.jpg/250px-Catoblepas_1657_(22295803).jpg){kind=small}
.jpg/2000px-Catoblepas_1657_(22295803).jpg)
Community hub
Recent from talks
Contribute something
Nothing was collected or created yet.
Catoblepas
View on Wikipedia.jpg)
The catoblepas (from Latin catōblepas, ultimately from Greek καταβλέπω (katablépō) "to look downwards") is a legendary creature from Aethiopia, first described by Pliny the Elder and later by Claudius Aelianus.
One known description of the Catoblepas is said to resemble a cape buffalo, with its head always pointing downwards due to its great weight. Its stare or breath could kill people. The catoblepas is often thought to be based on real-life encounters with wildebeest, such that some dictionaries say that the word is synonymous with "gnu". Other depictions have it sporting the head of a hog and the body of a cape buffalo. It is sometimes known as an African version of a Gorgon.[1]
Ancient and medieval descriptions
[edit]Pliny the Elder (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.
Pomponius Mela (Chorographia, 3.98) echoes the description given by Pliny the Elder though also notes that the creature is fairly passive and not known to physically attack others.
Timotheus of Gaza (On Animals, 53) says that the catoblepas emits fire from its nostrils.
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.
Constantine Manasses (2, 39) mentions the "fire-breathing katobleps".
In literature
[edit]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 (1874), Gustave 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.
In The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (c. 1570–1586), by Sir Philip Sidney, the "forsaken knight" that Amphilalus fights has a Catoblepas upon his crest:
So passed he over into the island, taking with him the two brothers of Anaxius; where he found the forsaken knight attired in his own livery, as black as sorrow itself could see itself in the blackest glass: his ornaments of the same hue, but formd into the figures of ravens which seemed to gape for carrion: only his reins were snakes, which finely wrapping themselves one within the other, their heads came together to the cheeks and bosses of the bit, where they might seem to bite at the horse, and the horse, as he champed the bit, to bite at them, and that the white foam was engendered by the poisonous fury of the combat. His impresa was a Catoblepta, which so long lies dead as the moon (whereto it hath so natural a sympathy) wants her light. The word signified, that the moon wanted not the light, but the poor beast wanted the moon's light.
The Catoblepas was listed in the Book of Imaginary Beings (1957) by Jorge Luis Borges. It is described as a black buffalo with a hog's head that is always looking down.
A catoblepas appears in A Spell for Chameleon (1977) by Piers Anthony. In the book, the catoblepas fights an argus and a harpy, all of which want to devour the protagonist, Bink. It is described as follows:
[Bink] sat up. One leg remained anchored-but now he had anchorage to rip out of the clutch of the demon weed. It didn't even hurt this time. He looked at the battling monsters-and saw the snakelike hair of the catoblepas twined around the head of the argus, gripping it by horns, ears, scales, and eyeballs-anything available. The body of the catoblepas was covered with reptilian scales, from its gorgon head to its cloven hooves, invulnerable to the attack of the argus. In overall shape it was like any quadruped, not all that remarkable; but that deadly writhing prehensile head hair-what a horror!
The catoblepas is mentioned in The Shattered World (1984) by Michael Reaves:
Troas cleared his throat impatiently and Beorn looked at him. On his robe was a stylized design of a catoblepas, stitched in silver thread in a rampant pose. Beorn thought it looked faintly ridiculous.
In Rick Riordan's 2013 The Heroes of Olympus book The House of Hades, the catoblepas appears with the name Katobleps (Ancient Greek κατῶβλεψ) in the form of creatures resembling cow monsters. They are shown to have a poisonous gaze and a poisonous breath.
In other media
[edit]- The Catoblepas appeared in the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons in two distinct forms. It first appeared under the name "Catoblepas" in 1976, in the TSR-published magazine The Strategic Review, issue #7[2] and continued to appear in various editions of the game rules[3] with evolving attributes. TSR also included a creature in its game called the gorgon based on the catoblepas of legend, but resembling iron-scaled cattle. This interpretation of gorgon appears as a unit in Heroes of Might and Magic III as well.
- The catoblepas appears as creature cards in the Theros and Theros Beyond Death expansion sets of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering.[4][5]
- The catoblepas appears as a common enemy in the Castlevania video games. Its description varies in different games where it can resemble a gray ox and an armored bull. The catoblepas has a weaker counterpart called the gorgon which can breathe poison.
- An invalid binomial name for the Black wildebeest is Catoblepas operculatus as coined by Brookes (1828), likely in reference to both its horns and downturned head.
