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. It is found in Ethiopia near to the source Nigricapo. The catoblepas is described in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci: In his description, the animal's gaze was not lethal, but its breath was poison, since it ate only poisonous vegetation.Ĭonstantine Manasses (2, 39) mentions the "fire-breathing katobleps". The head was so heavy that the beast could only look down. Timotheus of Gaza ( On Animals, 53) says that the catoblepas emits fire from its nostrils.Ĭlaudius 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. He thought its gaze, like that of the basilisk, was lethal, making the heaviness of its head quite fortunate. 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.
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