The Monstrefact Redux: The Salamander

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the mythical salamander… (originally published 1/17/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind focusing on nonmithical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
As mentioned in yesterday's core episode The Nature of Diamonds,
Part one, I'd like to discuss the fantastic salamander in

(00:32):
today's Monster Fact. Now. Dungeons and Dragons players have long
noticed the startling difference between salamanders of the natural world
and salamanders as they appear in the D and D
Monster Manual, where they are described as flaming snakes and
snake like beings that quote slither across the Sea of
ash on the elemental plane of fire. Meanwhile, real life

(00:55):
salamanders are quite remarkable, but are decidedly not on. Ancient
and medieval bestiaries are full of strange and often fiery
tales of the salamander. I turned to the writings of
folk historian Carol Rose and her book Monsters, Giants and Dragons,
as well as Jorge Luis Borges The Book of Imaginary

(01:15):
Beings to piece together the different attributed features of the
mythic salamander. The creature pops up in various works from
the ancient Greco Roman world, most notably the writings of
Roman historian Pliny the Elder in seventy seven CE. He
describes the salamander as a monstrous lizard that poisons anything

(01:35):
it touches, known to live on the slopes of volcanoes
as well as within the heart of a fire. As
Borges points out, Plenty highlights the creature's natural coldness as
a reason for this. It's so cold it simply resists
the fire and even extinguishes it. But Pliny also writes
of another creature, the pyrosta, that lives within the copper

(01:58):
smelting furnaces of Cyprus, and the creature, he says, dies
if they leave the flames. Borges points out that later
traditions would take these attributes and apply them to the salamander.
It's also worth noting, though, that, as a creature of fire,
the mythic salamander was, by some standards, a necessary part

(02:20):
of classical elemental theory. If earth, water, air, and fire
are the prime building blocks of nature, then there have
to be animals of each element, and that includes creatures
of fire, as we discussed in yesterday's episode. Sixteenth century
Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini claimed in his autobiography to have

(02:41):
seen a salamander in the fire as a child. As
Matt Simon discussed in a twenty fourteen article for Wired magazine,
fantastically wrong the legend of the homicidal fireproof salamander. This
common bit of lare likely came about as ancient people
occasionally threw damp logs on their fires, blogs that may

(03:01):
have had tiny, unfortunate salamanders clinging to their underside. But
as Borges stressed, the notion of a creature that lives
in fire was a theologically useful bit of lore as well.
Saint Augustine, in his fifth century CEE work The City
of God, used the salamander as proof that fiery living
torment in the afterlife was not that far fetched a notion.

(03:23):
Borhes notes that the mythical phoenix, another mythical creature of fire,
was often cited by theologians to support the idea of
a bodily resurrection during the Middle Ages. Salamanders continued to
tear it up in the bestiaries. Writers of the day
described their abilities to poison the fruit of trees. They
entwined to stop up the mouths of lions, and of course,

(03:45):
extinguish fires. The creature also became associated with fibrous minerals
classified today as asbestos, which are highly fire resistant. Of course,
natural salamanders do not live in or tolerate fire any
more than the rest of the animal kingdom. In fact,
they are decidedly moist creatures. The truth of experience and
experimentation easily extinguish the fantastic idea of a literal salamander

(04:11):
of the flames, but the creature lived on in heraldry,
alchemical symbolism, and of course fantasy. Tune in for additional
episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
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