# Basilisk - Creature: Monstrosity - Date: 150 BCE - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/basilisk/ > The 'little king' of serpents whose glance kills: Pliny's venomous snake from Cyrene, hatched by medieval cockerels, turned into D&D's petrifying lizard and Harry Potter's monster in the pipes. **Why it matters:** The basilisk carried the idea of a monster that kills by sight from Roman natural history into the rules of every fantasy game, where its gaze became the petrification attack and the saving throw that answers it. ## Quick answers **Where does the Basilisk come from?** Greek and Roman natural history — named by Nicander (2nd century BCE), made deadly by Pliny the Elder's Natural History (77 CE) **When did the Basilisk first appear?** c. 150 BCE, in Nicander's Theriaca. **How did the Basilisk get into games?** Key appearances: Dungeons & Dragons, Monsters & Treasure (1974) and NetHack (1987). **Why is the Basilisk significant?** The basilisk carried the idea of a monster that kills by sight from Roman natural history into the rules of every fantasy game, where its gaze became the petrification attack and the saving throw that answers it. ## Origins The basilisk began as a snake that people believed was real. The Greek poet and physician Nicander, writing his poem on venomous creatures in the second century BCE, already knew the *basiliskos*, the "little king", as a small serpent whose bite killed quickly. Then Pliny the Elder, in his *Natural History* (77 CE), turned it into something unforgettable. His basilisk comes from the province of Cyrene in North Africa and is no more than twelve fingers long, with a white mark on its head like a diadem. Other serpents flee its hiss. It moves upright rather than in coils. Its breath withers shrubs, burns grass and breaks stones; venom climbs a horseman's spear and kills both man and horse. The only defense is the weasel, whose smell kills it. Scholars have suggested that travelers' stories of cobras, which rear upright and are hunted by mongooses, lie somewhere behind the tale. The Middle Ages made the basilisk stranger still. Bede is the first to record that it hatched from an egg laid by an old cockerel; bestiaries gave it a rooster's comb and wings, and it merged with the cockatrice, a creature that John Trevisa's 1397 translation of Bartholomeus Anglicus used for the same beast. The legends collected their own countermeasures: a rooster's crow killed it, and so did its own reflection, which is how a journeyman with a coat of mirrors is said to have killed the basilisk of Warsaw. Chaucer called it the "basilicok"; Shakespeare's Lady Anne wished her eyes were a basilisk's so she could kill Richard III with a look. ## Into the dungeon When [Gary Gygax](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/gary-gygax/) and [Dave Arneson](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/dave-arneson/) assembled the monster list of [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) in 1974, they included both creatures. The basilisk turned victims to stone by touch and glance; the cockatrice, a smaller and more mobile cousin, by touch alone. That single power became one of the most important ideas in fantasy games: petrification, answered by a [Saving throw](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/saving-throw/) and, if the dice failed, by a spell or potion that turns stone back into flesh. [Advanced Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/advanced-dungeons-and-dragons/) fixed the basilisk as a heavy reptile with a petrifying gaze and kept the medieval trick of turning that gaze back on it with a mirror. A "greater basilisk" followed in *Monster Manual II* (1983). Computer games inherited the whole kit. [Final Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/final-fantasy/) (1987) sold a cure for stone, the Soft, to counter monsters such as its cockatrices. The cockatrice became the most feared object in [NetHack](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/nethack/), where touching its corpse bare-handed is instantly fatal and players learn to carry a lizard corpse, which cures creeping petrification. Veterans also learned the reverse: wearing gloves, a cockatrice corpse can be wielded to stone almost anything, one of the roguelike's most famous emergent tactics. ## Variations [J. K. Rowling](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/j-k-rowling/) returned the basilisk to its roots as a king of serpents in [*Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/harry-potter/) (1998). Her monster is a giant snake, left in the school by Salazar Slytherin and hatched, as the medieval sources said, from a chicken's egg under a toad. Its direct stare kills; those who see it only indirectly, through a camera, a ghost or a puddle, are petrified. Spiders flee it, a rooster's crow is fatal to it, and the phoenix Fawkes blinds it before Harry kills it with the sword of Gryffindor. Rowling packs almost every element of Pliny and the bestiaries into one sequence. Elsewhere the basilisk and the cockatrice keep splitting and recombining. Some games make the basilisk a lizard and the cockatrice a bird; others give both the same stony gaze. The Greek gorgon and the basilisk sit side by side in most monster books, both answers to the same fear: that a monster might kill you before you ever get close enough to fight it. Swiss Basel still uses basilisks as supporters of the city's arms, a heraldic afterlife older than any game. Like the [Griffin](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/griffin/) and the [Dragon](https://www.lanternhall.org/bestiary/dragon/), the basilisk shows how a creature from classical natural history can survive two thousand years by changing its body while keeping its single, memorable power. ## Migration - -150: Nicander's Theriaca — The Greek poet-physician lists the basiliskos, 'little king', as a small snake with a lethal bite — still a naturalist's animal, not yet a monster. - 77: Pliny the Elder, Natural History — The serpent of Cyrene, twelve fingers long, with a crown-like white spot; its breath scorches grass and splits stones, poison runs up a spear to kill horse and rider, and only the weasel can kill it. - 1180: Medieval bestiaries (Alexander Neckam and others) — Bede had already told of a basilisk hatched from a cockerel's egg; the creature grows rooster features and blurs into the cockatrice, killed by a rooster's crow or its own reflection. - 1974: Dungeons & Dragons, Monsters & Treasure — Basilisk and cockatrice both enter the first monster list; the basilisk petrifies by touch and glance, the cockatrice by touch. - 1987: NetHack — The cockatrice becomes the roguelike's most infamous hazard: touch its corpse bare-handed and you turn to stone; wield it in gloves and it becomes a weapon. - 1998: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — Rowling's giant serpent in the pipes of Hogwarts kills with a direct stare and petrifies those who catch it only in reflection, and fears the crowing rooster. ## Facts - Basilisk comes from the Greek basiliskos, 'little king' — named for a crown-shaped white spot, or crest, on its head. - Pliny says a man who speared a basilisk from horseback died with his horse, poisoned by venom running up the shaft. - Pliny's only antidote was the weasel, thrown into the basilisk's hole; the smell kills the serpent, though the weasel usually dies too. - Wycliffe's 1382 Bible and later the King James Version render Isaiah's serpent as 'cockatrice', where other translations say 'basilisk' or 'viper'. - The first D&D rules of 1974 gave the basilisk the power to turn victims to stone by touch and glance; later editions settled on the gaze. - In NetHack, a player can turn a cockatrice corpse into a weapon — as long as he or she is wearing gloves. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilisk) - [Wikipedia — Cockatrice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatrice) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.