Catoblepas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The catoblepas (from the Greek καταβλέπω, "to look downwards") is a legendary creature from Ethiopia, described first by Pliny the Elder and later by Claudius Aelianus. It is said to have the body of a buffalo and the head of a hog. Its back has scales that protect the beast, and its head is always pointing downwards. Its stare or breath could either turn people into stone, or kill them.
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[edit] Ancient and medieval descriptions
Pliny (Natural History, 8.77) described the catoblepas as a mid-sized creature, sluggish, with a heavy head and a face always turned to the ground. He thought its gaze, like that of the basilisk, was lethal, making the heaviness of its head quite fortunate.
Claudius Aelianus (On the Nature of Animals, 7.6) provided a fuller description: the creature was a mid-sized herbivore, about the size of a domestic bull, with a heavy mane, narrow, bloodshot eyes, a scaly back and shaggy eyebrows. The head was so heavy that the beast could only look down. In his description, the animal's gaze was not lethal, but its breath was poison, since it ate only poisonous vegetation.
Both authors may have been referring to the gnu or pangolin.[original research?]
[edit] In Literature
The catoblepas is described in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci:
It is found in Ethiopia near to the source Nigricapo. It is not a very large animal, is sluggish in all its parts, and its head is so large that it carries it with difficulty, in such wise that it always droops towards the ground; otherwise it would be a great pest to man, for any one on whom it fixes its eyes dies immediately.
In The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Gustav Flaubert describes it as:
...a black buffalo with the head of a hog, hanging close to the ground, joined to its body by a thin neck, long and loose as an emptied intestine. It wallows flat upon the ground, and its legs are smothered under the huge mane of stiff bristles that hide its face.
[edit] The catoblepas in computer gaming
The catoblepas is a common monster in video and roleplaying games. In Dungeons & Dragons, the catoblepas is "a deadly and notorious monster"; in the Forgotten Realms setting, it is even milked to make an exotic cheese known as "Death Cheese" in reference to its deadly glare.[citation needed]
Catoblepas appeared in various Castlevania videogames such as, Aria of Sorrow for Game Boy Advanced and Dawn of Sorrow for Nintendo DS. In Dawn of Sorrow, his breath could turn Soma Cruz into stone, but if Soma obtained the monster's soul, he could use that same ability on his enemies.
The catoblepas has also appeared in several Final Fantasy games as either a powerful monster or as the summoned creature, "Shoat". This creature also appears by name in Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga as a boss monster. Catoblepas is the monster in Monster in My Pocket #20. The catoblepas appears too in Omega, and in the Lost Kingdoms series of games. It appears in the MMORPG RuneScape in a dungeon where it is called "catablepon".
