Do salamanders scare you? Well, me neither. In fact, they make me feel super fluffy. They are pretty squishy, exhibit some funny behaviors, and appeal to the eyes. What I'm going to share may be counterintuitive, then: pre-modern authors, particularly medieval bestiaries, thought that salamanders were terrifying.
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| An attractive Blue-Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma laterale) |
As early as the 4th century BCE, writers such as Aristotle already knew of salamanders. The earliest known depiction of salamanders comes from a Roman man named Pliny the Elder, an author and philosopher who wrote an encyclopedia titled Naturalis Historia, which documented the knowledge of his time. Pliny refers to the salamander "as an animal like a lizard in shape and with a body specked all over; it never comes out except during heavy showers and goes away the moment the weather becomes clear." So, we see here that Pliny makes an important distinction between lizards and salamanders. He also makes note of its ectothermy and some of the poisonous properties of salamanders, which we know to be true to some degree. But, Pliny makes these properties out to be way more fantastical than reality. He says, "It is so chilly that it puts out fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does. It vomits from its mouth a milky slaver [saliva], one touch of which on any part of the human body causes all the hair to drop off, and the portion touched changes its color and breaks out in a tetter." Excuse me, what?! He's being a total drama queen.
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| An emblem that shows a fearsome, beast-like salamander |
As for salamanders putting out fires, Pliny found out the hard way that this wasn't true. Aristotle was the first to make that big claim, so Pliny put on his scientist cap and had to test that hypothesis. He threw a salamander into a fire. What happened is exactly what you think happened. Needless to say, Pliny the Elder was disappointed. What Aristotle probably observed were salamanders skittering away when the wet, rotting logs they lived in were thrown into fires. It's way cooler to imagine caudates as being born from the fire itself, though. Did you make the connection to Salamandra salamandra?
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| A depiction of an alchemist burning a salamander |
Then, we enter Medieval Europe. Salamanders became the highlight of fantasy tales, the mystical, and the occult. In those bestiaries, salamanders were depicted as being rather mythical and quixotic; some examples include "a satyr-like creature", "a worm penetrating flames", or "a winged dog". These descriptions are quite outlandish when we consider the actual salamanders we know and love. We have to wonder, what were the reasons behind these grandiose and outrageous depictions in the bestiaries? Well, Medieval bestiaries were usually living allegories- depictions of each animal's religious meaning. Supposedly, early Christians believed that the symbol of the salamander represented the immunity of Jesus to the devil's temptation and exposure to the fires of hell.
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| A strange depiction of a salamander in a Medieval bestiary |
If you took British Literature in high school like I did, you probably read Macbeth. There was a scene where some witches refer to the "eye of newt" as an ingredient for witch's brew. Luckily, they didn't actually maim any newts and this was just a metaphor for mustard seeds. But still, why did people associate them with dark magic? Well, that's just because they're herps. People learned that amphibians can cause sickness or death if ingested. You and I both know that you should not be licking amphibians. Further, we know that herpetofauna account for a lot of biomass, and during the breeding season, most of them have babies in mass. Back then, animals swarming was not cool- it meant evil. For context, imagine rats or locusts or whatever organisms that Europeans feared at the time and what a horde of them could mean. Furthermore, swamps were scary pits of black water that much of our herpetofauna love (thanks a lot, Linnaeus).
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| A Rough-Skinned Newt (Taricha granulosa) |
Sources:
-https://danq.me/2020/01/04/salamander/
-https://www.froglife.org/2020/10/27/halloween-folklore-and-myths/
2 comments:
Kayla, I appreciate how in-depth you went into about the lore of these salamanders "born in fire." I feel that in a lot of ancient cultures there have been myths about different animals. It's really interesting to see how they're depicted in ancient art, as well. This can be seen with other species like frogs. A playwright from ancient Greece, Aristophanes actually wrote a play about their croak-like calls, hence the name 'The Frogs.' Anyways, there's a specific part in the play when Dionysis, a god, gets into an annoyed debate with these creatures in response to their chorus of loud calls! It gets weird, but very cool to see how humans feelings and interactions were with amphibians in history.
Well, salamanders are pretty fantastic and somewhat weird (albeit not necessarily in the ways depicted by these authors of old)!
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