Basilitrice



"What though the Moor the Basilisk hath slain, and pinned him lifeless to the sandy plain, up through the spear the subtle venom flies; the hand imbibes it, and the victor dies."

- The Roman poet Lucan as quoted by Thomas Bulfinch, The Age of Fable

The basilisk and the cockatrice are two relatively small creatures that have appeared in folklore, with roots dating back as far as Pliny the Elder (making them far Older Than Feudalism). The creatures have shared very similar descriptions since those early times, especially in heraldic depictions - indeed, they are often still conflated in the modern day, and many languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, and Greek still translate the term "cockatrice" as "basilisk" in some form. Basilitrice is a portmanteau of their names that alludes to these common traits.

The basilisk is first explicitly described in Pliny's Natural History. The word originates from the Greek form basilískos (Greek: βασιλίσκος; Latin: basiliscus), meaning "little king"; the serpent was reputed to have a mitre or crown-shaped crest adorning its head, leading some scholars to believe the description was based off that of various cobras. The basilisk remained an object of terror long after the collapse of the Roman empire, and was popular in bestiaries circulated within medieval-era Europe - they began attributing chicken-like traits to the beast, with the most prominent originating in the late 12th century: the basilisk was supposedly created by a cockerel hatching the egg of a serpent or toad.

Meanwhile, the cockatrice first appears in its 'modern' form as early as the twelfth century, depicted as two-legged and draconian or serpentine, with the head of a rooster. The name itself first appeared in the later fourteenth century: the cockatrice became synonymous with the basilisk when the "basiliscus" in Bartholomeus Anglicus' De proprietatibus rerum (circa 1260) was translated by John Trevisa as "cockatrice" - this came from the Old French cocatris, which in turn was derived from medieval Latin calcatrix, a translation of ichneumon from Greek. The cockatrice's birth was the reverse of the basilisk - a cockatrice would spawn from a chicken egg incubated by a serpent or toad.

Related to both is the ichneumon, or "weasel", a creature said to target the basilisk and cockatrice alike - it was not only immune to both their gazes, but a reputed reliable killer of both creatures, able to bring down the vicious monster before succumbing to its poisons at minimum. Similarly, the ichneumon was said to target and kill crocodiles as well, waiting for the reptile to bask in the sun with its mouth open - after which it would enter and eat its way through its insides.

Parts of this collective folklore are likely derived from early descriptions of the Nile crocodile, as well as a possible root in Egyptian folk tales - ibis eggs were regularly destroyed for fear that their diet of venomous snakes would create a snake-bird mix, i.e. a cockatrice. Said eggs may also have been preyed on by the aforementioned "weasel" - likely a type of egg-eating mongoose, perhaps specifically the Egyptian mongoose. Mongooses are known to tangle with venomous snakes, including cobras believed to be the basilisk's inspiration (e.g., the spitting cobra and king cobra), and have an immunity to snake venom.

The following traits are generally associated with these creatures:


 * Mix-and-Match Critters: Naturally a subtrope of this, as they are usually a mix of a serpent and a chicken as detailed above; though this is slightly more associated with the cockatrice nowadays, the basilisk still retains its origin of "snake hatched by a chicken".
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Both have serpentine features, frequently hide themselves away and are generally considered foul and nasty.
 * Poisonous Person: The basilisk and cockatrice have incredibly potent poisons that make any kind of contact with it fatal, often instantaneously so - even eye contact, contact with its breath, handling its corpse, or (as per Lucan above) running the rotten thing through is enough for the venom to infect, spread and kill in seconds.
 * Enemy to All Living Things: Both the basilisk and cockatrice actively seek out victims to kill with their venom, often because they were...
 * Made of Evil: The pair are often invoked as symbols or literal incarnations of wrath and malice, representing an inherently poisonous or downright evil nature.
 * Walking Wasteland: Some accounts assert that, if unable to find a "live" victim, they would turn their powers upon the surrounding plant life instead.
 * Taken for Granite: The instant fatality associated with them sometimes manifests as a form of petrification, possibly based off the fact that venom from cobras and other snakes can immobilize victims. Dungeons & Dragons in particular popularized this aspect of the cockatrice.

Modern incarnations of the basilisk and cockatrice, such as those seen in Dungeons & Dragons, Harry Potter and various other fantasy media, portray them as distinct creatures: The basilisk is usually a vicious low-slung reptile that is either lizard-like or serpentine, and the cockatrice is usually a bird-like reptilian monster with a snake's tail, if not an outright snake-bird hybrid.

For the manga named after the former creature, see Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls. For "basilisk images" and other similar hazardous media, see Brown Note, which The Basilisk redirects to. For other uses of the name, see Basilisk.

