Ancient Greeks, by the time of the prolific philosopher and scholar Aristotle (c. 384-322 BCE), had come to believe in strange mythical creatures that dwelled near live coals and burning materials. These heat-resistant beings were called salamanders (not to be confused with the real amphibians), and they were believed to be so fireproof that they could travel through flames without being harmed. Quite the opposite, it was the flame that could be harmed by the salamander, as the creature’s presence could allegedly extinguish flames. Aristotle wrote about these magical salamanders, as well as other creatures that were believed to live in snow and fire, in his History of Animals. Aristotle wrote:
“The grubs found in the snows of Media are large and white; and all such grubs are little disposed to motion. In Cyprus, in places where copper-ore is smelted, with heaps of the ore piled on day after day, an animal is engendered in the fire, somewhat larger than a blue bottle fly, furnished with wings, which can hop or crawl through the fire. And the grubs and these latter animals perish when you keep the one away from the fire and the other from the snow. Now the salamander is a clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so” (Aristotle, History of Animals, 5.19.16).
Stories about the fireproof salamanders were passed from Greece to Rome, and the subject was still relevant enough centuries later to come up in the works of Roman authors, such as Cicero (106-43 BCE). Although Aristotle had written of creatures that both lived in fire and could also extinguish it, Cicero refocused the conversation on the mythical salamanders’ invulnerability to fire and their preference for dwelling in the flames. Cicero wrote, “Of creatures, some dwell on earth, some in water, and some that are amphibious dwell in both. Some are thought to be born even in fire, and are often to be seen fluttering in fiery furnaces” (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 1.103). Interestingly, these ancient fireproof salamanders were still in the public consciousness over a millennium later when fire-resistant asbestos was discovered and started to be manufactured during the reign of Khubilai Khan (r. 1260-1294). According to the famous merchant, Marco Polo (present in the Mongolian court from 1275-1291), the asbestos cloth was nicknamed Salamander.
Out of an abundance of caution, it should be reiterated that the so-called salamanders mentioned by Aristotle, Cicero, Marco Polo, and others are not the real amphibian salamanders that can be found in the wild. Real salamanders, of course, are not fireproof and do not live in fire.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Fire (The Four Elements), by Adriaen Collaert (16th century), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Rijksmuseum).
Sources:
- The Travels by Marco Polo and translated by Nigel Cliff. New York: Penguin Classics, 2015.
- Cicero, The Nature of the Gods, translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 1998, 2008.
- https://topostext.org/work/101
- https://www.britannica.com/animal/salamander
