The ancient Greeks and Romans had no doubt at all about the actual existence of dragons, and were already telling stories about them, as we have seen. They even knew about their strange love of collecting gold and guarding it in caves - without any special reason except, as Phaedrus made the dragon say in his version of the old Greek Fable:
In the days when Arcadia was the wildest and leneliest part of Greece there lived a boy called Thoas whose home was in a village of only two or three houses where the shepherds dwelt who fed their flocks on the lower slopes of the mountains.
Some fifteen hundred years ago a king called Beowulf ruled over the Geats who lived in the south of Sweden. He was a mighty warrior who, as a young man, had done deeds of which the minstrels and poets would tell through after ages. He had come to Denmark where King Hrothgar was sorely troubled by the marsh-monster, Grendel, who came each night when the warriors slept in the great hall called Heorot and carried one off to his den.
Storytellers know that China has hundreds of dragons. Every pool and river has its own dragon, and there are quite a few more in the Chinese seas. The dragons are not fierce, and they don't eat people, either-which is just as well. But why are there so many dragons in China?
A young dragon was caught in a river flood and stranded on a dry ridge in the bed of a stream when the water sank, unable to fly away having been injured by a floating log. As he sat there wondering what to do, a peasant came down with his donkey to collect drift-wood left by the flood.
In ancient times the country to the north of Greece was called Emathia. But when King Macedon ruled over it, bringing peace and prosperity, the people changed its name in honour of their greatest king-nor did any greater rule over it for many hundreds of years until Alexander the Great inherited the kingdom and set out to conquer the world.
Once upon a time, there were no rivers and lakes on earth, but only the Eastern Sea, in which lived four dragons: the Long Dragon, the Yellow Dragon, the Black Dragon and the Pearl Dragon.
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