Close to the Point of Origin

The earliest archaeology of the hagiographical dragon fight is investigated through the lens of a remarkable pagan parody of the story-type roughly contemporary with the earliest extant example of it, this parody being found in Lucian’s Philopseudes or Lover of Lies of around the AD 170s. The parody indirectly attests the prior existence of a number of motifs in the tradition not actually documented within it until some centuries later. Consideration is given to its allusions to the Gospels and to its proto-hagiographical motifs of: the serpent-brood presided over by an ancient drakōn; the last victim boy; the blowing upon the dragon to burn it; the magical healing of a workman’s snakebite; and the use of material from the tomb of a holy person.