The salamander is an amphibian of the order Urodela which, as with many real creatures, often has been ascribed fantastic and sometimes occult qualities by pre-modern authors (as in the allegorical descriptions of animals in medieval bestiaries) not possessed by the real organism. The legendary salamander is often depicted as a typical salamander in shape with a lizard-like form, but is usually ascribed an affinity with fire, sometimes specifically elemental fire.
Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance lore
This legendary creature embodies the fantastic qualities that ancient and medieval commentators ascribed to the natural salamander. Many of these qualities are rooted in verifiable traits of the natural creature but often exaggerated. A large body of legend, mythology, and symbolism has developed around this creature over the centuries. Carl Linnaeus in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae of 1758 established the scientific description of the salamander and noted the chief characteristics described by the ancients, the reported ability to live in fire and the oily exudates.
Classical lore: Pliny, the Talmud, and Augustine
The salamander was clearly known to the Ancient Greeks by the 4th century BCE, since both Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and his successor Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BCE) refer to the σαλαμάνδρα (salamandra). Theophrastus in particular refers to it as a lizard ("saura") whose emergence is a sign of rain.
The Ancient Greek physician Nicander (2nd century BCE) describes the use of the salamander, the "sorceress’ lizard," in a poisonous potion, and Wallace surmises that a similar reference to grinding up a lizard to produce a love potion by Theocritus (3rd century BCE) may also refer to the salamander.
In one of the earliest surviving descriptions of a salamander, Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) noted that the creature is "an animal like a lizard in shape and with a body specked all over; it never comes out except during heavy showers and goes away the moment the weather becomes clear." All of these traits, even down to the star-like markings, are consistent with the golden Alpine salamander (Salamandra atra aurorae) of Europe that has golden or yellow spots or blotches on its back and some similarly marked subspecies of the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra). Pliny even made the important distinction between salamanders and lizards, which are similar in shape but different in other respects, which was not systematized until modern times, when biologists classified lizards as reptiles and salamanders as amphibians.
Pliny recounts several other traits which are less credible, such as the ability to extinguish fire with the frigidity of their bodies, a quality which was reported as hearsay by Aristotle. While Pliny notes this in Book 10, Chapter 86 of the Natural History, in Book 29, Chapter 23 of the same work he views this idea with skepticism, pointing out that if such an idea were true, it should be easy to demonstrate. Pliny likewise reports (Book 29, Chapter 76) that his contemporary Sextius Niger denied the idea that salamanders could extinguish fire, though Sextius also believed they had aphrodisiac qualities when properly prepared and consumed.
Pliny also notes medicinal and poisonous properties, which are founded in fact on some level, since many species of salamander, including fire salamanders and Alpine salamanders, excrete toxic, physiologically active substances. These substances are often excreted when the animal is threatened, which has the effect of deterring predators. The extent of these properties is greatly exaggerated though, with a single salamander being regarded as so toxic that by twining around a tree it could poison the fruit and so kill any who ate them and by falling into a well could slay all who drank from it.
Roughly contemporary with Pliny is a bas-relief of a salamander straddling the cross-beam of a balance scale in an anvil-and-forge scene found in the ruins of the Roman town of Pompeii. Bodson identifies the animal as Salamandra salamandra, the familiar fire salamander, and suspects that it might have been a sign for a blacksmith's shop.
A few centuries later (late 2nd–early 3rd century CE), Greek-speaking Roman author Aelian describes salamanders as being drawn to the fires of forges and quenching them, to the annoyance of the blacksmiths. Aelian is also careful to note that the salamander is not born of fire itself, unlike the pyrausta.