Talk:Demogorgon

Pronapides (Pronapides of Athens?) later claimed that Demogorgon was the ancestor of all of the Greek gods, a claim that was accepted by many medieval scholars. Later writers often conflated Demogorgon with Hades, or downgraded him to the status of a human magician. Can anyone make any sense of this? Sounds like Demonological doubletalk. Wetman 04:26, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

found a pic http://crpp0001.uqtr.uquebec.ca/w4/campagne/monsters/Demogorgon_600x727.png anyone know how to insert with the proper tags?

The link to the picture isn't working, any other pictures of decent quality that could be used?User:jimfox

I added this page into the category "Fakelore", although if anyone does not feel that it could be considered that, feel free to remove it.--69.205.162.73 00:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Nice article

Surely the computer game references are irrelevant under the "literature" section. I think this should be renamed or a separate section for non-literature should be created. ahpla 17:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

"Phantom"

This article should clear up the confusion on this subject, not be an example of it. Someone thoughtlessly deleted "phantom" in the descriptive first line. Please, in order usefully to edit this article, one must understand what a "phantom" is. The article explains how the misunderstanding that is "Demogorgon" came about. If you are not quite sure whether you do understand, read the article again, more slowly. The current version of the article as it is once again is the sensible, fully-exampled version — another someone demanded "references", when the article is essentially a string of references: it should be self-explanatory. --Wetman (talk) 08:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't exist? What in chthonic Greece!?

This is the first I've ever heard (after 3 years of high school Latin, 1 year of college, and a lively "hobbyist" interest in the classical-and-earlier world) of Demogorgon not existing, of his being "a grammatical error, become [a] god." Is the "oral tradition" of classical studies really that far off, or is there another side to the argument? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ex ottoyuhr (talk • contribs) 05:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

What Latin text were you assigned in three years of Latin where Demogorgon appeared? --Wetman (talk) 05:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

None of my textbooks mentioned Demogorgon; but I stumbled across a reference to him somewhere and asked my high-school Latin teacher if he'd ever heard of him, and he said that he certainly had, that he was a major chthonic deity and it took until the 4th century for a writer, a Christian writer at that, to dare to mention his name in print. I seem to recall something that looked like a reference to him in Oedipus at Colonnus or maybe late in the Oresteia, but I wouldn't have any way of locating the passage even if I had access to the book. (There might have been a reference in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations or somewhere, too.) This instructor was very intelligent, a passionate classicist and a former Catholic seminarian, very good with Classical Greek as well as Latin; so I'm pretty disconcerted to think that Demogorgon was more-or-less-universally recognized as a theological typo, and that the word hadn't reached him.

Then again, as I write this, I'm reminded about how a lot of people interested in the classics basically don't know about the Hittites, and don't realize that there's an academic debate as to whether the Carthagenians really practiced child sacrifice in the way the Romans said they did. (I didn't realize that anyone in the academic world had picked up the argument, which I first encountered in Isaac Asimov's short story "The Dead Past," until I saw the Wikipedia article on it...)

So I admit that there's a real possibility that Demogorgon never existed and I, my instructor, and the circles we've moved in just never happened to get the message; but the conventional reconstruction of Demogorgon strikes me as so compatible with Greek religion -- which was characterized by a pre-IE substrate ("cow-eyed" Hera, the Furies, the Pythian Oracle, Typhon, Athena, Theseus sowing dragon teeth, Demeter burning away an infant's mortality) almost as pronounced as the Celtic one -- that I want to see references -- not just Seznec, but someone with strong classical-era credentials (Seznac seems to have been more an art historian than a classicist), a serious understanding of classical and "para-classical" religion (Minoan, pre-Doric Greek, Etruscan, pre-Celtic, etc.), and no ideological axes to grind (Seznec edited an edition of Diderot), who agrees that Seznec had considered the evidence and wasn't just making fun of a late-Roman-era Christian author. (All the more importantly because late-Roman-Empire Christian authors are such easy targets that even conservative Catholics don't always resist the temptation to make fun of them; John Zmirak, in his admittedly irreverent The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living, describes St. Isidore of Seville in terms evocative of Durant or Asimov...) ExOttoyuhr (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

History is that of sources and verifiability. If something was never penned or never recorded, its first attested example is all that gives credence to its existence. Theories for an oral tradition can be put forth, but my opinion is that one would think outside cultures without the taboo to the writing of the subject would have come away with some mention of it, or even ones within the culture as taboos are rarely universal in a literate culture. Wikipedia can't claim any more than what is referenced, that doesn't mean it should assume it didn't exist previously, but it can only state from it's proven sources and attested examples and instances of the name. Which as of now only lead back so far. Nagelfar (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point. I wonder about the extent of surviving Punic, Persian, etc. records about the classical Hellenes, though... but that's beside the point, that's WP:OR. I'll defer to experts on the subject. Thanks for your edit -- as mentioned above, although not an expert I'm not sure that Seznac is a reliable source.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. ExOttoyuhr (talk) 13:38, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

• This could benefit from a reading of Carlo Landi's Demogòrgone, Palermo (1930), which explains the origins of Demogorgon in Bocaccio. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Apollyon

Being a Christian though Greek-myth based being of utter cataclysmic destruction yet of demi-god power reminds me of Apollyon. I wonder if that'd make a good "See also"? What of straight Greek monsters among the gods, like Typhon? 65.102.40.8 (talk) 06:33, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Was Lactantius Christian?

I am not sure that "Lactantius Placidus" is Christian at all, and I think that the references to his being Christian add a misleading slant to this article. "Lactantius" is actually a collection of glosses and exegeses taken from a large number of sources, and is not the product of one author. (The attribution to comes from a note by an interpolator who identifies himself after ad Theb. 6.432.) The commentary nowhere mentions Jesus or any of his disciples, and does not even discuss the Alter of Mercy (12.481-92), at which, according to Acts 17:34, Paul converted Dionysius the Areopagite. Similarly, the gloss on the "Unknowable God" (ad Theb. 4.516-17) does not mention Christianity (even in cloaked terms) or Judaism.

I would like to re-edit this and remove the references to Christianity, but since the Lactantius' Christianity plays such a strong role in the article, it would take a massive re-write. Hariboa (talk) 12:09, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

El Bernardo: Translation?

Can't we possibly have a translation of the poetic quotation from El Bernardo? I have cobbled one together as a suggestion:-

Here Demogorgon is seated

On his fatal bench, whose decree

Of the supreme causes it is kept

For inviolable and celestial precept.

The frugal ones and his delicate stamen

To whose bobbin the world is fastened,

The ugly death and living lucid

And the black lake of the dark negligence

— (I, Book the Second, strophe 19) Nuttyskin (talk) 04:10, 13 May 2018 (UTC)