# Unicorn - Creature: Beast - Date: 400 BCE - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/unicorn/ > A one-horned wild ass in a Greek traveler's report became Christ's own emblem, then a narwhal-tusk swindle, a Scottish royal supporter, a novel's heroine and a maiden-only mount in Dungeons & Dragons. **Why it matters:** Few creatures show the museum's migration pattern so cleanly: natural history hardened into allegory, allegory into heraldry and art, and art into the rulebooks and cartoons where most people now meet the unicorn. ## Quick answers **Where does the Unicorn come from?** Greek natural history (Ctesias, c. 400 BCE), then medieval Christian allegory. **When did the Unicorn first appear?** c. 400 BCE, in Ctesias, Indika. **How did the Unicorn get into games?** Key appearances: Original D&D boxed set (1974) and NetHack (1987). **Why is the Unicorn significant?** Few creatures show the museum's migration pattern so cleanly: natural history hardened into allegory, allegory into heraldry and art, and art into the rulebooks and cartoons where most people now meet the unicorn. ## Origins The unicorn began as a traveler's report rather than a myth. Around 400 BCE Ctesias, a Greek physician living at the Persian court, wrote in his *Indika* of wild asses in India, fleet of foot, with a single horn a cubit and a half long, colored white, red and black. Aristotle, Pliny the Elder and Aelian repeated and embroidered the account; Pliny's monoceros had a stag's head, elephant's feet, a boar's tail and one black horn two cubits long. To classical readers it was zoology, not fantasy. (Scholars have also noted one-horned animals on Bronze Age Indus Valley seals, though any connection to the Greek unicorn is unproven.) The creature's second life came from the *Physiologus*, a Greek compendium of animal lore compiled in Late Antiquity and ancestor of the medieval bestiaries. It told how the unicorn, too fierce for any hunter, would lay its head in the lap of a maiden and so be taken — an allegory of Christ entering the world through the Virgin Mary. That image dominated the Middle Ages. It fed courtly poetry, in which the lover is drawn to his lady as the unicorn to the virgin, and it reached its grandest form in the seven Unicorn Tapestries, woven in the Southern Netherlands around 1495–1505 and now at The Cloisters in New York. The horn, called alicorn, was believed to neutralize poison, and narwhal tusks sold for fortunes until the Danish physician Ole Worm exposed the trade in 1638. Scotland, meanwhile, made the unicorn its royal beast, and since 1707 it has stood opposite the English lion on the arms of the United Kingdom. ## Into the dungeon Modern fantasy inherited both unicorns: the wild, holy beast and the fragile emblem of a vanishing wonder. [C. S. Lewis](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/c-s-lewis/) gave [Narnia](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-chronicles-of-narnia/) a warrior unicorn, Jewel, in *The Last Battle* (1956). [Peter S. Beagle](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/peter-s-beagle/)'s [The Last Unicorn](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-last-unicorn/) (1968) made the creature a heroine whose immortality is itself a kind of grief, and the 1982 animated film carried her to a generation of children. [Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) and [Arneson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/dave-arneson/) put the unicorn into the 1974 [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) box with the Physiologus rule intact: it could be ridden only by maiden-warriors, and it would obey them. The first-edition *Monster Manual* (1977) of [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/) made it a shy, good-aligned dweller of temperate woodlands that shuns nearly all contact. On television, the [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dungeons-and-dragons-cartoon/) (1983–85) gave its young heroes a baby unicorn named Uni, a mascot still remembered fondly by the viewers who grew up with the show and, often, with the game. Computer games turned the old lore into rules. In [NetHack](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/nethack/), unicorns come in three colors matching the game's three [alignments](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/alignment/), and throwing a gem to one of your own alignment improves your luck — a mechanical descendant of the belief that the unicorn rewards the pure. In [Harry Potter](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/harry-potter/), unicorn blood keeps a dying man alive at the price of a cursed life, the medieval purity allegory turned inside out. ## Variations The fantasy unicorn splits along the same lines as its sources. The **holy unicorn** of the Physiologus survives in games that bind it to good alignment, healing or purity. The **wild unicorn** of Ctesias and Pliny, dangerous and untameable, lingers in darker settings. The **elegiac unicorn** of Beagle, the last of a dying kind, has become fantasy's favorite symbol of disenchantment — the magic the modern world is losing. Artists added the horse's body, cloven hooves and goat's beard that medieval tapestries fixed; the rainbow-maned, sparkling unicorn of 1980s toys and stickers is the newest branch, and the one the others most often define themselves against. Close cousins in the menagerie include the [Griffin](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/griffin/) and the [Phoenix](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/phoenix/), other beasts that passed from natural history through Christian allegory into the monster manual. ## Migration - -400: Ctesias, Indika — A Greek physician at the Persian court describes swift wild asses of India with a single horn a cubit and a half long. - 300: Physiologus (Late Antiquity) — The proto-bestiary makes the unicorn a beast that only a maiden can capture, an allegory of the Incarnation; dating of the text is approximate. - 1495: The Unicorn Tapestries (c. 1495–1505) — Seven tapestries woven in the Southern Netherlands show the hunt, killing and resurrection of the unicorn; now at The Cloisters in New York. - 1638: Ole Worm, Copenhagen — The Danish physician shows that 'unicorn horns' sold across Europe are narwhal tusks. - 1968: The Last Unicorn — Peter S. Beagle turns the heraldic beast into a melancholy heroine searching for her lost kind. - 1974: Original D&D boxed set — Unicorns enter the game as rare woodland beasts that only maiden-warriors may ride. - 1983: Dungeons & Dragons cartoon — Uni, a baby unicorn, becomes the series' mascot and sidekick. - 1987: NetHack — Throwing gems to a unicorn of your own alignment raises your luck, a piece of old lore turned into game mechanics. ## Facts - The earliest Greek description, by Ctesias around 400 BCE, gives India's one-horned ass a horn about a cubit and a half long, colored white, red and black. - The Physiologus made the unicorn catchable only by a maiden, an allegory of the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation that shaped every medieval bestiary after it. - In 1638 the Danish physician Ole Worm showed that prized 'unicorn horns' were narwhal tusks. - The seven Unicorn Tapestries (c. 1495–1505) were given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1938. - Two unicorns supported the royal arms of the Kings of Scots; since 1707 a unicorn has faced the English lion on the British royal arms. - Original D&D's unicorn could be ridden only by maiden-warriors, a direct echo of the Physiologus. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn) - [Wikipedia: The Unicorn Tapestries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_Tapestries) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.