Anime and Manga

 * The Rental Magica episode "Red-Headed Girl" (episode 7 in broadcast order, episode 11 in chronological order) has a basilisk as its initial threat. A Biblical description of the monster is mentioned, and the basilisk in the show has the ability to kill a person simply by meeting their gaze.
 * The first episode of Little Witch Academia has a cockatrice as the main antagonist.
 * Basilisk: The Kouga Ninja Scrolls is an aptly-named manga that employs the basilisk motif: eye contact is the most powerful asset that the main characters have. Gennosuke can reverse the murderous intent of any who meet his eye, thus forcing them to kill themselves, and Oboro can neutralize the ninja arts of any who meet her gaze.

Comic Books

 * In DC Comics, Basilisk is a terrorist group encountered by the Suicide Squad.
 * In Marvel Comics, Basilisk is the moniker of four different characters:
 * Basil Elks, a petty thief who broke into a museum to steal what he believed an ordinary emerald. However, it is actually alien Kree artifact called the Alpha Stone; when Elks is caught and fired upon by a security guard, the bullet accidentally hits and shatters the gem, causing an explosion that transforms Elks into a green, red-eyed humanoid reptilian with eye beams and the ability to flash-freeze victims (which he then turns upon the unfortunate guard). The newly-christened Basilisk has since faced off against Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Captain Marvel, the Mole Man, and the Punisher.
 * The second Basilisk is Wayne Gifford, who created the alternate persona through demon worship. Also a humanoid reptilian, Gifford posseses a paralyzing stare and is an enemy of the Anti-Heroic Morbius the Living Vampire.
 * The third was a mutant student at the Xavier Institute, who was persecuted in his youth due to his large form and bald head - he had a single eye with a camera-like device in the socket that allows him to control his mutant ability, a pulse of high-frequency strobe light emitted from his brain that paralyzes sentient viewers. He was characterized as somewhat dim and extremely aggressive, and would eventually join the Brotherhood of Mutants shortly before they took over New York City; Magneto accidentally kills him after he makes an insensitive joke about the "bad smell" of the marched human prisoners.
 * A fourth Basilisk appeared in the Age of X crossover, a former executioner from Arcade's prison who killed him and defected to Magneto's resistance..

Literature
"What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blaspheme Freedom and thee? a new Actaeon's error Shall theirs have been,--devoured by their own hounds! Be thou like the imperial basilisk, Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds! Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk, Aghast she pass from the earth's disk. Fear not, but gaze,--for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe."
 * In the Harry Potter franchise, basilisks are far larger and longer-lived, with lengths upwards of fifty feet and a lifespan of several centuries, and draw from folkloric depictions in several aspects - including its enmity towards spiders (derived from Bulfinch), and its weaknesses to the crow of a rooster and the musk of a weasel, both of which are said to kill it.
 * Cockatrices are mentioned briefly in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Hermione explains that the Triwizard Tournament had not been held in centuries: the last one had been called off due to a cockatrice that participants were tasked with capturing got loose, and the heads of the competing schools were injured in the aftermath.
 * In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the first basilisk is reported to have been birthed by Herpo the Foul, a Greek Dark wizard and Parselmouth (able to communicate with snakes) who hatched a chicken egg under a toad. Basilisks are said to be uncontrollable except by Parselmouths, and are the mortal enemy of spiders (who flee from their presence). Their venom and stare are differentiated, but no less deadly than the original folklore, and the male basilisk's head has a distinct scarlet plume.
 * In Chapter 4 of The Worm Ouroboros, King Gorice shows Gro a live cockatrice.
 * In Dracula, Jonathan Harker likens the titular vampire's gaze to a basilisk's as he attempts to destroy the sleeping Count, only for his gaze to turn upon Jonathan mid-swing and throw off his aim.
 * Walter Wangerin Jr. novel The Book of the Dun Cow features a cockatrice as the main villain, born of a rooster's Deal with the Devil (who is aptly named Wyrm). With the help of a sycophantic toad, he creates an army of wicked basilisks.
 * As indicated by the description above, the basilisk lends its name to a specific type of Brown Note, codified by science fiction author David Langford in the short story BLIT. The title itself ("Berryman Logical Image Technique") also refers to the concept - a form of image with patterns designed to lethally exploit flaws in the structure and cognition of the human mind. The motif recurs in other works by Langford, including "What Happened at Cambridge IV" and the Hugo-winning "Different Kinds of Darkness"
 * Langford's later sequel to BLIT, the 1999 "comp.basilisk FAQ", makes explicit mention of similar concepts in Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud (1957), J. B. Priestley's The Shapes of Sleep (1962), Piers Anthony's Macroscope (1969), and William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984).
 * The works of Ken MacLeod and Greg Egan specifically refer to the idea as "the Langford hack" (The Cassini Division) and "the Langford Mind-Erasing Fractal Basilisk" (Permutation City). Charles Stross's works also refer to a "Langford Death Parrot" (The Fuller Memorandum) and "Basilisk attacks" with "Langford fractals" (Accelerando). More modern works influenced by the concept include Eclipse Phase (the viral "Basilisk hacks") and SCP Foundation (cognitohazards, sometimes called "memetic kill agents").
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley's 1820 poem "Ode to Naples" uses an allusion to the basilisk, and is quoted as follows within The Age of Fable mentioned below:


