I just read this funky story in Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals 6.51, and I had to share it really quickly. The translation is that of Scholfield.
The name of the Dipsas {thirst-provoker} declares to us what it does. It is smaller than the viper, but kills more swiftly, for persons who chance to be bitten burn with thirst and are on fire to drink and imbibe without stopping and in a little while burst. Sostratus declares that the Dipsas is white, though it has two black stripes on its tail. And I have heard that some people call these snakes presteres {inflaters}; others, kausones {burners}. In fact they deluge this creature with a host of names. It has also been called melanūrus {black-tail}, so they say, and by others ammobates {sand-crawler}; and should you also hear it also called kentris {stinger}, you may take it from me that the same snake is meant.
I must repeat a story (which I know from having heard it) regarding this creature, so that I may not appear to be ignorant of it. It is said that Prometheus stole fire, and the story goes that Zeus was angered and bestowed upon those who laid information of the theft a drug to ward off old age. So they took it, as I am informed, and placed it upon an ass. The ass proceeded with the load on its back; and it was summer time, and the ass came thirsting to a spring in its need for a drink. Now the snake which was guarding the spring tried to prevent it and force it back, and the ass in torment gave it as the price of the loving-cup the drug that it happened to be carrying. And so there was an exchange of gifts: the ass got his drink and the snake sloughed his old age, receiving in addition, so the story goes, the ass’s thirst.
This idea that a snake has cheated us out of eternal life is widespread over the ancient world. It appears in Genesis 3, of course, but it also shows up in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Lots of our ancestors were convinced that snakes lived forever. (Think about it; how many snakes that have died of natural causes have you ever come across?).
From The snake’s uncanny ability to shed its old skin, revealing new youth underneath contributed to this idea. But what is interesting is the conviction that somehow snakes had stolen this from us.
