The Griffin (Gryphon) is the majestic eagle-lion of classical and medieval European legend: a noble beast with the head, wings, and talons of an eagle and the body, hind legs, and tail of a lion, guardian of gold and treasure, king of all creatures as the union of the king of birds and the king of beasts, and a great emblem of strength, vigilance, and divine guardianship. It is the eagle-lion, the noble guardian of the bestiary.
The Union of Eagle and Lion
The Griffin (Greek gryps) is one of the most ancient and noble of legendary beasts, known from the art of the ancient Near East, Egypt, Persia, and Greece long before the medieval bestiaries. Its form unites the two royal animals: the head, the great hooked beak, the feathered neck, the broad wings, and the fearsome front talons of the eagle (king of the birds), joined to the powerful body, the hindquarters, the legs, and the tufted tail of the lion (king of the beasts). As such a union, the griffin was held to be supremely majestic and powerful — the king of all creatures, combining the sovereignty of air and earth.
The Guardian of Gold
The classical authors — Herodotus, Pliny, and others — placed the griffins in the far north or east (in Scythia, near the Hyperboreans, or in India), where they guarded great hoards of gold, digging it from the mountains and fiercely defending it against the one-eyed Arimaspians who sought to steal it. This made the griffin a famous guardian of treasure, watchful and implacable, and a symbol of vigilance. Its strength was prodigious — it was said to be able to carry off a horse and rider, or a yoke of oxen, in its talons — and its nest held the marvellous “agate” or eagle-stones.
The Noble Emblem
In the Middle Ages the griffin became a beloved figure of the bestiaries and, above all, of heraldry, where it was one of the most popular and esteemed of all charges — a symbol of courage, strength, boldness, vigilance, and noble guardianship, fit for the arms of the powerful. In Christian symbolism the griffin’s dual nature was sometimes read as representing Christ (king of heaven and earth, divine and earthly), and Dante set a griffin to draw the chariot of the Church in the Purgatorio. The griffin was held to mate for life, a further mark of its nobility. Distinct from its kin the [hippogriff] (the offspring of griffin and mare), the griffin remained the pure and noble eagle-lion. In the Griffin, the European imagination gave form to the noble guardian — the majestic union of eagle and lion, king of all creatures, watchful guardian of gold, and great heraldic emblem of strength and vigilance, the eagle-lion of the bestiary.