- The Catoblepas inspired several Monster Cards in the collectible card game Yu-Gi-Oh!.[6][7]
- The Catoblepas appears in RuneScape with the name "Catablepon".
- Catoblepas meat is mentioned as preferred food of a spoiled princess in The Witcher video game.
- The catoblepas appears as a common enemy in the Final Fantasy video game series.
References
[edit]- ^ Tom McGowen (1981). Encyclopedia of Legendary Creatures. Rand McNally. p. 28. ISBN 0528824023.
- ^ Ewalt, David M. (2013). Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It. Scribner. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-4516-4052-6.
- ^ Theurer, Mark (December 2002). "D20 Product Review: Monster Manual II" (PDF). Fictional Reality. No. 10. p. 52. Archived from the original on 2007-08-13. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
- ^ "Blight-Breath Catoblepas (Theros Beyond Death)". Gatherer. Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
- ^ "Loathsome Catoblepas (Theros)". Gatherer. Wizards of the Coast. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
- ^ "Catoblepas and the Witch of Fate". Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Database. Konami. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
- ^ "Catoblepas, Familiar of the Evil Eye". Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Database. Konami. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
External links
[edit]Catoblepas
View on GrokipediaOrigins and Etymology
Name Origin
The term "Catoblepas" originates from the Ancient Greek κατῶβλεψ (katôbleps), a compound word meaning "downward-looking" or "that which looks down," derived from κατά (katá, "down" or "downwards") and βλέπω (blépō, "to look" or "to see").[4][5] This etymology emphasizes the creature's defining trait of a perpetually lowered gaze, stemming from the weight of its head.[6] The name first appears in ancient literature in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia (c. 77 CE), Book 8, Chapter 32, where it is used to denote a sluggish Ethiopian beast with a head too heavy to lift, compelling it to gaze at the ground.[1] Earlier Greek uses of related forms, such as the verb καταβλέπω (katablépō, "to look downwards"), appear in classical texts, but Pliny's account marks the initial application to this specific mythical animal. Over time, the term underwent transliteration and spelling variations across languages and periods. In Latin, it became catōblepās or catoblepas, directly borrowed from the Greek.[5] Later European adaptations in medieval bestiaries introduced variants such as catapleba, catoblepon, and katoblepon, reflecting phonetic shifts and scribal interpretations while maintaining the core meaning of downward gaze.[3]Historical Context
The Catoblepas myth originated in association with Aethiopia, the ancient Greek and Roman term for sub-Saharan Africa, particularly regions near the source of the Nile River or the Nigris area, which were perceived as remote and enigmatic frontiers of the known world.[2][7] This placement reflected the classical worldview, where Aethiopia represented a land of marvels and perils beyond the Mediterranean, populated by extraordinary creatures reported by traders and explorers venturing southward.[2] The creature emerged prominently within Greco-Roman natural history traditions during the 1st century CE, as documented in works compiling accounts of exotic beasts from distant explorations.[2] Authors like Pliny the Elder integrated such reports into encyclopedic treatises, portraying the Catoblepas as emblematic of Africa's untamed wilderness and the limits of human knowledge at the time.[2] This era's fascination with empirical yet fantastical geography helped embed the myth in the intellectual fabric of the ancient Mediterranean, bridging hearsay from African expeditions with scholarly discourse.[8] In medieval European bestiaries, the Catoblepas appeared drawing from classical sources, perpetuating the creature's image in compilations of exotic beasts.[3] These works helped shape cultural curiosities about the African interior throughout the Middle Ages.[3]Physical Description and Abilities
Appearance
The Catoblepas is depicted in ancient accounts as a mid-sized, sluggish creature with a body resembling that of a bull or ox, supported by inactive limbs. Its overall form emphasizes a stocky, bovine build. The creature's most distinctive feature is its disproportionately large and heavy head, which hangs perpetually low toward the ground due to its immense weight, rendering it incapable of lifting the gaze upward with ease.[9][10] The head itself bears a grim expression, with high, shaggy eyebrows and a mane of coarse hair—resembling horsehair—cascading from the crown over the forehead that obscure its features. This downward-facing posture, from which the name Catoblepas derives (meaning "down-looker" in Greek), is consistently emphasized across sources, portraying the animal as perpetually earthbound in its orientation.[2][10] Variations in descriptions highlight a range in scale, from moderate proportions to those akin to a domestic ox or bull.[9][11]Lethal Attributes
