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Snake Stones.
263

Of snake stones various kinds may be distinguished. Stones or marbles, which in their shape or markings suggest a resemblance to snakes, have been thought to have the property of curing snake-bite. Among these may be reckoned various fossils, such as ammonites or the fossil shark's teeth which in the Middle Ages went by the name of "snakes' tongues."[1] Serpentine and ophite, which owe their names to the markings of waving lines or spots with which they are variegated, equally with stones which resembled snakes in shape, were used as antidotes.[2] In Pliny's time varieties of these marbles, which were in secular demand for the purposes of architectural decoration,[3] were worn as amulets and used to cure headache or snake-bite.[4] In the fourth century A.D. the Orphic Lithica recommends the rubbing of ophite into unmixed wine as an infallible potion, and alleges that Philoctetes was thus healed by Machaon.[5] A rival theory suggested that Philoctetes was cured by Lemnian Earth,[6] which already in the time of Pliny was sold in sealed packets and hence called sphragis.[7] It is therefore worth noticing that Pliny remarks of it that in the native mass it is red, but "is spotted on the exterior."[8] This

  1. ↑ W. Skeat. "Snakestones and Stone Thunderbolts," Folk-Lore. xxiii. pp. 45-80. America may be added to the area over which the belief in the ammonite snake stone is distributed. A fragment of an ammonite presented by a Sioux chief as "good medicine" was exhibited at the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891. International Folk-Lore Congress, 1891. p. 445.
  2. ↑ Similarly in Malta pebbles which resemble in colour the eyes, heart, liver, or tongue of snakes are worn as amulets or used for steeping as an antidote. Like Maltese Earth (for which see Hasluck, B.S.A. xvi. p. 228) they are connected with the traditional cave of St. Paul. Skeat, op. cit. p. 48.
  3. ↑ Martial, vi. 42. 12-15; Statius, Silvae, i. 5. 35. Cf. Dionysius Periegetes, 1013.
  4. ↑ Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvi. (11), 55-56.
  5. ↑ Orphic, Lithica, x. 335 f., 11. The story that Philoctetes was cured by means of ophite is repeated by Tzetzes, ad Lycophron., 911.
  6. ↑ Philostratus, Heroica, vi. 2. For the history of Lemnian Earth see Hasluck, "Terra Lemnia," B.S.A., xvi. pp. 221 foll.
  7. ↑ Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxv. (14), 33-35.
  8. ↑ Pliny, Nat, Hist. xxxv. (13), 31. Glaebis suus colos, extra maculosus.
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