ASP

(Yunanca köken — orijinale bakınız.) A species of poisonous serpent frequently mentioned by ancient authors, some of whom describe its bite as being inevitably mortal, and say that the bitten die within three hours, and without pain, being thrown into a deep sleep; whence it was selected by Cleopatra as the instrument with which at once to terminate her existence, and bereave her conqueror of the chief feature of his triumph. There is always much difliculty in identifying the precise species mentioned in the cla ical writings of antiquity, from the vague manner in which they are there alluded to. Some naturalists are of opinion that the species of hooded viper, called by the modern Arabs ' El Haje ' [Vipera (Naja) Haje, Cuvier] is the ' Aspis' of the ancients; and as it po e es th e power of distending the skin of the neck, like the Indian Cobra di Capello, it agrees with one of the characters a igned by Pliny to the Aspis — " CoUa aspidumintumescere," lib. viii. The size, however, of the Haje, which varies from three to five feet, is greater than that which is usually attributed to Cleopatra's asp. [s. 107]