The Basilisk

BASILISK, A sort of serpent hatched form the egg of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal and was said to turn beings to stone. Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave. Nothing is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk, but the cocks have stopped laying.

The basilisk serpent also has the same power [as the catoblepas, to kill with its gaze]. It is a native of Cyrenaica, not more than 12 inches long, and adorned with a bright white marking on the head like a sort of diamond shape. It routs all snakes with its hiss, and does not move its body forward in manifold coils like the other snakes but advancing with a middle raised high. It kills not only by its touch but also with its breath, scorches up grass and burns rocks. Its effect on other animals is disastrous: it is believed that once one was killed with a spear by a man on horseback and the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but the horse.

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