The Catoblepas is renowned in ancient accounts for its lethal gaze, which, according to Pliny, causes instant death to humans who meet its eyes. Aelian describes its narrow, bloodshot eyes but attributes lethality to its breath rather than the gaze.[2][1] In addition to its deadly stare, Aelian attributes to the Catoblepas a poisonous breath exhaled from its mouth or throat, capable of infecting the surrounding air and inducing severe affliction, loss of voice, and fatal convulsions in approaching animals. This noxious emission arises from its diet of poisonous roots, which infuses its exhalations with toxicity, making even indirect proximity dangerous without requiring visual contact.[2] The creature's sluggish demeanor and tendency to keep its heavy head lowered further underscore its non-aggressive nature, yet these traits do not diminish its peril; herbivores like the Catoblepas become deadly through environmental adaptation, where mere presence in toxic feeding grounds turns it into an unwitting vector of death.[2]Historical Accounts
Ancient Descriptions
The earliest detailed accounts of the Catoblepas appear in Greco-Roman natural history texts from the 1st to 6th centuries CE, portraying it as a sluggish, dangerous creature inhabiting the marshes and rivers of Ethiopia and Libya. Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History (Book 8, Chapter 32), describes it as a moderate-sized beast found near the Nigris spring among the Hesperian Ethiopians, with a body otherwise inert but burdened by an excessively heavy head that it can scarcely lift, always drooping toward the ground.[12] Most lethally, its eyes cause instant death to any human who beholds them, rendering it a peril to the species.[12] Pomponius Mela echoes this in his Chorographia (3.98), situating the Catoblepas in similar Ethiopian locales and emphasizing its non-aggressive nature despite its deadliness. He notes it as a small wild animal unable to raise its oversized, heavy head, forcing it to move with its face grazing the earth, yet anyone who encounters and gazes upon it perishes miserably.[13] This passive demeanor underscores the creature's reliance on its inherent lethality rather than pursuit, aligning with Pliny's depiction of immobility as a defensive trait. Claudius Aelianus provides further elaboration in On the Nature of Animals (7.6), relocating it to Libya while expanding on its herbivorous habits and toxic emissions. Resembling a bull in size but with a fiercer visage—shaggy eyebrows, narrow bloodshot eyes fixed downward, and a horsehair mane veiling its face—the Catoblepas grazes on poisonous roots, which infuse its breath with a foul, infectious quality.[14] When provoked, it rears its mane, bares its teeth, and exhales a pungent vapor that afflicts approaching animals with voicelessness, convulsions, and death, prompting all wildlife to avoid it instinctively.[14] Timotheus of Gaza, in his later On Animals (53), bridges ancient and transitional views by attributing to the Catoblepas fiery exhalations from its nostrils, enhancing its aura of peril in Ethiopian settings without altering the core image of a low-slung, hazardous beast.[15] These accounts collectively reflect an empirical curiosity about exotic fauna, blending observation with cautionary wonder in the pre-Christian naturalist tradition, though locations vary between Ethiopia and Libya.Medieval Descriptions
In the medieval period, descriptions of the catoblepas in Byzantine and European texts adapted ancient accounts to emphasize symbolic and moral dimensions, transforming the creature into a figure of cautionary lore, often reiterating the deadly gaze or breath with added Christian allegory. A prominent Byzantine variant appears in the 12th-century Synopsis Chronike by Constantine Manasses, where the creature, termed "katobleps," is depicted as fire-breathing, introducing a novel attribute of emitting flames that diverges from earlier Greco-Roman natural histories. European medieval bestiaries and encyclopedias from the 12th to 15th centuries, such as Thomas of Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum (book 4, chapter 76), portrayed the catoblepas as a sluggish quadruped with an excessively heavy head that forced it to gaze downward, its red eyes and poisonous breath or stare capable of killing on sight. These works often integrated the creature into Christian moral frameworks, using its lethargic posture and lethal qualities to illustrate themes of spiritual burden and divine retribution. The influence of Pliny the Elder's Natural History (book 8, chapter 32), disseminated through Latin translations and compilations like those of Solinus and Isidore of Seville's Etymologies (book 12, chapter 2:21), further shaped these depictions by maintaining the catoblepas's gaze as causing death, sometimes conflated in broader lore with basilisk-like effects symbolizing the petrifying effects of sin or hubris in medieval theological contexts.Cultural Depictions
In Literature