 * Shelley also refers to the basilisk in part VIII of his poem "Queen Mab:"

"Those deserts of immeasurable sand, Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, – Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother's door, Sharing his morning's meal with the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet."

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends
"Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of thee, because the rod that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's root shall come forth a basilisk, and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent."
 * The Bible:
 * The English Revised Version of the Book of Isaiah has chapter 14:29, the prophet's exhortation to the Philistines after the fall of Israel. The text claims that a "basilisk" shall arise from its remains, and the King James translation uses "cockatrice"; in either case, said beast represents the nation's resurgence, and would itself beget a "dragon".


 * In the Latin Vulgate and Septuagint translations of Book of Psalms, Psalm 91:13 is translated as "You will tread on the lion and the dragon,/the asp and the basilisk you will trample under foot".


 * Pliny the Elder's Natural History arguably provides the Trope Codifier, if not the Ur Example. Described after the catoblepas (a bovine-like monster with a similarly deadly gaze), Pliny attributes its habitat to the province of Cyrene, i.e. the eastern half of modern-day Libya. Pliny's basilisk is "not more than twelve fingers in length" (i.e., ten and a half inches), with a white crown-like spot on its head, and is described as moving upright compared to "typical" low-slithering snakes. It actively uses its venom to kill plant life and can even shatter stone with it; in addition, Pliny asserts that it was formerly believed potent enough that if a man on horseback killed one with a spear, the poison would run up the weapon and kill both.
 * Some Romans were said to believe that a basilisk infestation resulted in the creation of the Sahara Desert.
 * Similar creatures with varying amounts of resemblance to the basilisk and/or cockatrice crop up in folklore around the globe, such as the half-reptile half-bird snallygaster of eastern American folklore that originated from the tales of 18th-century German immigrants; Whittaker Chambers famously likened U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy to the monster. Others include the Chilota basilisco chilote and the Mapuche Colo Colo, both originating in South America.
 * The basilisco chilote is described as a rooster-crested serpent, while the Colo Colo is unusual in that is much more ratlike than other similar creatures - both are still hatched from an egg laid by a snake and incubated by a rooster. They like to hide in inhabited houses and feed on the residents' saliva and phlegm, and already-hatched ones are usually impossible to get rid of (short of burning down the entire house).
 * On that note, it was not uncommon to hear tales of "basilisk hunts" - among the most famous of them is the "Warsaw basilisk" of 1587, which is sometimes cited as the last of the great basilisk hunts.
 * The collected first two volumes of Thomas Bulfinch's The Age of Fable has "The Cockatrice, or Basilisk" as one of the monster descriptions in chapter sixteen. In addition to establishing many now-current characteristics of the "king of serpents" and providing the page quote, the book asserts that there were many species of basilisk. It also mentions that the corpse (or perhaps a likeness thereof) was used in the temple of Apollo and private houses to ward off spiders; similarly, another was used within the temple of Diana, said to scare off swallows.
 * Pierre de Beauvais's Bestiarie contains one of the earlier examples of the "snake-rooster" hybrid form of basilisk. According to the work, a small "abnormal" egg lain in a dunghill by an old rooster and hatched by a toad would birth a basilisk - described as "a misshapen creature, with the upper body of a rooster, bat-like wings, and the tail of a snake". Once hatched, it lies in a cellar or deep well and waits for victims to pass by.
 * In Korean folklore, there is a creature known as a gye-lyong (Korean: 계룡; Hanja: 鷄龍, lit. "chicken-dragon"); while not as common as "actual" dragons, they are sometimes seen as chariot-pullers for important legendary figures or their parents. The princess of the Kingdom of Silla was said to have been born from a cockatrice egg.

