——tresque vibrant linguæ——
Says Ovid of Cadmus’s snake.
The tongue was the only active arms of the apostles, as the bifid tongue of the serpent is its only weapon; and which, as the ancients thought, carried life and death with it.
From the numerous and credible accounts I have seen, snakes, I am persuaded, have a power of charming, by looking steadfastly with their fiery eyes, on birds, mice, and such creatures as they prey upon. They are put into such an agony, as to run by degrees into their open mouth. Further, snakes were thought to have an inchanting power, not only with their eyes, but likewise by whispering into the ears: for by that whispering they communicated a prophetick and divine spirit. The scholiast of Euripides writes, of Helenus and Cassandra, that serpents licking their ears, so sharpened their hearing, that they only could hear the counsels of the gods; and became great prophets thereby. This incantation by the ears, is elegantly apply’d by the fathers, in their writings, to the preachers of the gospel, and to our Saviour himself. Clemens in pædagog. V. calls him Επωδὸς the inchanter, as the learned Spanheim observes: and often St. Chrysostom uses the like expression.
TAB. XXX.
P. 58.
Stukeley del.
Milbarrow in Monkton 215 f. long 55 broad set round with great Stones, the broad end Eastwd. the narrow end W. drawn 10 Iuly 1723
All these put together, I take to be some good reasons (to omit several more for brevity’s sake) for the extraordinary veneration paid to this creature, from all antiquity. Our oldest heathen writer Sanchoniathon says, the Phœnicians call’d it agathodæmon, the good angel. Epies the Phœnician in Eusebius pronounces it a most divine animal. Maximus of Tyre before quoted writes, that the serpent was the great symbol of the deity, in most nations, even among the Indians. Sigismund in his Muscovite-history, says the like of the Samogitians, in the northern parts of that vast empire. Gaguin in his Sarmatia, of the Lithuanians. So Scaliger in his notes on Aristotle of animals, concerning the people of Calicut in the East-Indies; all books of travels into the West-Indies, the like. This sufficiently proves the notion nearly as old as mankind.