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Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead

Ostracias, Marcasite Page of 453 Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
278                                  OVUM ANGUINUM.
OVUM ANGUINUM: Οφίτηs.
" Moreover, there is a kind of egg in mighty reputation in the Gallic provinces, of which Greek writers have no mention. Innumerable snakes, twining together in summer, make a ball, by a skilful combination, out of the froth from their jaws and the slime of their bodies. It is called the Ovum Anguinum. The Druids assert that it is tossed on high by their breath, and must be caught in a cloak before it touch the ground : the robber makes his escape on horseback, the snakes following him till they are stopped by the intervention of a running stream. The test of its reality is, that it should float against the stream, even though set in gold ; and, so ingenious are magicians in disguising their impositions, they declare it must (to have any virtue) be captured at a particular age of the moon—as though it were within the will of man that such an operation should coincide with any determined time. I have myself certainly seen the egg, which is of the size of a small, round apple, covered with a cartilaginous crust, with many excrescences, like the suckers ' on the arms of the cuttle-fish. It was being worn at the moment as the badge of a Druid. It is marvellously extolled for its effect in giving success in battle and in petitions to princes : a proof of the falsity of which is the fact, that to my knowledge a Roman knight from Vocontii was put to death by the Emperor Claudius for no other cause than the carrying of one in his bosom during a trial. This embracing together of the serpents, and their thus productive union, seems to be the cause why foreign nations have made the Caduceus entwined with snakes, one of the emblems of peace ; for it is not the custom to represent the snakes on the Caduceus as having crests " (i. e. not as the ser­pents called by the Romans " dracones," the sacred reptiles above all others, the Egyptian Aspis).
Ostracias, Marcasite Page of 453 Ovum Anguinum, Druid's Bead
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