Caduceus is a continuation of the older Indo-European dragon-slayer motif. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (1913) pointed out that the serpent as an attribute of both Hermes and Asclepius is a variant of the "pre-historic semi-chthonic serpent hero known at Delphi as Python", who in classical mythology is slain by Apollo. One Greek myth of origin of the caduceus is part of the story of Tiresias, who found two snakes copulating and killed the female with his staff. Tiresias was immediately turned into a woman, and so remained until he was able to repeat the act with the male snake seven years later.
The Great Snake The Great Snake "The Great Snake" or "The Great Serpent" (, lit. "Of the Great Serpent") is a folk tale (the so-called "skaz") of the Ural region of Siberia collected and reworked by Pavel Bazhov. It was first published in the 11th issue of the "Krasnaya Nov" literary magazine in 1936 and later the same year as a part of the collection "Prerevolutionary Folklore of the Urals". It was later released as a part of "The Malachite Casket" collection. The story was translated from Russian into English by Alan Moray Williams in 1944, and by Eve Manning in the 1950s.