More than nineteen hundred years ago, on August 24 (AD 79), volcano Mount Vesuvius, located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania, Italy, roused itself from a long sleep and erupted. Within 42 hours, the thriving Roman seacoast town of Pompeii was buried under 23 feet of volcanic ash and lapilli (droplets of molten or …
Gryphons were real…or so the ancient Greeks believed. Could they have been right? After all, they did have proof. The Gryphon was unique in the Greek pantheon of hybrid creatures. For example, the winged horse Pegasus; the half man, half horse Centaurs; the Minotaur with its human body and bull’s head; the Sphinx—all were …
Around 675 BC, a wandering Greek poet made the wondrous claim that gryphons were real—not a mythic creature lost in the mist of time, but a living presence in the world. This in turn sparked a cultural fascination for the creature that lasted a thousand years. The poet Aristeas from the Greek island of Proconnesus …