Statue

I’m not sure who this is meant to be, it’s a photo I took three years ago at Trentham Gardens in Stoke-on-Trent. The woman is carrying a snake.

I looked up various ‘women holding a snake’ entries on the Internet. Some had two snakes, some were about Asian goddesses. But this is a single snake, classically represented. I don’t know if it’s Greek or Roman but I think I remember the statue being linked with medicine so I plumped for a roman version from Wikipedia.

Angitia

The Romans derived her name from anguis, “serpent,” hence the form Anguitia. As snakes were often associated with the healing arts in antiquity (see, for instance, rod of Asclepius), Angitia is believed to have been mainly a goddess of thaumaturgy.

Pliny the Elder

s Plinius Secundis was a Roman author. He is known to us as Pliny the Elder. He wrote several books on Natural History and I was going to use one of them as source material for my essay on dragons. He described them as serpents which were large and strong enough to squeeze the life out of elephants by sucking their blood.

As you can see from the image of a Chinese dragon the similarity between the two is quite limited apart from the fact they both have huge long thin bodies.

I read this much information but now the book has gone missing. I think my hubby has ‘borrowed’ it. It has bought my essay writing to a temporary halt. I need a rest anyway so thank you Pliny.