This legend has greatly ‘exercised’ commentators. The hero is connected
with Io, Belus, and Ægyptus; while he is evidently related to the
Cypriot Perseuth and the Phœnician Reseph[577] (flame or thunderbolt).
The original fight is the eternal warfare of good, light, warmth,
joy, with their contraries. It begins with Osiris-Typhon; it proceeds
to Assyria, where Bel the Sun-god attacks the Tiamat or marine
monster with the Sapara-Sword or Khopsh. In Persia it becomes Hormuzd
(Ahura-mazda) and Ahriman (Angra-manus): in Jewry it is an affair
between Bel and the Dragon; in Greece between Apollo and Python. The
duello is continued by St. Patrick,[578] who banished for ever snakes
from Ireland; and it makes its final appearance as ‘Saint George
and the Dragon.’ This expiring effort of Egyptian mythology is held
apocryphal by the Roman Catholic Church, and no wonder. Dragons do
not, and never did, exist, except in memory as prehistoric monsters;
moreover, the traveller in Syria is shown three several tombs of
‘Már Jiryús’ the Cappadocian, a saint who has spread himself from
Diospolis-Lydda throughout the world. Under Justinian, the Theseum of
Athens was dedicated to ‘Saint George of Cappadocia,’ and in Cyprus he
had as many temples as Venus. The Saxon teacher thus invoked him:
Invicto mundum qui sanguine temnis,
Infinita refers, Georgi Sancte, trophæa.
He entered the English calendar when Henry II. married Eleanor,
daughter of William of Aquitaine, the Crusader who chose the ‘flos
Sanctorum’ for his patron saint. He is still godfather of the Garter,
established by Edward III. in 1350; and the most feudal of existing
orders wears ‘the George’ on a gold medallion, and celebrates its
festival at Windsor on April 23.
One step in the Saint’s progress has been traced by M. Ch.
Clermont-Ganneau,[579] an Orientalist whose archæological acumen is
unsurpassed even by his industry. A bas-relief group in the Louvre
shows the hawk-headed Horus, mounted and in Roman uniform, piercing
with his peculiar spear (an _hamatum_, or barb-head), the neck of the
crocodile Typhon, Set, Dagon,[580] Python—the Devil. This strongly
suggests that Horus and Perseus, Saint Patrick and Saint George, are
one and the same person.
[Heading: _PHŒNICIAN SWORDS._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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