Like many ancient marvels, it was a bizarre hybrid: a crested snake that hatched ... popular notion of the basilisk as the king of serpents; according to the same mythology, it also “kills ...

The name comes from the Greek word 'basileus', which means 'king' and, thus, basilisk was known to be the 'king of the snakes'. Most authors agree that Africa was its homeland. This monster was of ...

In European mythology, snakes often symbolized world destroyers like the devil ... In medieval Europe, the imaginary creature basilisk appears in many legends as having the head of a lizard or chicken ...