by Ryan Denson
Here Professor Denson, who previously spoke with us about Charybdis, has a very new take on some extremely old sea monsters.
Image: H. Pisan, after Gustave Doré image of ca. 1870, illustration of Isaiah 27:1. “In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (King James Version). Wikimedia Commons, CC0-PublicDomain.
The biblical sea monster Leviathan appears most prominently in parts of the Old Testament as the monstrous sea serpent that opposes God. The Book of Job, for example, describes Leviathan as a fire-breathing dragon-like creature with “fearsome teeth” and impenetrable armor-like scales (41:13–29). One of the most recognizable depictions of Leviathan comes from an engraving made by Gustave Doré in 1866, an adaptation of which is included above. In this illustration of Isaiah 27:1, God descends from the clouds brandishing a sword as Leviathan appears in the sea twisting its neck upward, roaring at the advancing deity before their combat begins. This representation aligns with our conventional expectations of monsters: they are often put forth as malicious beasts to be slain. In this religious context, the conquest of the monster further serves to exemplify the power of the deity to vanquish chaos in order to make way for his creation of the world and humanity.
But a sharp contrast to this depiction is also present within the Old Testament. Rather than recalling this narrative of God facing Leviathan in a combat, Psalm 104:26 states: “There go ships and Leviathan which you created to play there.” Here, the hostile monster as a symbol of chaos has now been radically recast: Leviathan is no longer an antithesis to creation, but now one among the many creatures formed by God as part of the divine order. Perhaps it would still be a threat to any human encountering it, yet it poses no such threat to God himself. We see this same repositioning of Leviathan in the later thought embedded in the Babylonian Talmud, a fifth-century CE collection of rabbinical teachings on Jewish religious law and theology. One portion interprets this verse of Psalm 104 as revealing part of God’s daily routine. According to this Talmudic comment, it is always the fourth quarter of his day that God devotes to playing with Leviathan as a means to rest after his other work. Thus, the monster has become a mere plaything for the supreme deity, reminiscent of a human playing with their pet dog at the end of a long day. This, in effect, accomplishes the same goal of using a monster to exemplify the power of a deity: there is simply no need to slay the monster if its power has been neutralized by complete subservience to an omnipotent divine force.
We may, then, compare this to a similar relationship between the Greek god Poseidon and the most prominent type of sea monster in Greco-Roman mythology, the kētos (pl. kētē). One scene in the epic lliad depicts Poseidon driving his chariot across the surface of the sea, describing “kētē coming from their hollows [and] frolicking underneath him on every side, acknowledging their master. And the sea parted for him in jubilation” (13.27–29). The kētos is certainly a hostile monster in the conventional sense elsewhere in Greco-Roman mythology, yet no such antagonistic qualities are evident in these lines. The kētē here, much like the sea itself, have been mollified by the divine power of the sea god. Such a brief scene similarly functions to underscore Poseidon’s mastery of his native element. Both the sea and its monsters naturally pose threats to humanity, but we see them in a radically different manner when they appear in the presence of their divine masters alone.
These brief instances of the occasionally playful nature of Leviathan and the kētē illustrate the varied ways that monsters were imagined in the ancient Mediterranean world. Monsters are most often figures that represent the Other and the unknowns of the world. Narratives about the slaying of these monsters are one means of dealing with these threatening forces. We see here an alternate way to deal with them, recasting them from being wild symbols of chaos to figures that are tightly bound to their divine masters’ leashes. They may now be playful and jubilant creatures in the presence of their respective deities, but their potential danger to humanity lingers, specifically for those who have unwisely incurred the wrath of some divinity. It is this subservience to divinity, though, that simultaneously functions to illustrate that deity’s ability to bend nature and its creatures to their will. Avoiding the displeasure of such divine forces, in turn, becomes a method for securing one’s safety in such environments.
These scenes of playful sea monsters are among the ideas I am exploring further for a book chapter in a planned edited volume on ancient monsters. My chapter will examine depictions of ancient sea monsters from an ecotheological perspective, which stresses the interrelation of divinity and nature. Such depictions of monsters are useful for assessing the larger cultural patterns, particularly regarding how they fit within the ancient imagination alongside varied conceptions of divine forces.
Dr. Ryan Denson recently earned his PhD from the University of Exeter and specializes in researching sea monsters and other denizens of the deep. He is currently working monograph devoted to the kētos, which is under contract with Bloomsbury for their Ancient Environments series. Other related publications include an article examining the canine aspects of Greco-Roman sea monsters in Classical Quarterly (2023), and another article exploring the nature of the nicoras, the sea monsters of Beowulf, in a special issue of Shima (2022).
Dr. Denson’s handle on X is @SeaMonsterGuy. He has also spoken about ancient sea monsters on two podcasts: “Sharks, Whales, and Sea Monsters in Greek Mythology” on Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby!, and “Sea Monsters of the Ancient World” on Ancient History Fangirl.