Monoceros (legendary Creature)
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The monoceros () is a legendary animal with only one horn, related to the
unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...
.


Mythology

It derives from the
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
word (), a compound word from () which means "only one" / "single" and () (
neuter gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...
), which means "
horn Horn may refer to: Common uses * Horn (acoustic), a tapered sound guide ** Horn antenna ** Horn loudspeaker ** Vehicle horn ** Train horn *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various animals * Horn (instrument), a family ...
". The monoceros was first described in
Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
's ''
Natural History Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...
'' as a creature with the body of a
horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 mi ...
, the head of a
stag A deer (: deer) or true deer is a hoofed ruminant ungulate of the family Cervidae (informally the deer family). Cervidae is divided into subfamilies Cervinae (which includes, among others, muntjac, elk (wapiti), red deer, and fallow deer) a ...
(minus the antlers), the feet of an elephant, and the tail of a
wild boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a Suidae, suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The speci ...
. It has one black horn in the middle of its forehead, which is two
cubit The cubit is an ancient unit of length based on the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It was primarily associated with the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Israelites. The term ''cubit'' is found in the Bible regarding Noah ...
s (about ) in length, and is impossible to capture alive.
Cosmas Indicopleustes Cosmas Indicopleustes (; also known as Cosmas the Monk) was a merchant and later hermit from Alexandria in Egypt. He was a 6th-century traveller who made several voyages to India during the reign of emperor Justinian. His work '' Christian Topogr ...
, in the ''
Christian Topography The ''Christian Topography'' (, ) is a 6th-century work, one of the earliest essays in scientific geography written by a Christian author. It originally consisted of five books written by Cosmas Indicopleustes and expanded to ten and eventually t ...
'', writes that he did not see the animal, but he did see brazen figures of it at the palace of the king of
Aethiopia Ancient Aethiopia, () first appears as a geographical term in classical documents in reference to the skin color of the inhabitants of the upper Nile in northern Sudan, of areas south of the Sahara, and of certain areas in Asia. Its earliest men ...
and from these figures he was able to draw it. He also mentions that the people speak of it as a terrible beast and invincible, and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it is pursued by many hunters and is about to be caught, it springs up to the top of some precipice, whence it falls down. Then, while falling, it turns so that the horn sustains all the shock of the fall, and it escapes unhurt. In today's English language, the term ''monoceros'' typically refers to a
unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...
or similar one-horned creature.


See also

* ''
Elasmotherium ''Elasmotherium'' is an extinct genus of large rhinoceros that lived in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and East Asia during Late Miocene through to the Late Pleistocene, with the youngest reliable dates of at least 39,000 years ago. It was ...
'' *
Rhinoceros A rhinoceros ( ; ; ; : rhinoceros or rhinoceroses), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant taxon, extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls) in the family (biology), famil ...
*
Unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...


References

{{Reflist Medieval European legendary creatures Legendary horses Mythological hybrids Unicorns Legendary creatures in Roman mythology tl:Monoseros