Serpent

enclosing you two all around with the brahman, I will cut you asunder, as the mongoose [cuts] the serpent.

the waves of rivers have subsided, the vigor of the venom-spent serpents has subsided.

I have indeed grasped together the heads of serpents and their offspring;

Because even in evil-doings one may find a certain sequence and discernment and composition and conjecture of the things to come.

Well too did Diogenes say to the man who marvelled that he had found the serpent coiled about the pestle:

the other stars, on account of their oblique course, they likened to the bodies of serpents, but the sun to that of the beetle, since it moulds a round shape out of ox-dung and rolls it facing it.

"For their wrath," says the Scripture, "is after the likeness of the serpent, like the deaf asp that stops her ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers.

but when, yielding to pleasure (the serpent is the allegory of pleasure, creeping upon its belly, an earthly wickedness, fed upon matter), he was led aside by lusts, the child, made manly by disobedience and disobeying his Father, was ashamed before God.

A Greek festival was being held over a dead serpent at Pytho, and Eunomus sang the serpent's dirge.

Taking, then, the serpent as the workshop of his own deceit, through it he spoke with the woman, and, persuading her to eat of that forbidden tree in the hope of becoming a god, through her he deceived Adam also — for so the first-formed man was called.

as one flees from a serpent.

and when I command the neck of a guilty man to be struck off, when I sew up parricides in the sack, when I send a man to a soldier's punishment, when I set a traitor or a public enemy upon the Tarpeian Rock, I shall be without anger and with the same look and mind with which I strike serpents and venomous creatures.

so the venom of serpents creeping from their lair does harm, but their fangs are harmless once a frequent biting has drained them.

the necks of provoked serpents swell;

There is no serpent on the rope — by what cause, then, arises the fear of a snake?

As, in the case of the serpent [imagined] on a rope, there is no [real] cause and no [real] arising or perishing [of it], so here there is neither origination nor destruction of the world, nor any [real] cause [of it].

Water in a mirage, silver in mother-of-pearl, a serpent on a rope — like the double-moon [seen] by one with diseased sight, the entire form of the world is an error ({{adhyāsa / bhrānti|superimposition / illusory error, as a snake on a rope}}).

Anxieties border upon my heart and kindle my fear of the army surrounding our walls, as a trembling dove fears for her children in the nest because of snakes that are dangerous bed-fellows.

yet that very milk, drunk by serpents, all the more increases their venom.

When you see a snake's skin, take it and store it, so that you need not look for it when there is need.

If a serpent bites an ox or any other four-footed beast, take an acetabulum of the black cumin that the doctors call smyrnaean, grind it in a hemina of old wine, and pour it through the nostrils;

and, as you went, you squeezed the fat-cheeked snakes, or brandished them above your head, now shouting your Euoi Saboi!

First they let their hair loose over their shoulders, and secured their fawn-skins, as many of them as had released the fastenings of their knots, girding the dappled hides with serpents licking their jaws.

Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs

The breres augmented with their flying spoils:

Its vestments 'mongst the thorns- for oft we see

For as they were eager to pass over, a bird had crossed them, an eagle of lofty flight, pressing the host at the left hand, and bearing a blood-red monster of a snake, alive and still struggling;

And inasmuch as there was no longer any need of feet for the most foolish of these same creatures, which stretched with their whole body along the earth, the gods generated these footless and wriggling upon the earth.

A serpent twisting about the key of his inmost door, and the priests declaring it a prodigy;

Moreover, the soothsayers, observing two eagles coming up on the wing, one of which bore a serpent pierced with its talons, while the other flew with a loud and inspiring cry, pointed them out to the soldiers, and all betook themselves to invoking the gods with prayers.

and the portent of the serpent and the sparrows is shown to them, and Calchas foretells to them what is to come about.

May the enemies be blind, headless like snakes — of those driven out by Agni, may Indra slay each one.

Tiny serpents go unnoticed and are not hunted down by the public;

A king even a slave can kill, and a serpent, and an arrow;

suppose He had rescinded the liberty of arbitration, while He recalls man from the tree, while He keeps the very circumventing serpent from his meeting with the woman — would not Marcion cry out, "O futile lord, unstable, faithless, rescinding what He instituted!

Let the serpent therefore hide himself as much as he can, and twist all his wisdom in the windings of his hiding-places;

"Be wise as serpents, and simple as doves.

Beasts too change their form in place of dress;

If he sees a snake in the house—a brown one—he calls on Sabazios;

A best of the twice-born, having killed a snake, should give an iron spade;

A twice-born who is unable to make the expiation for the slaying of a snake and the others by a gift should perform a `Kṛcchra` for each one for the removal of his sin.

The slaying of a donkey, a horse, a camel, a deer, or an elephant, and of a goat or a sheep, is to be known as a sin causing a mixture of castes, and likewise of a fish, a snake, or a buffalo.