The amphysian cockatrice or basilisk in heraldry exactly resembles the
cockatrice, but having an additional head (like that of a dragon) at the
end of its tail instead of a barb or sting.
"With complicated monsters' head and tail
Scorpion and Asp and Amphisbœna dire."
MILTON.
_Amphisbœna_, or _Amphista_, is a creature sometimes referred to by old
writers as having the dragon's body and wings, the head of a serpent, and
the tail ending in a like head. Bossewelle, in "Armorie of Honour," folio
63, enlarging upon this idea, describes "a prodigious serpente called
Amphybene, for that he hath a double head, as though one mouth were too
little to custe his venyme."
_Earl Howe_ has for supporters _two cockatrices (amphysian), wings
elevated, the tails nowed, and ending in a serpent's head or, combed,
wattled and legged gules_.
_Argent, a basilisk, wings endorsed, tail nowed, sable._--_Langley_,
Rathorpe Hall, Yorks.
[Illustration: Basilisk or Amphysian Cockatrice, tail nowed.]
_Basilisk_, the king of serpents (Greek, _Basileus_, a king), so called
from having on his head a mitre-shaped crest. Old writers give wonderful
accounts of the death-dealing power of this strange creature. Pliny says,
"all other serpents do flee from and are afraid of it," and tells of the
deadly effect of his breath and glittering eye. The Duke of Alva, the
scourge of the Netherlands (1566-1575), where he left the eternal memory
of his cruelties, had for a device a basilisk drawing out serpents, with
the motto: "Tu nomine tantum" ("Thou dost so much by thy name alone"), a
fitting emblem for so great a monster!
In allusion to its power of "looking any one dead on whom it fixed its
eyes," Dryden makes Clytus say to Alexander, "Nay, frown not so; you
cannot look me dead,"
"like a boar
Plunging his tusk in mastiff's gore,
Or basilisk, when roused, whose breath,
Teeth, sting and eyeballs all are death."
KING, _Art of Love_.
King Henry, when he hears of the death of his uncle Humphry, the good
Duke of Gloucester, says to Suffolk:
"come basilisk
And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight."
_2 King Henry VI._ Act iii. 2.
Beaumont and Fletcher also speak of "the basilisk's death-dealing eye" in
"The Woman Hater."
Its appearance was so dreadful, it was said, that if a mirror was placed
so that it could see itself, it would instantly burst asunder with horror
and fear.
In Christian Art it is the emblem of _deadly sin_ and _the spirit of
evil_. St. Basil the Great uses it as the type of a depraved woman.