Saint George’s Dragon

Quick facts

These details follow the Silene episode, from the arrival of George to his departure.^{[1: Silene episode]}

What the selected source says

George, a knight born in Cappadocia, comes to Silene in Libya. A dragon lives in a nearby pond compared in size to a sea. An assembled attempt to kill it fails when the people flee; its breath poisons them when it approaches the city. They supply two sheep each day to prevent further harm. When sheep become scarce, the tribute includes a person and a sheep, and children and young people are chosen by lot regardless of rank.^{[1: arrival and tribute]}

The lot falls on the king’s daughter. The people reject his offer of wealth to spare her and insist that he obey the ordinance under which their own children have died. After an eight-day reprieve, the king dresses her as for a wedding and sends her to the dragon’s place. She warns the passing George to leave, but he promises help in Christ’s name.^{[1: lot and reprieve]}

The dragon runs towards them. Mounted George draws his sword, makes the sign of the cross and charges; the blow that wounds and fells the dragon is explicitly made with his spear. At his instruction the princess binds her girdle around its neck. The creature becomes docile and follows her into the city, where its arrival sends the people fleeing.^{[1: combat and girdle]}

George tells them to believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized, promising to kill the dragon. The king and people receive baptism; George then kills and beheads it. Four ox-drawn carts remove its body to the fields. The account reports about fifteen thousand men baptized, besides women and children, and a church with a healing fountain. George refuses the offered payment and directs it to the poor before departing.^{[1: baptism and departure]}

Description and abilities

The episode establishes harmful breath, a neck that can be bound, a head that is cut off, and movement from the pond towards people and into the city. The four carts suggest a burdensome carcass but provide no exact dimensions. The text supplies no colour, wing description, limb count, flight, fire-breathing, speech or transformation. Poisonous breath should not be rewritten as flame.^{[1: breath, binding and disposal]}

Its docility follows George’s attack and the binding in the religious narrative. The girdle is the princess’s belt or sash; the passage does not describe a permanently magical object or a technique for taming dragons generally. Raphael’s pictured wings and limbs belong to his visual interpretation.^{[1: combat and girdle]}

Source realm: Silene in the saint’s legend

The source names Silene in a province called Libya, with a great pond nearby. This record uses Folklore places as the site’s grouping for legendary local geography, while identifying the work specifically as Christian hagiography. It is not an African oral collection or an English countryside setting: Cappadocia is George’s birthplace, and the dragon encounter is placed at Silene. No modern coordinates or present-day national boundary are established here.^{[1: arrival and tribute]}

Source and version boundaries

This profile follows the English wording modernized by Ellis from Caxton’s translation, not a fresh translation of Voragine’s Latin or a reconstruction of the earliest Saint George tradition. The dragon and princess have no personal names in this episode. The sequence matters: the spear wounds the dragon, the princess leads it alive into town, and baptism precedes its killing.^{[1: Silene episode]}

The chapter’s prefatory discussion reports conflicting accounts of George’s martyrdom. Those notices concern the saint’s death; they do not establish a date for the Silene encounter. The later martyrdom narrative, other saints’ dragons, and later adaptations are outside this creature record.^{[1: prefatory martyrdom notices]}

Deliverance and conversion

George explicitly offers help in Christ’s name, and the public defeat is tied to baptism. The princess also acts: after being selected as a victim, she leads the subdued threat back to her city. These are readings of the episode’s stated actions. Calling the dragon a universal symbol of evil, identifying it literally as Satan, or making the ending a marriage would go beyond this passage.^{[1: Silene episode]}