The dragon’s form varied from the earliest times. In Christian art the dragon came to be symbolic of sin and paganism and, as such, was depicted prostrate beneath the heels of saints and martyrs. Christianity confused the ancient benevolent and malevolent serpent deities in a common condemnation. On the whole, however, the evil reputation of dragons was the stronger, and in Europe it outlived the other. But the Greeks and Romans, though accepting the Middle Eastern idea of the serpent as an evil power, also at times conceived the drakontes as beneficent-sharp-eyed dwellers in the inner parts of Earth. Thus, the Egyptian god Apepi, for example, was the great serpent of the world of darkness. In general, in the Middle Eastern world, where snakes are large and deadly, the serpent or dragon was symbolic of the principle of evil. In Greece the word drakōn, from which the English word was derived, was used originally for any large serpent ( see sea serpent), and the dragon of mythology, whatever shape it later assumed, remained essentially a snake. In medieval Europe, dragons were usually depicted with wings and a barbed tail and as breathing fire. The belief in these creatures apparently arose without the slightest knowledge on the part of the ancients of dinosaurs, which have some remblance to dragons.ĭragon, in the mythologies, legends, and folktales of various cultures, a large lizard- or serpent-like creature, conceived in some traditions as evil and in others as beneficent.