The Good and Evil Serpent (37 page)

Chronos is sometimes depicted nude with a large serpent wrapped around him, from the bottom to the top, with the head of the serpent resting on the head of Chronos. An excellent example is the statue of Chronos preserved in Merida.
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Thus, under the influence of Platonic and speculative Greek philosophy, this noun developed from a concept grounded in this world, “lifetime,” to an abstract concept, “eternity.” For Plato, Aion denoted “eternity,” as is well known from his
Timaeus
37d.
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Thinking about Plato’s dialogues awakens thoughts about time and eternity. The very transience of “becoming,” in its very nature of always being in the process of tending toward the elusive, is itself a mirror of the eternal, the everlasting.
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We thus learn that for Greeks and Romans, by the first century
CE
, Aion meant “Life and Eternity.” Moreover, Aion was the offspring of Time (Chronos).

In Alexandria in Greco-Roman times, there was an annual festival honoring Aion. It may have been a New Year’s festival. It was a mixture of Greek and Egyptian ideas and myths. The festival’s high point seems to have been when Aion’s image was brought out from a sanctuary. It appears there was an announcement to the crowds; perhaps a priest proclaimed that the Maiden (Kore) had given birth to Aion.
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Aion is frequently depicted in antiquity as a nude male around whom a large serpent is entwined, from ankles to shoulders; from the male’s head the large serpent frequently looks down. Occasionally, the large serpent is shown to the side of the god and curled upward around an obelisk. Sometimes Aion has a beastly face, somewhat like that of a lion. Occasionally, Aion is depicted with wings on his back. The art appears on amulets, and in mural paintings in tombs (as in the Isola sacra d’Ostie, tomb 57, from the end of the end of the second cent.
BCE
).
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What is the meaning of the serpent in this inconographic representation of Aion? The variety and different dates of this symbol indicate that Aion reflects a multiplicity of concepts, and I think predominantly good ones. The depiction of Aion with a serpent curled around him, and in the center of a zodiacal circle, indicates that Aion combined with the serpent is a very powerful positive symbol for time and eternity.
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Surely, any reflection will be enriched by the following discussion of Ouroboros. As that symbol represents completeness, so Aion, as its name clarifies, symbolizes “Eternity.” The serpent is thus a positive symbol that denotes the fulfillment of time. It also denotes the cyclical renewal of time and the return to the primordial so-called Golden Age (see esp. the cosmogonic mosaic in Merida, Spain).
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Ouroboros

We have already introduced Ouroboros. What more may be said? Ouroboros is a Greek noun that means “devouring its own tail.” It is composed of two Greeks words: the noun “tail”
and the verb “to devour”
. The symbol is a serpent formed into a circle and eating its own tail. This symbol appears in many places in antiquity, especially on seals, drawings, and gems, and often in late magical papyri. One attractive depiction of Ouroboros has the serpent with a dark beginning and white tail with scales; the tail is almost in the serpent’s mouth. Some ancient testimonies, namely Horapollon and Olympiodorus,
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indicate (probably correctly)
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that the concept of Ouroboros was borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians. Within the circle formed are the words “one [is] the whole”
.
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Thus, it is clear what Ouroboros symbolized, at least in essentials. It denoted, and personified, time, continuity, and the cosmos. Because Ouroboros is a serpent with its tail in its mouth, so the symbol seems to indicate the circularity of time and the movement of the cosmos as complete.
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The cosmic dimension of Ouroboros is often overlooked, but not by the author of one of the Greek magical papyri, who explains how to make a small ring that will bring “success”
:

Taking an air-colored jasper, engrave on it a snake
in a circle with its tail in its mouth, and also in the middle of [the circle formed by] the snake [Selene] having two stars /on the two horns, and above these, Helios, beside whom ABRASAX should be inscribed.
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The perception that Ouroboros denoted the completion of time and the cosmos, or at least that the serpent symbolized the cosmos, at times, in Greek and Roman mythology is enhanced by a study of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
. He occasionally mentions the constellation called the serpent. Referring to the cosmic serpent or the constellation of the serpent, Ovid has Titan advise his son, Phaëthon, about driving the celestial chariot so as not to burn up the heavens or the earth and avoid the “writhing Serpent (Anguem).”
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Subsequently, Ovid explains that “the Serpent (Serpens), which lies nearest to the icy pole, once harmless because it was formerly sluggish with the cold, now grew hot, and conceived great frenzy from that fire.”
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It thus becomes clearer that Ouroboros did not necessarily denote only repetitiousness or repetitive time. There was movement and progression. While the tail ended up in the mouth, it completed the circle of being because the tail had reached the mouth. The Ouroboros denoted optimism and the return to the best of times. The ancients, Greeks and Semites, seem to have shared the idea that the beginnings were better than the present. Kiss rightly perceives that Ouroboros is “a symbol of the constant cycle and in this sense Eternity.”
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The inscription, “the One [is] the whole,” indicates more than that the beginning is the end or the end is the beginning;
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it denotes the harmony and unity of creation, especially the humans’ place within time and space.

Thinking of Aion and Ouroboros, and what they symbolized in the various dimensions, leads to reflections on Henry Vaughan’s perception that eternity is a “great ring of pure and endless light.”
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The serpent is thus a profound symbol, and it is a positive one. In all these reflections, we need to be circumspect and not forget the odd sensations we first had when we saw a drawing of a serpent swallowing its own tail.

The Ouroboros may also symbolize something more. The tail can resemble the lingam. The mouth can represent the mons veneris. Hence, the Ouroboros, I am convinced, would symbolize for some Greeks and Romans the completed human: the androgynous one (the harmony of male and female).

Babi

Another serpent god is Babi, Sid. An image of Babi, Sid, was discovered in the Antas Valley in Carthaginia. This image dates from the fifth or sixth centuries
BCE
and is accompanied by the inscription “To Sid, Babi, I dedicate 94 deniers.” The god is to be identified with
Pater Sardus.
The serpent image symbolizes eternity.
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