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| Andromeda liberata da Perseo by Piero di Cosimo, via Wikimedia |
Herakles,
appropriating the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, apparently also rescued a
princess from a ketos, doing so in true herculean fashion by leaping into its
mouth and slaying it from within. In 58
BC, the Romans put the bones of what they believed to be the ketos that Perseus
slew on display during gladiatorial games.
The bones were described as “forty feet long, with ribs taller than an
Indian elephant, and spines eighteen inches thick.”
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Image ©Peter on flikr
"Hercules Slays the Ketos" from vase painting in Athens, Stavros S Niarchos Collection. |
Many
medieval depictions of the inside of the whale emphasize its overwhelming heat,
to the point where at least one such depiction has Jonah going bald from the
heat. In a late tenth century tale recounted by the
French monk Letaldus, with parallels to the story of Jonah, a fisherman named
Within is swallowed by a great whale and kills the whale by setting his boat on
fire and attacking the creature’s insides with his sword. After four days and five nights, he is washed
up in the whale's carcass and emerges hairless.
The whale that swallows Within is likened to Scylla and Charybdis, and
described “with snake-like teeth and with an ever gaping gullet, a gullet that
could tumble entire cities to the underworld.”
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Photo by wmpearl, via Wikimedia
Jonah Cast Up, 280-290 CE, marble, late Roman, Asia Minor, Cleveland Museum of Art |
The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2015 Jonah Bomgaars.
