A Zoobiography of the Ancient Sea Monster

By (author) Ryan Denson

ISBN13: 9781350451872

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Hardback

Published: 11/06/2026

Availability: Not yet available

Description
Examining a vast corpus of literary references and artistic representations, this volume offers a comprehensive study of the ketos - the type of sea monster imagined by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The chapters explore the three central traditions of thought that existed about this creature in Graeco-Roman culture. The first tradition concerns the ketos as a divinely associated monster: a force aligned with marine gods (chiefly Poseidon) and one which was fought by Heracles and Perseus. The second tradition features the ketos in a more naturalised context, as depicted among ancient geographers, as a type of monster roaming the distant waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The third tradition concerns the fusion of the ketos with the Old Testament sea monsters in the minds of early Christians. Accordingly, this classical sea monster became the image of the creature that swallowed Jonah, and, alternately, a monster associated with the devil. While other monsters of Graeco-Roman mythology, such as the Minotaur and Medusa, are household names in modern popular culture, the ketos is not as well remembered. Yet it was no small part of the Graeco-Roman imagination. This sea monster formed a key aspect as to how the sea-adjacent societies of ancient Greece and Rome perceived ancient marine environments. It was this fantastic sea beast that so haunted ancient mariners, and in turn, which contributed to ancient perceptions of the marine world as a profoundly alien and hostile environment.
List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Defining a Ketos Part One: The Divinely Associated Tradition Chapter One: Poseidon's Pet Chapter Two: The Hesione and Andromeda Myths Part Two: The Ethnographic Tradition Chapter Three: The Kete of the Mediterranean Chapter Four: The Kete of the Outer Seas Part Three: The Christian Tradition Chapter Five: Jonah's Ketos Chapter Six: The Christian Assimilation of Leviathan and the Ketos Conclusion: Did the Greeks and Romans Believe in the Their Sea Monsters? Notes Appendix Bibliography Index
  • Archaeology
  • Ancient religions & mythologies
  • Professional & Vocational
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