Record #19
Catoblepas
A swamp-dwelling monster whose poisonous breath and downward gaze bring death.
Original Text
Pliny (VIII, 32), relates that somewhere on the borders of Ethiopia, near the head of the Nile, there is found a wild beast called the catoblepas; an animal of moderate size, and in other respects sluggish in the movement of the rest of its limbs; its head is remarkably heavy, and it only carries it with the greatest difficulty, being always bent down towards the earth. Were it not for this circumstance, it would prove the destruction of the human race; for all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot.
Catoblepas, in Greek, means ‘that which looks downward’ . The French naturalist Cuvier has conjectured that the gnu (contaminated by the basilisk and the gorgon) suggested the Catoblepas to the ancients. At the close of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Flaubert describes it and has it speak in this way: black buffalo with the head of a hog, hanging close to the ground, joined to its body by a thin neck, long and loose as an emptied intestine.
It wallows in the mud, and its legs are smothered under the huge mane of stiff bristles that hide its face.
‘Obese, downhearted, wary, Ido nothing but feel under my belly the warm mud. My head is so heavy that I cannot bear its weight. I wind it slowly around my body; with half-open jaws, I pull up with my tongue poisonous plants dampened by my breath. Once, I ate up my forelegs unawares.
‘No one, Anthony, has ever seen my eyes; or else, those who have seen them have died. If I were to lift my eyelids - my pink and swollen eyelids - you would die on the spot.’
Catoblepas, in Greek, means ‘that which looks downward’ . The French naturalist Cuvier has conjectured that the gnu (contaminated by the basilisk and the gorgon) suggested the Catoblepas to the ancients. At the close of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Flaubert describes it and has it speak in this way: black buffalo with the head of a hog, hanging close to the ground, joined to its body by a thin neck, long and loose as an emptied intestine.
It wallows in the mud, and its legs are smothered under the huge mane of stiff bristles that hide its face.
‘Obese, downhearted, wary, Ido nothing but feel under my belly the warm mud. My head is so heavy that I cannot bear its weight. I wind it slowly around my body; with half-open jaws, I pull up with my tongue poisonous plants dampened by my breath. Once, I ate up my forelegs unawares.
‘No one, Anthony, has ever seen my eyes; or else, those who have seen them have died. If I were to lift my eyelids - my pink and swollen eyelids - you would die on the spot.’