It is possible that the legend of the basilisk and its association with the weasel in Europe was inspired by accounts of certain species of Asiatic and African snakes (such as cobras) and their natural predator, the mongoose.

He describes the catoblepas, a monstrous cow-like creature of which "all who behold its eyes, fall dead upon the spot",[5] and then goes on to say, There is the same power also in the serpent called the basilisk.

To this dreadful monster the effluvium of the weasel is fatal, a thing that has been tried with success, for kings have often desired to see its body when killed; so true is it that it has pleased Nature that there should be nothing without its antidote.

[7] The Venerable Bede was the first to attest to the legend of the birth of a basilisk from an egg by an old cockerel; other authors added the condition of Sirius being ascendant.

Alexander Neckam (died 1217) was the first to say that not the glare but the "air corruption" was the killing tool of the basilisk, a theory developed a century later by Pietro d'Abano.

Theophilus Presbyter gave a long recipe in his book, the Schedula diversarum artium, for creating a compound to convert copper into "Spanish gold" (De auro hyspanico).

Albertus Magnus, in the De animalibus, wrote about the killing gaze of the basilisk, but he denied other legends, such as the rooster hatching the egg.

He gave as source of those legends Hermes Trismegistus, who is credited also as the creator of the story about the basilisk's ashes being able to convert silver into gold.

[12] Leonardo da Vinci included a basilisk in his Bestiary, saying “it is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them, withers them up.”[citation needed] In his notebooks, he describes the basilisk in an account clearly dependent directly or indirectly on Pliny's: This is found in the province of Cyrenaica and is not more than 13 fingers long.

Within a few days, the egg shell, which is not hard, but rather soft and leathery, is opened by the strange creature, which already has all the features of an adult: legs, beak, cockscomb, and reptilian body.

In his book Facies rerum Sarmaticarum,[15] 17th-century Vilnius University historian Professor Adam Ignacy Naramowski describes how boughs of rue, a plant believed to have the power to repel basilisks, were lowered into the creature's lair.

Nineteenth-century historian Teodoras Narbutas (Teodor Narbutt) claimed the location of the creature's lair had been at the intersection of Bokšto, Subačiaus, and Bastėjos streets, near Subačius Gate.

[19] The basilisk appears in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, though not most English translations, which gave rise to its inclusion in the subject in Early Medieval art of Christ treading on the beasts.

In one part, the Serbian army is praised for killing ''Amurat and his son, spawns of viper and adder, whelps of lion and basilisk...''[20] The basilisk appears in On the Jews and Their Lies by theologian Martin Luther: Wherever you see or hear a Jew teaching, do not think otherwise than that you are hearing a poisonous Basiliskus who with his face poisons and kills people.

[22] In Act II, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's Cymbeline, a character says about a ring, "It is a basilisk unto mine eye, Kills me to look on't."

[24]Jonathan Swift alluded to the basilisk in a poem: See how she rears her head, And rolls about her dreadful eyes, To drive all virtue out, or look it dead!

[28]Shelley also referred to the basilisk in his poem "Queen Mab": Those deserts of immeasurable sand, Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, – Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother's door, Sharing his morning's meal with the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet.

There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workman had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face.