Monsters are the physical embodiment of fear. Monsters are physical embodiment for a wide variety of reasons. The most important being: the monsters' apparent invulnerability/incredible strength, represent the bad part of society, mostly look ugly, represent evil/nightmares themselves, are intelligent, and some deviate norms are the reasons why monsters are the physical embodiment of fear. The incredible characteristics of monsters are what scare others. In many myths, monsters constitute a weakness for societies. For example, the heroes of Rome fight these monsters to defeat them, which is the symbolic overcoming of weakness by the community. The fear that monsters represent is primarily human fear, as monsters are generally on good terms with animals and human fear runs much deeper than animal fear. A monster's apparent invulnerability/incredible strength is what scares its opponents. Examples of this can be seen in many sources. One such example is “Eurytheus first ordered Heracles to bring him the skin of the Nemean lion. Heracles knew that the beast could not be harmed by stone or bronze, so he would have to find another way to kill it. When he encountered the lion, he learned that his arrows and huge wooden club were also useless. The lion responded to Heracles' attack by retreating into a cave with two exits. (Rosenberg 101). This quote shows the incredible strength the beast possesses, which allows it to break free from death with normal weapons. Many amateur heroes retreat when their trusted weapons fail to work. This fear was ultimately caused by the robustness of the monster. Another striking example is the fact that certain monsters born from the gods can prove more formidable than the... middle of paper ......urs. According to Edith Hamilton, "Since the combination of a horse and a human is not degrading, the 'Centaur' is the only imaginary monster of antiquity to which good traits are attributed." Another example is that some monsters are not free from human emotions. A monster that illustrates this is Polyphemus who was very fond of the sea nymph Galatea. Monsters are a representation of fear and resemble nightmares. This is so because many qualities of monsters arouse fear and are therefore a representation of fear itself. Monsters are like nightmares, in that the one who has a nightmare always wakes up before the end, symbolizing the victory of good over evil. This is why monsters symbolize evil as well as fear. This was the case with Heracles and the serpents. Even danger lurked, baby Heracles woke up before tragedy struck and fought back against tragedy..