European dragon resembling a windsock. Several personifications of evil or allusions to dragon in the Old Testament are translated as forms of "draco" in Jerome's Vulgate. e.g Deuteronomy (32:33), Job (30:29), Psalms (73:13, 90:13 & 43:20), Isaiah (13:21, 27:1, 34:13 & 43:20), Jeremiah (9:11), Micah (1:8) and Malachi (1:3). Dragons in Greek mythology often guard treasure such as Ladon, a hundred headed dragon which guarded the tree of Herdias until he was slain by Heracles. Likewise Python guarded the oracle of Delphi until he was likewise slain by Apollo out of revenge for Python tormenting his mother. The Lerneaen Hydra, a multiple
Heracles the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their own, some of it linking the hero with the geography of the Central Mediterranean. Details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere. His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the