tiger and the face of a human being. Modern art has further confused matters by dispensing with the human face, but I will ignore those depictions for simplicity.
The word
manticore derives from an unattested Persian word meaning “man-eater.” A folk etymology analyzes it as a compound of
man and
tiger. The manticore
is sometimes conflated with the leucrota due to both having absurdly wide smiles, a penchant for swallowing prey whole, and the ability to mimic human voices.
Not only that, but it has been given numerous names of unknown or questionable etymology like
baricos,
lampago,
man-tiger,
man-lion,
satyral, and variant spellings thereof (as this was in the days before dictionaries and spellcheck). In heraldry circles there were attempts to differentiate these names, but to my knowledge these remain synonyms according to the
Oxford English Dictionary.
The Greek manticore
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| ©1998 Jonathan Hunt |
The image above depicts the manticore as it was
described by Greek historians.
Aristotle described it as having the body of a lion, the face of a man, triple rows of teeth (which it used to eat whole anyone it came across, panoply and all), red in color, and having the tail of a scorpion covered in quills like a porcupine
—which it throws like darts. Although forgotten in modern depictions, its voice was described as like the sounds of a pipe and trumpet.
Curious, both Aristotle and Ctesias describe it as having multiple darts or stings: Ctesias claims it has a sting at the end of its tail, one on both sides of its tail and one at the top of its head (perhaps an allusion to horns? venomous horns?), whereas Aristotle claims its body is covered with spines instead of hair.
The medieval manticore
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| © Rudolf Freund; LIFE Apr 23, 1951 |
The images above depicts the manticore as it typically appears in heraldry
and bestiaries. Here it is depicted as a lion or tiger with a human face, three rows of teeth, and a spiked mace at the end of its tail. I have no idea where this change in depiction came from.
The man-lion or man-tiger
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| Ulisse Aldrovandi's Monstrorum Historia, 1642. |
Medieval bestiaries sometimes depicted the manticore without the characteristic tail, resulting in a creature variously labeled a "man-tiger" or "man-lion" in heraldry (see above). Compare to the "androsphinx" of Egyptology (see below).
The image below depicts the
man-tyger (again, spelling varies) as having the body of a lion and the head, hands and feet of a man or possibly a baboon (heraldry is weird that way).
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Tudor Banner Manuscript, banner of Mayster Ratleff,
man-tyger = body of lion, head/hands/feet of a man (baboon?) |
The horned mantyger or satyral
The image below depicts another
man-tyger, also called a
satyral, as having the body of a lion, the horns and tail of an antelope, the claws of a dragon, and the face of an old man with tusks. The latter feature is sometimes described as that of an elderly satyr (hence the name). As always, specific features have been known to vary for both the
man-tyger and
satyral.
The
man-tyger may or may not have horns. Some schools of thought in heraldry tried to devise clearer definitions by labeling a
man-tyger with horns as a
satyral and one without as a
lampago or
lympago (again, inconsistent spelling). This was never standardized to my knowledge, though
Wikipedia is certainly trying. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies claimed that he never saw any instances of them in armorial use.
The dragon's tail
Modern art readily depicts the manticore with horns and wings, but these are absent from the earliest depictions and appeared rarely in historical art until the heraldic
satyral (I suspect this is due to confusion with the lamia and sphinx, see below).
The Encyclopedia Britannica claims that the manticore may be depicted with a dragon's tail, but oddly enough this is quite rare in both historical and modern art. The image below depicts the manticore or
manticora (spelling is inconsistent) with the tail of a dragon and the wings of a bat.
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| “The Manticora Monster of Tartary,” 17th century. |
Speaking of a dragon's tail, what qualifies as a dragon's tail is either a scaly tail ending in a spade or the head of a dragon or serpent. This is because dragons and serpents are vaguely distinguished if at all in heraldry and bestiaries; Ancient Greek did not have separate words for the two.
What other leonine monster had a dragon's tail? The chimera!
The German chimera
Heraldry has long confused the manticore and chimera due to their mutual leonine features. The chimera is sometimes depicted as a manticore-like beast with the horns of a goat and a snake for a tail (and sometimes the wings of a bat), based on the vague
description given by Homer, as seen below.
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| Chimera as described by Homer |
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| Homer's chimera with snaked-headed tail |
The
Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry labels this depiction a "German chimera" (the German word for chimera is
Schimäre, pronounced IPA /ʃiˈmɛːʀə/). It further goes on to claim that a variant of the chimera has the head and breasts of a woman, though I have been unable to find any examples and
the Wikimedia Commons include only depictions of the hornless man-lion/tiger like I mentioned above. (Indeed, heraldry books commonly conflate the two, indicating the inherent arbitrariness of the taxonomy.)
I suspect this is actually confusion with the lamia and sphinx, as in Greek mythology both the lamia and the sphinx were described with serpent's tails (the sphinx was sometimes attributed a snake
for a tail) and in Tudor heraldry (influenced by Topsell?) the lamia acquired sphinx- and mantyger-like features. Indeed, the lamia, manticore, sphinx, and such are commonly conflated in books about heraldry. They may be compared below:
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| "German chimera," Pictorial Dictionary of Heraldry |
The Nué
The nué is a monster from Japanese bestiaries which is described much like certain depictions of the manticore or the German chimera I just mentioned; I suspect there is a non-zero chance that it was inspired by stories carried along the Silk Road. While its exact description has varied over the years and been reinterpreted by artists, the nué generally appears as a tiger-like beast with the face of a monkey and the tail of a snake or ending in a snake's head.
Modern art
As shown by the preceding image, the depiction of the manticore varies immensely in modern art. In many cases it may be depicted with the face of a lion, but I will ignore those depictions for the purpose of this post. For the most part, modern art generally remixes features from the prior depictions of the manticore.
Generally, the manticore is depicted as having the body of a lion and the face of a man. The tail may be a spiked mace, a dragon's tail, a scorpion's tail, and/or covered in quills like a porcupine. It may or may not have wings, membranous like a bat or feathered like a bird. It may or may not have horns. I have seen other features appear a few times, but by no means common. Sometimes the manticore has two mouths, a bipedal gait, scorpion pincers, an exaggerated human face, a mane of quills (echoing Aristotle), or other new features.
Sometimes manticores appear under different names, such as
Warcraft's wyvern (pictured below). They come in a "grand wyvern" variant that has a pair of curving horns.
The female manticore
Sometimes artists or writers devise a specifically female manticore, based on the assumption that the typical manticore is male. There is no reason to believe that the manticore is male, or that its face is always masculine in appearance. In any case, many of these female counterparts are typically based on the sphinx.
Mazes & Minotaurs introduces a monster called the "Asheeba" in one book, a panther with the head of a woman that enjoys eating human flesh and taunting its prey. It is compared to the sphinx, but its behavior is identical to the manticore.
Monster Encyclopaedia II: Dark Bestiary by Mongoose Publishing at one point introduces a "manicora" as the female counterpart to the manticore (pictured below). The manicora has the face of a woman, a snake for a tail, and her body is covered in scales. I suspect her design was influenced by the heraldic depictions of lamia and chimeras I mentioned previously.
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| ©2005 Mongoose Publishing Ltd. |
Hacklopedia Field Manual mocks the idea by referring to female manticores as "womanticores" and describing them as identical to manticores except for possessing a woman's face.
Bibliography and links
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