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
Dragons in Greek mythology and possibly slain by Heracles. After a few years, the Argonauts passed by the same spot, on their chthonic return journey from Colchis at the opposite end of the world, and heard the lament of "shining" Aigle, one of the Hesperides, and viewed the still-twitching Ladon ("Argonautica", book iv). The creature is associated with the constellation Draco. Ladon was given several parentages, each of which placed him at an archaic level in Greek myth: the offspring of "Ceto, joined in love with Phorcys" (Hesiod, "Theogony" 333) or of Typhon, who was himself serpent-like from the waist down, and Echidna ("Bibliotheke"