Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on nonmithical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: As mentioned in yesterday's core episode The Nature of Diamonds,
Speaker 2: Part one, I'd like to discuss the fantastic salamander in
Speaker 2: today's Monster Fact. Now. Dungeons and Dragons players have long
Speaker 2: noticed the startling difference between salamanders of the natural world
Speaker 2: and salamanders as they appear in the D and D
Speaker 2: Monster Manual, where they are described as flaming snakes and
Speaker 2: snakelike beings that quote slither across the Sea of ash
Speaker 2: on the elemental plane of fire. Meanwhile, real life salamanders
Speaker 2: are quite remarkable but are decidedly not on fire. Ancient
Speaker 2: and medieval bestiaries are full of strange and often fiery
Speaker 2: tales of the salamander. I turned to the writings of
Speaker 2: folk historian Carol Rose and her book Monsters, Giants and Dragons,
Speaker 2: as well as Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Imaginary
Speaker 2: Beings to piece together the different attributed features of the
Speaker 2: mythic salamander. The creature pops up in various works from
Speaker 2: the ancient Greco Roman world, most notably the writings of
Speaker 2: Roman historian Pliny the Elder in seventy seven CE. He
Speaker 2: describes the salamander as a monstrous lizard that poisons anything
Speaker 2: it touches, known to live on the slopes of volcanoes
Speaker 2: as well as within the heart of a fire. As
Speaker 2: Borges points out, Plenty highlights the creature's natural coldness as
Speaker 2: a reason for this. It's so cold it simply resists
Speaker 2: the fire and even extinguishes it. But Pliny also writes
Speaker 2: of another creature, the pyrosta, that lives within the copper
Speaker 2: smelting furnaces of Cyprus, and the creature, he says, dies
Speaker 2: if they leave the flames. Borges points out that later
Speaker 2: traditions would take these attributes and apply them to the salamander.
Speaker 2: It's also worth noting, though, that, as a creature of fire,
Speaker 2: the mythic salamander was, by some standards, a necessary part
Speaker 2: of classical elemental theory. If earth, water, air, and fire
Speaker 2: are the prime building blocks of nature, then there have
Speaker 2: to be animals of each element, and that includes creatures
Speaker 2: of fire, as we discussed in yesterday's episode. Sixteenth century
Speaker 2: Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini claimed in his autobiography to have
Speaker 2: seen a salamander in the fire as a child. As
Speaker 2: Matt Simon discussed in a twenty fourteen article for Wired Magazine,
Speaker 2: fantastically wrong the legend of the homicidal fireproof salamander. This
Speaker 2: common bit of lare likely came about as ancient people
Speaker 2: occasionally threw damp logs on their fires, logs that may
Speaker 2: have had tiny, unfortunate salamanders clinging to their underside. But
Speaker 2: as Borges stressed, the notion of a creature that lives
Speaker 2: in fire was a theologically useful bit of lore as well.
Speaker 2: Saint Augustine, in his fifth century CEE work The City
Speaker 2: of God, used the salamander as proof that fiery living
Speaker 2: torment in the afterlife was not that far fetched a notion.
Speaker 2: Borhes notes that the mythical phoenix, another mythical creature of fire,
Speaker 2: was often cited by theologians to support the idea of
Speaker 2: a bodily resurrection during the Middle Ages. Salamanders continued to
Speaker 2: tear it up in the bestiaries. Writers of the day
Speaker 2: described their abilities to poison the fruit of trees. They
Speaker 2: entwined to stop up the mouths of lions, and of course,
Speaker 2: extinguish fires. The creature also became associated with fibrous minerals
Speaker 2: classified today as asbestos, which are highly fire resistant. Of course,
Speaker 2: natural salamanders do not live in or tolerate fire any
Speaker 2: more than the rest of the Anna kingdom. In fact,
Speaker 2: they are decidedly moist creatures. The truth of experience and
Speaker 2: experimentation easily extinguish the fantastic idea of a literal salamander
Speaker 2: of the flames, but the creature lived on in heraldry,
Speaker 2: alchemical symbolism, and of course fantasy. Tune in for additional
Speaker 2: episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
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