Snake pit

The Snake Pit is found in legend and fairy tale as a place of terror, torture and death.

In Grimm Fairy Tales The white bride and the black orders the King, " to throw the coachman in a pit ," was full of vipers and snakes, vermin, and there he is then " deep with adders and snakes. "

In Jean Paul's work The Campanian valley of 1797, the snake pit is a metaphor for mental distress: "But he was long ago included in the gloomy cold snake pit stabbing pain, they bekrochen and wound him to the heart ."

That snake pits in the Middle Ages or at other times would have been actually maintained to torture and execution and used, is excluded. Evidence does not exist. Costs and risks would also be large and predict the effect hardly reliable and control.