There was a vessel wrought with a round bottome, haveing on the one side, pictures figured like unto the manner of the Egyptians, and on the other side was an eare, whereupon stood the Serpent aspis, holding out his scaly necke.
"The Golden Asse"
Lucius Apuleius
But the gate being too low to let in the elephants, they were obliged to take down the towers which they carried on their backs, and put them on again in the dark and in disorder, so that time being lost, the city took the alarm, and the people ran, some to aspis the chief citadel, and others to other places of defense, and sent away to Antigonus to assist them.
"Plutarch-Lives-of-the-noble-Grecians-and-Romans"
Clough, Arthur Hugh
At the first dawn, Pyrrhus, seeing the great citadel aspis full of enemies, was disturbed, and remarking, among a variety of figures dedicated in the market-place, a wolf and bull of brass, as it were ready to attack one another, he was struck with alarm, recollecting an oracle that formerly predicted fate had determined his death when he should see a wolf fighting with a bull.
"Plutarch-Lives-of-the-noble-Grecians-and-Romans"
Clough, Arthur Hugh
