Alexander Neckam (died 1217) was the first to say that not the glare but the "air corruption" was the killing tool of the basilisk, a theory developed one century later by Pietro d'Abano. The Venerable Bede was the first to attest to the legend of the birth of a basilisk from an egg by an old cockerel, and then other authors added the condition of Sirius being ascendant. The weasel destroys the basilisk by its odour, but dies itself in this struggle of nature against its own self." A putto kills a basilisk, symbolic of Swedish occupiers and Protestant heresy, on the Mariensäule, Munich, erected in 1638 Isidore of Seville defined the basilisk as the king of snakes, due to its killing glare and its poisonous breath. The animal is thrown into the hole of the basilisk, which is easily known from the soil around it being infected. To this dreadful monster the crow of a rooster is fatal, a thing that has been tried with success, for kings have often desired to see its body when killed so true is it that it has pleased Nature that there should be nothing without its antidote. It was formerly a general belief that if a man on horseback killed one of these animals with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill, not only the rider, but the horse as well. It destroys all shrubs, not only by its contact, but those even that it has breathed upon it burns up all the grass too, and breaks the stones, so tremendous is its noxious influence.
When it hisses, all the other serpents fly from it: and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves along upright and erect upon the middle.
It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of a diadem. It is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than twelve fingers in length. "There is the same power also in the serpent called the basilisk. He describes the catoblepas, a monstrous cow-like creature of which "all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot," and then goes on to say, One of the earliest accounts of the basilisk comes from Pliny the Elder's Natural History, written in roughly 79 AD. In Medieval Europe, the description of the creature began taking on features from cockerels. The basilisk is alleged to be hatched by a cockerel from the egg of a serpent or toad (the reverse of the cockatrice, which was hatched from a cockerel's "egg" incubated by a serpent or toad). Stories of the basilisk show that it is not completely distinguished from the cockatrice. The basilisk is called "king" because it is reputed to have on its head a mitre- or crown-shaped crest. 4.1 Reuse in science fiction and popular culture.5.1 Reuse in science fiction and popular culture.
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