Beast

Sources : Lizard

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 8, 60; 10, 85; 11, 65): [Book 8, 60] The greatest enemy of the snail is the lizard; this genus is said not to live more than six months. The lizard of Arabia is 18 inches long, but those on Mount Nysus in India reach a length of 24 feet, and are colored yellow or scarlet or blue. [Book 10, 85] There is a popular belief that of the oviparous quadrupeds the lizard bears through the mouth, but this is denied by Aristotle. Lizards do not hatch their eggs, but forget where they laid them, as this animal has no memory; and consequently the young ones break the shell without assistance. [Book 11, 65] Not all species have tongues on the same plan. ...with lizards it is cleft in two and hairy... - [Rackham translation]

Aelianus [170-230 CE] (On the Characteristics of Animals, Book 2, chapter 23): Should you strike a lizard with a stick and either on purpose or by accident cut it in two, neither of the two parts is killed, but each moves separately and by itself, and lives, both the one and the other trailing on two feet. Then when the parts meet - for the forepart frequently unites with the hinder - the two join up and coalesce after their separation. And the lizard, now one body, although a scar gives evidence of what it has suffered, yet runs about and maintains its former method of life exactly like one of its kind that has had no such experience. - [Scholfield translation]

Gaius Julius Solinus [3rd century CE] (De mirabilibus mundi / Polyhistor, Chapter 27.33-34): [Chapter 27.33] ...lizards are reckoned worms, not serpents. [Chapter 27.34] If these monsters hiss, they strike more slowly. They have feelings; they do not rashly stray except in couples. If one is captured or killed, the other, left behind, is maddened. The heads of females are more slender, their bellies more swollen and their venom more harmful. The male is equally smooth, higher, and also meeker. - [Arwen Apps translation, 2011]

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4, 34; 12, 37): [Book 12, 34] The lizard [lacertus] is a type of reptile, so named because it has arms [lacertus, "upper arm"]. There are many kinds of lizards, such as the botrax, the salamander, the saura, and the newt. [Book 12, 37] The saura is a lizard whose eyes go blind as it grows old. It goes into a chink in an east-facing wall, and stretches out and receives light when the sun rises. - [Barney, Lewis, et. al. translation]

Thomas of Cantimpré [circa 1200-1272 CE] (Liber de natura rerum, Serpents 8.2; 8.33): [Thomas describes the lizard under the names lacerta and scaura (saura).] [Serpents 8.22] As Solinus says, the ancients called the lizard [lacerta] a worm rather than a snake, because it strikes more mercifully. However, it hisses like a snake and has a similar tail; it walks on its feet. If one of a pair is captured, the other is made savage. There is also an animal of their kind in form, but unlike in color, which has a black tail. It feeds on wild spiders. A lizard, as Pliny says, does not incubate its eggs, having forgotten the place in which it laid them, since this animal has no memory. And, writes Pliny, the young break out of the eggs by themselves. [In the following sentence, Thomas has mistakenly included a passage from Pliny the Elder (Book 11, 30) about the scorpion killing all but one of its offspring.] Some say that the children are devoured by their mothers, leaving only one very clever, who places itself on the mother's hips; this avenger of its brothers kills its parents. There are lizards in India twenty-four feet in length, of a brilliant color. A lizard has a forked and hairy tongue. [Serpents 8.33] A scaura [saura, lizard] is a serpent, as Jacobus and Solinus say, which when it grows old, its eyes are blinded; but destitute of light, it enters the hole in a wall facing the rising of the sun, that is to say, looking the east to the sun, and when it directs its eyes against the sun it thus recovers the light. So also those who lack the light of the Scriptures, sending their hearts to the Sun, erect in contemplation, that what exercise or letter denied them, may be instructed by divine inspiration, and what negligence has washed away with the old life, holy exercise may restore with the new life. - [Badke translation/paraphrase]

Albertus Magnus [ca. 1200-1280 CE] (De animalibus, Book 25, 37): Though lizards do not, strictly speaking, belong to the category of serpents, we consider them here because of the general similarity of their shape to that of snakes. In his book which he composed about certain animals, Jorach says that when a lizard grows old, its eyesight becomes dim and blindness sets in; to coun- teract this disability the animal turns to face the sun’s rays and from its hole in the ground points its eyes directly toward the sun during the morning hours; thereafter, its sight returns and it sees as well as before. If this philosopher is accurate in this statement, the explanation must surely lie in the causation of the lizard’s blindness, i.e., a coldness which congeals the humor of the eye; the heat of the sunlight dissipates and thins the congealed humor and thus restores the sight. - [Scanlan]

Bartholomaeus Anglicus [13th century CE] (Liber de proprietatibus rerum, Book18.9): And such Serpents and adders lye in awaite for them that sleepe: And if they find the mouth open of them, or of other beasts, then they créepe in, for they love heate and humour that they finde there, but against such Adders, a little Beast fighteth that is called Saura, as it were a litle Euete. And some men meane, that it is a Lyzard, for when this beast Saura is ware that this Serpent is present, then he leapeth upon his face ye sléepeth, and cratcheth with his féet to wake him, and to warne him of the Serpent, as Avicen[na] saieth. And this little beast Saura, as Isidore saith, libr. 12. is as it were an Eute, and when he waxeth olde, his eien waxeth blind, and then hée goeth into an hole of a wall against the East, and openeth his eyen afterwarde when the Sun is risen, & then his eien heateth & taketh light. - [Batman]