Scitalis

Also Known As: Latin; Greek skytalē, “staff” or “cudgel”; also Scytale, Scytala, Sytula
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology, Medieval Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Its back glitters with so many varied markings that anyone who looks at it is stopped in wonder, and its body runs hot enough to cast its skin in winter.
Role in Mythos: It is one of the venomous serpents that Lucan says sprang from the blood of Medusa in the Libyan desert, later carried into the medieval bestiaries as the snake that hunts by astonishment.
Relation to Humans: It catches the people it is too slow to chase by holding them still with the sight of its back. The medieval encyclopedists add that its bite burns like fire, and one of them says it kills with thirst.

The frost has not yet lifted from the sand when the scitalis comes out of the ground. Every other snake in Libya is still stiff with cold. This one is already working its old skin loose, and when it slides away it leaves the slough lying on the rime behind it, a limp grey sleeve in a landscape that has not woken up.

That detail is the oldest thing anyone wrote about the creature that still survives in a story. In the ninth book of the Pharsalia, composed under Nero in the first century, Lucan marches Cato and the remnant of the republican army across the Libyan desert and stops to explain why the country swarms with serpents. When Perseus flew over Africa carrying the severed head of Medusa, her blood dripped onto the sand, and every drop became a snake. Lucan then runs through the brood one by one, and he gives the scytale a single line: it alone sheds its skin while the frost is still scattered on the ground. That is all the poem says about it.

The name is older than Lucan. The Greek skytalē means a staff or cudgel, and the poet-physician Nicander of Colophon, writing his verse treatise on venomous animals, the Theriaca, in the second century BC, uses it for a real-seeming snake. He sets it beside the amphisbaena and says the two look alike, except that the skytale is far bulkier, heavy right down to its useless tail, as thick as the handle men fit to a mattock. Nicander says nothing of colour and nothing of charm. His skytale is a dull, heavy thing, and nobody in his lines stops to admire it.

The glitter arrives with Solinus, the third-century compiler of wonders. He writes that the scytale’s back shines outstandingly and that the beauty of its spots makes anything that sees it pause. It crawls slowly, so it seizes by astonishment the creatures it could never overtake. Four centuries later Isidore of Seville took that sentence almost whole into the twelfth book of his Etymologies and tied it to Lucan’s frost. The snake is so hot, he explains, that it casts off the skin of its burning body even in winter. The two traits have travelled together ever since.

A traveller on a desert road sees colour where there should only be sand. He slows, then stops, trying to fix the markings in his eye, and they will not hold still. The snake, which has been coming toward him the whole time at the pace of a man carrying a load, is now close enough.

From Isidore the scitalis passed into the Latin bestiaries of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Aberdeen Bestiary gives it its own heading, De scitali serpente, on folio 68v, repeating Isidore and quoting Lucan’s line about the frost. Its painter ignored the text’s plain serpent and gave the scitalis a dog’s head, wings and two feet, and someone sketched a pointed reptile wing in the margin beside it. The Rochester Bestiary of about 1230 carries the same text under the spelling scytala. Neither book attaches a sermon to it. The bestiaries usually find a Christian lesson in their animals, but here the texts simply describe the creature and move on.

The thirteenth-century encyclopedists kept adding to it. Jacques de Vitry wrote that its body shines with a thousand glints that paralyse whoever looks, and that its bite consumes the victim as if by fire. Thomas of Cantimpré, spelling it sytula, made it small and malicious, a snake that kills a man with thirst and leaves the bitten burning. Bartholomaeus Anglicus called its venom the sharpest and hottest of all. None of them explains where these new powers came from. The thirst in particular sits oddly, since in Lucan that is the work of a different snake entirely, the dipsas.

What the record never does is settle the animal’s size or its colours. Nicander’s snake is thick and bulky; Thomas’s is small. The famous markings are only ever called varied and brilliant, never named, so that every illustrator had to choose the pattern for himself. No source gives the scitalis a story of its own beyond its birth in Medusa’s blood, no named victim, and no hero who killed one.

Its power was its surface. The spotted back was lure and trap at once, and the inner heat that let it moult in the frost set it apart from every cold-blooded thing around it. Later writers gave it a fiery venom to match that heat. Its weakness was its speed. It could not pursue anything, and a creature that hunts only by being looked at has nothing to use against a traveller who keeps walking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Scitalis?

The Scitalis, also spelled Scytale, is a legendary serpent of Greek, Roman and medieval tradition. Solinus and Isidore of Seville describe its back as shining with such varied markings that anyone who looks at it is stopped in wonder, and it later appears in medieval bestiaries such as the Aberdeen Bestiary.

How did the Scitalis catch its prey?

The Scitalis caught its prey by astonishment rather than speed. According to Solinus and Isidore, it crawled too slowly to overtake anything, so it seized the creatures that stood still, amazed by the beauty of its spotted back.

Where does the Scitalis come from in myth?

In Lucan’s Pharsalia, the Scitalis is one of the venomous serpents born in the Libyan desert from the blood of Medusa, which dripped onto the sand as Perseus flew over Africa with her severed head. Lucan says it alone sheds its skin while frost still lies on the ground.

Why does the Scitalis shed its skin in winter?

Isidore of Seville explains that the Scitalis has a body so hot that it casts off its skin even in winter. He links this to Lucan’s line that the Scitalis alone sheds its skin while the frost is still scattered on the ground.

What does the Scitalis look like in the Aberdeen Bestiary?

The Aberdeen Bestiary describes the Scitalis on folio 68v as a serpent, but its illustration gives it a dog’s head, wings and two feet. The earliest description, by Nicander in the Theriaca, makes it a heavy snake as thick as a mattock handle.