Tabletop Games

 * Yu-Gi-Oh! has several such monsters based on one of the two creatures:
 * "Basilius, Familiar of the Evil Eye"
 * "The Fabled Kokkator"
 * "Heraldic Beast Basilisk"
 * "Cockathorium, the Superheavy Shining Soarer"
 * "Mythical Beast Bashilisk"
 * "Umbral Soul"
 * And fittingly, "Hazy Flame Basiltrice".

Theatre
"O ill-dispersing wind of misery! O my accursed womb, the bed of death! A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world, Whose unavoided eye is murderous."
 * In Shakespeare's play Richard III, the Duchess of York likens her son Richard to a cockatrice.


 * When the title character compliments the eyes of Lady Anne, she spits back: "Would they were basilisk's, to strike thee dead!"

"Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'Ay,' And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice."
 * In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet laments apparent news of Romeo's suicide as follows:

"... never threaten with your eyes they are no cockatrice's..."
 * Nathan Field invokes the cocktrice's gaze as a metaphor in the first scene of The Honest Man's Fortune.

Video Games

 * In NetHack, the cockatrice is a class of creatures represented by the  glyph, and includes its namesake and their younger form, the chickatrice; their encyclopedia entry is a quoted excerpt that touches on their the relationship to the basilisk. They are always hostile and generally infamous for being a source of many a stupid death and several of the game's worse One-Hit Kills - all related to its ability to turn the player to stone. Just bare skin making contact with its body (e.g., via weaponless melee without gloves or being bitten) is enough to turn a victim into a statue, unless they're incorporeal, already made of stone or are acidic in nature. Even a well-armored player character can be turned to stone if bitten.
 * After the bite attack, the cockatrice will attempt a touch attack; if it lands, there is then a 1 in 3 chance that the cockatrice will hiss at you. Following this, there is a 10% chance that you will begin slowing down and turning to stone, losing any intrinsic speed you have in the process. This is a 'delayed instadeath' that can be cured through a few means, so hopefully you have at least one of them available.
 * Even its corpse has this property - touch a corpse without gloves or try to eat one, and unless you're stony or acidic it's game over. On top of that, its corpse is also poisonous to eat, and being hit with or eating an egg will similarly induce a slow stoning. Grab a corpse with gloves, however, and you have an Improvised Weapon that turns non-immune monsters to stone, even including many later bosses! Players tend to call these "rubber chickens", and this can also be done using the eggs as projectiles.
 * ...but intelligent enemies that can wear gloves will do the same to you, if they find a rubber chicken or some footrice eggs. (Thankfully, this is non-instantaneous as above.) There's also the still-present danger of touching the corpse in other ways - better not fumble or fall onto it!
 * Of note is that golems and skeletons are also immune, partly due to being non-living. Golems have their body turned to stone but remain mobile otherwise, while skeletons are completely unaffected - likely as a result of not being bothered by instant fossilization.
 * NetHack variants often add an additional spin on the cockatrice and its kin, and some even introduce its close cousin in the basilisk. NetHack itself has the fiery-gazing pyrolisk.
 * SLASH'EM adds both the basilisk and another close relative to both in the asphynx - they can petrify the player in a manner similar to cockatrices, and are different classes of monster from them, making "solving" the stoning problem via scrolls of genocide much more difficult.
 * SpliceHack has werecockatrices.
 * EvilHack improves enemy monster AI to the point that glove-wearing monsters 'lucky' enough to get a wish might well choose a footrice corpse to smack you with!
 * In Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hand, cockatrices appear as enemies in Sol City.
 * Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time features the cockatrice from the first episode of the anime (mentioned in Anime & Manga above) as a dungeon boss in the underground labyrinth.
 * Mother 3 has the Slitherhen - a Chimera with a snake's body and a chicken's head. Though it visually resembles a cockatrice, it thankfully isn't very poisonous.

Web Original

 * Super Mario Bros. Z features a minor antagonist named Captain Basilisx, a tough Koopatrol with Wolverine Claws and a stone-inducing stare.

Western Animation

 * In one episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, a cockatrice turned Twilight Sparkle and a chicken to stone, and was in the process of turning Fluttershy to stone when she stares the monster down while sternly lecturing it on its rude behavior.
 * In Amphibia, the Chicka-lisk is a chicken-like demon that can turn people to stone with a stare and eats gold.

Real Life

 * Averted with real-life basilisks, a genus of large iguanian lizard that only shares its name and reptilian nature with the mythical beasts. Native to rainforests in the Americas, readers may know them better as the "Jesus Christ lizards" that can run across water for short periods.
 * Crotalus basiliscus (commonly known as the Mexican green rattler) also derives its species name from the basilisk, though in this case it was given its name due to its size and highly potent venom.