[lit-ideas] Re: Right to Life, Right to Die

  • From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:09:06 -0800

Renee Morel wrote:

> I believe it was a cobra, according to Plutarch.

Some report that this aspick [1] was brought unto her in the basket with 
figs, and that she had commanded them to hide it under the fig-leaves, 
that when she should think to take out the figs, the aspick should bite 
her before she should see her: howbeit, that when she would have taken 
away the leaves for the figs, she perceived it, and said, "Art thou 
here, then?" And so, her arm being naked, she put it to the aspick to be 
bitten. Others say again, she kept it in a box, and that she did prick 
and thrust it with a spindle of gold, so that the aspick, being angered 
withal, leapt out with great fury, and bit her in the arm.

-------
[1] asp

—Plutarch, Lives: Marcus Antonius. This is the charming translation of 
Thomas North.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plut.+Ant.+86

I was looking for the Latin text but Perseus for some reason doesn't 
provide one in this case. A cobra might have been a bit unweildy in the 
circumstances. Plutarch does say though that the aspick bit her on the 
arm, not as Andreas would have it, elsewhere.

Robert Paul
Reed College



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