The Catoblepas first appears in Renaissance literature as a symbolic emblem in Sir Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (c. 1580), where it serves as the heraldic crest of a forsaken knight, embodying themes of sorrow and lunar dependency.[16] In the 19th century, Gustave Flaubert reimagined the creature in his hallucinatory narrative The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874), depicting it as a black buffalo with a hog's head, a flaccid neck like an emptied intestine, and eyes concealed by swollen lids that promise instant death to any beholder; it emerges amid a chaotic vision of mythical beasts tormenting the saint in the desert.[17] Jorge Luis Borges compiled and synthesized classical accounts in The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), portraying the Catoblepas as a sluggish black buffalo-hog hybrid from Ethiopian marshes, its heavy head perpetually bowed, feeding on toxic plants while its hidden gaze retains lethal potency, thus preserving and blending ancient lore into a modern fantastical lexicon.[18] Fantasy literature of the late 20th century featured the Catoblepas in action-oriented roles, such as in Piers Anthony's A Spell for Chameleon (1977), where it engages in a territorial battle against an argus and a harpy over prey in the magical land of Xanth, highlighting its role as a formidable, gaze-wielding predator in a picaresque adventure. Similarly, Michael Reaves's The Shattered World (1984) mentions the catoblepas symbolically on a character's robe, evoking its mythical lethal glance in a post-apocalyptic setting. In contemporary young adult fiction, Rick Riordan adapts the Catoblepas—spelled "katobleps"—in The House of Hades (2013) as cow-like monsters imported to Venice, possessing poisonous breath and acidic hides that corrode weapons, serving as antagonistic hordes that demigod Frank Zhang must exterminate in a high-stakes quest through mythological underworlds.[19]In Popular Media
The catoblepas has been a recurring creature in the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game since its early editions, initially appearing in the 1975 supplement Greyhawk as a bull-like monstrosity with a petrifying gaze ability that could instantly kill victims.[20] In later editions, such as the third edition's Monster Manual II (2002), it evolved into a swamp-dwelling beast with a stench aura and tail attack, maintaining the deadly gaze as a core trait.[20] The fifth edition, detailed in Volo's Guide to Monsters (2016), portrays it as a large, unaligned animal with necrotic damage from its gaze, emphasizing its role as a hazardous wilderness encounter in campaigns.[21] In Magic: The Gathering, the catoblepas appears as creature cards in the Theros block, drawing from Greek mythology-inspired mechanics. The Loathsome Catoblepas from the 2013 Theros set is a 2/3 green Beast with trample and an activated ability forcing opponents to block it, plus a death trigger dealing -3/-3 to an enemy creature, evoking its lethal attributes.[22] A variant, Blight-Breath Catoblepas from Theros Beyond Death (2020), is a 3/2 black Beast that enters the battlefield dealing damage equal to the player's black devotion, reflecting poisonous breath as a scaling removal tool in black decks.[23] The Castlevania video game series, starting from 1986, features the catoblepas as a recurring enemy, often depicted as an ox or bull with petrifying attacks. In titles like Portrait of Ruin (2006), it uses a stone-turning breath attack, serving as a mid-level hazard in gothic castle environments.[24] Later games, such as Lords of Shadow (2010), adapt it as a bulky, aggressive foe with charging and gaze-based stunning mechanics, evolving its mythical lethality into platforming challenges. Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game incorporates catoblepas-inspired monsters since 1999, emphasizing earth-attribute destruction effects. Catoblepas and the Witch of Fate, from the 2009 Stardust Overdrive set, is a level 6 Spellcaster with ? ATK that destroys specially summoned opponent monsters by banishing one from the graveyard, tying into disruptive strategies.[25] More recently, Catoblepas, Familiar of the Evil Eye from The Infinity Chasers (2017) supports "Evil Eye" archetypes by protecting spells/traps and self-summoning from the graveyard, portraying it as a resilient, supportive beast in competitive play.[26] In RuneScape, released in 2001, the catablepon (a variant spelling) is a herd-like monster in the Stronghold of Security dungeon, resembling a green bull with a reptilian tail and poisonous weakening properties via its magic spell that drains player strength by up to 15%.[27] It functions as a low-to-mid level combat training target, with drops including bones and herbs, and its toxic theme aligns with the game's pestilence-themed area.[28] In CD Projekt Red's The Witcher video game (2007), catoblepas meat is a quest item sought as a delicacy for Princess Adda, implied to carry inherent poisons from the creature's diet of venomous plants, making it hazardous yet valuable for alchemical or culinary uses.[29] This portrayal underscores its role as a background mythical element in the game's folklore.References
- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/catoblepas