Serpentum et Draconum Historiae

Some serpents are harmless. ch. 96.

They are fit, for they lack teeth. Likewise, it is held in the first part of the Chronicles of Peru that in the mountains of the city of Cuzco, huge and harmless serpents roam; for this matter, they provide this account: namely, that when once, by the order of the Inca King, many leaders with an army went out to the mountains to subjugate them, the serpents, inhabitants of the mountains, killed the greater part of the army. Whence a certain old woman promised the King that she wished to lull these serpents to sleep with songs, so that the leaders together with the soldiers might be able to pass through there harmlessly. This being done, those serpents were thereafter rendered harmless. Which we opine to be a fiction or a fable. Nicander also, in his Theriaca, includes moluri among the harmless serpents in these verses:

More of the reptiles, which are not of such harmful form,
Dwell through dense forests and through opaque lairs,
Which they call Elopes, and Libyans, and crowned Myagri;
They are distinguished by their darts, and are moluri.
There are also blind ones, but a crowd that does not know how to injure.

Which serpents are Moluri.

Lonicerus interprets these serpents as if they were walking on their tails, and nothing more is read about these among the authors. For μολυρίς is an equivocal word: for the scholiast of Nicander writes that moluridae are similar to locusts; the same is noted by Hermolaus in his Corollarium on locusts. Aristophanes, however, uses this term to name a little creature born among millstones. Otherwise, according to Hesychius, μολυρίς is μόλις ὀρῶν, namely, passing urine with difficulty. The remaining serpents, however, are believed to be pestiferous because of their venom; those of the male sex have more venom, although some learned men judge that females are worse than males. The old redundant with a greater abundance of venom than the young. Furthermore, the large are said to be more venomous than the small (provided that the discussion is about the same species). Moreover, the hungry are more so than the sated. Likewise, those that are enraged prove to be both bolder and more venomous. There are also those that infect by their breath alone: for Pomponius Mela hands down that, around the Rhymdacus river bordering Bithynia, huge snakes are generated, which often lie basking with open mouths, and infect with their breath the birds flying over them, which they then consume as they fall.

The breath of snakes killing birds.

Finally, if we consider their appearance and the rest of what accompanies them. First, we will find a very great difference in the eyes of snakes: for some have very large eyes, like the serpents of Libya, others small and similar to locusts, others are filled with eyes suffused with a blood-red or yellow color, and finally, some see very acutely, while others are of dull vision. The mouth also distinguishes snakes from one another: since the feps and the marine serpent are endowed with a sharp mouth, the Parus has a wide mouth, and the Libyan serpent displays a vast one. Some are adorned with a cone on their crown as if it were a little crest: whence Aelian wrote that, just as a stag surpasses a doe in horns, and a lion excels a lioness in its mane, and the male of the cicadas in its voice, so the male serpent is distinguished from the females by being adorned with a crest; although it is subsequently established that this does not hold true in all species. This is indeed true, that some serpents were endowed by nature with horns: for in the asp, two callous tubercles are seen above the eyes, which make a greater cavity for the eyes. Others have only one horn, like the vipera monoceros, which is generated in Istria; the Cerastes bears twin horns, and others bear fourfold ones: for this reason, the doctrine of Albertus is not to be rejected, where he enumerates unicorn, bicorn, tricorn, and multicorn serpents. However, it must be noted that the horns of serpents do not appear hard and horny, but rather as certain fleshy or callous eminences. On account of this, Vitriacus, in his history of the Orient, mentions serpents armed with horns like a ram, with which, moved like a fan, they strike men. Nor are the winged snakes to be passed over, which are nurtured on the mountain separating the Kingdom of Senege from the Malabars. These, by their breath alone or even by their gaze, kill men approaching too closely. Finally, if we investigate the ultimate species, Nicander, with Lonicerus reporting, enumerates more than twenty species of snakes. And these are the Viper, Asp, Cerastes, Hæmorrhous, Sepedon, Dipsas, Chusydrus, Amphisbena, Scytale, Basiliscus, Drynus or Chelydrus or Hydrus, Draco, Cenchrynes, Ascalabus, Elopes, Libyes, crowned Myagri, Acontia, Typhlopes, and Moluri.

Bk. 16. c. 62.

Some serpents have horns.