Nemean lion
nee-MEE-un
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe lion whose hide no weapon could cut. Hesiod places it in the hills of Nemea as a plague to men, and says Heracles overcame it.
Because no blade would go through the skin, the standard account has him strangling it and then skinning it with its own claws, which are the only thing hard enough.
He wears the hide afterwards, which is why he is shown with a lion's head over his own. The armour is the animal.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 326-332
- Apollod. 2.5.1
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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