The romans used a vast selection of animals, predominantly the eagle, lion, boar, wolf but interestingly, it seems that they ignored dragons. There were no dragons in roman culture I think, as far as I know. The european dragon is a medieval product to explain the unexplained natural phenomena.
I belive it is a western influenced feature. The majority of 1750-1850 yataghans, believed to be balkan/greece bear such dragon/fish at the end of the scabbard.
|