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Saturday, August 20, 2022

Book Review: Adrienne Mayor's Flying Snakes & Griffin Claws

 Adrienne Mayor

Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws: And Other Classical Myths, Historical Oddities, and Scientific Curiosities

Princeton University Press, 2022, 448pp.   

Mayor is one of a kind. I’m an avocational historian with some skill at research and connecting far-flung dots. I mention that only to lend credence to my evaluation of Mayor as, not merely a professional at the confluence of these and other professions, but someone one on another plane of existence. As in her previous books (my favorite is Fossil Legends of the First Americans), Mayor connects stories, artifacts, and cultures in ways that might never occur to anyone else. We tend to study individual cultures and empires in school, and Mayor delights in showing how human culture has always been an interactive web shot through with tiny cross-filaments created by trade, travelers, legends, and the intersection of ideas and cultures.




The 50 essays contained here skip through eras, civilizations, and continents, bringing us tales of sea monsters, paleocryptozoology, ancient ghost ships, Amazon queens, possible fossil origins for mythical creatures like griffins, and the Golden Fleece. If she can’t always connect an oddity to a possible origin, or a story to a storyteller, she never fails to arouse the reader’s curiosity.

For example, countless storytellers have described their opponents as giants. It seems that, while the differences between tribes of men were certainly exaggerated, the way men tended to get larger as forces from the south and east worked their way towards Scandinavia did lend themselves to a certain mythologizing, and kings certainly gathered very tall men for royal guards. She explores countless other questions. Were the Carthaginians taught to be sworn enemies of Rome from the day they could walk? (There seems to be a propaganda element in there.)  How did Baron Georges Cuvier come to examine what he said was a fresh mammoth’s foot? (The mystery is unsolved.)

One of my favorite chapters is on the Greek response to being incorporated into the Roman expire. Such nations often lead a gray, low-profile existence, but the Greeks were entrepreneurs. Knowing the Roman fascination with Greek history, culture, and legend, they became rich off Roman tourists. They sold replicas (or fakes) of great art, reenacted plays, and plastered the country (really) with “Heracles slept here” signs while guidebook authors and large intercity cart rental agencies made small fortunes. Commercialization is not a new concept.  

Mayor’s writing moves along at the right pace, never bogging down and always hinting of “Wait ‘till you see what’s next!” In this cabinet of curiosities lies something for everyone, whether their interest is the origin of tattoos or the first foot fetishists.  This is the latest in a serios of marvelous books, and I hope many more are in the offing.

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