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Lamia (; ), in ancient Greek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit or "daimon".
In the earliest Myth, Lamia was a beautiful queen of ancient Libya who had an affair with Zeus and gave birth to his children. Upon learning of this, Zeus's wife Hera robbed Lamia of her children, either by kidnapping them and hiding them away, killing them outright, or forcing Lamia to kill them. The loss of her children drove Lamia insane, and she began hunting and devouring others' children.Duris of Samos (d. 280 B. C.), Libyca, quoted by Either because of her anguish or her cannibalism, Lamia was transformed into a horrific creature. Zeus gifted Lamia the power of prophecy and the ability to take out and reinsert her eyes, possibly because Hera cursed her with insomnia or the inability to close her eyes.Bell, Robert E., Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), s.v. "Lamia" (drawing upon Diodorus Siculus 22.41; Suidas "Lamia"; Plutarch "On Being a Busy-Body" 2; Scholiast on Aristophanes' Peace 757; Eustathius on Odyssey 1714).
The lamiai () also became a type of phantom, synonymous with the who seduced young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. An account of Apollonius of Tyana's defeat of a lamia-seductress inspired the poem "Lamia" by John Keats.
Lamia has been ascribed serpentine qualities, which some commentators believe can be firmly traced to mythology from antiquity; they have found analogues in ancient texts that could be designated as lamiai, which are part-snake beings. These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the "Libyan myth" told by Dio Chrysostom, and the monster sent to ancient Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe, daughter of King Crotopos.
In previous centuries, Lamia was used in Greece as a bogeyman to frighten children into obedience, similar to the way parents in Spain, Portugal and Latin America used the Coco.
According to one myth, Hera deprived Lamia of the ability to sleep, making her constantly grieve over the loss of her children, and Zeus provided relief by endowing her with removable eyes. He also gifted her with a shapeshifting ability in the process.Scholium from the Byzantine-Hellenistic period to Aristophanes, Peace 758, quoted by Bell, Robert E. (1993), Women of Classical Mythology, drawing upon Diodorus Siculus XX.41; Suidas 'Lamia'; Plutarch 'On Being a Busy-Body' 2; Scholiast on Aristophanes's Peace 757; Eustathius on Odyssey 1714)
Diodorus's rationalization was that the Libyan queen in her drunken state was as if she could not see, allowing her citizens free rein for any conduct without supervision, giving rise to the folk myth that she places her eyes in a vessel. Heraclitus's euhemerized account explains that Hera, consort of Zeus, gouged the eyes out of the beautiful Lamia.Heraclitus Paradoxographus (2nd century) De Incredibilibus 34, quoted by
According to the same source, Lamia was taken by Zeus to Italy, and that Lamos, the city of the man-eating Laestrygonians, was named after her. A different authority remarks that Lamia was once queen of the Laestrygonians.
It is somewhat uncertain if this refers to the one Lamia or to "a Lamia" among many, as given in some translations of the two plays;"a Lamia's groin" (Benjamin Bickley Rogers, 1874), "a foul Lamia's testicles" (Athenian Society, 1912), "sweaty Crotch of a Lamia" (Paul Roche, 2005). a generic is also supported by the definition as some sort of a "wild beast" in the Suda." 1=http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/lambda/85", Suda On Line, tr. David Whitehead. 27 May 2008
Numerous sources attest to the Lamia being a "child-devourer", one of them being Horace., note 114. Horace in Ars Poetica cautions against the overly fantastical: "nor draw a live boy out of a Lamia's belly". Lamia was in some versions thus seen as swallowing children alive, and there may have existed some nurse's tale that told of a boy extracted alive out of a Lamia.
The Byzantine lexicon Suda (10th century) gave an entry for lamía, with definitions and sources much as already described." 1=http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/lambda/84", Suda On Line, tr. David Whitehead. 1 April 2008 The lexicon also has an entry under mormo (Μορμώ), stating that Mormo and the equivalent μορμολυκεῖον mormolykeion are called lamía, and that all these refer to frightful beings.: "Μορμώ: λέγεται καὶ Μορμώ, Μορμοῦς, ὡς Σαπφώ. καὶ Μορμών, Μορμόνος. Ἀριστοφάνης: ἀντιβολῶ σ', ἀπένεγκέ μου τὴν Μορμόνα. ἄπο τὰ φοβερά: φοβερὰ γὰρ ὑπῆρχεν ἡ Μορμώ. καὶ αὖθις Ἀριστοφάνης: Μορμὼ τοῦ θράσους. μορμολύκειον, ἣν λέγουσι Λαμίαν: ἔλεγον δὲ οὕτω καὶ τὰ φοβερά. λείπει δὲ τὸ ὡς, ὡς Μορμώ, ἢ ἐπιρρηματικῶς ἐξενήνεκται, ὡς εἰ ἔλεγε, φεῦ τοῦ θράσους"., p. 91, note 114" 1=http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/mu/1212", Suda On Line, tr. Richard Rodriguez. 11 June 2009.
"Lamia" has as synonyms "Mormo" and "Gello" according to the scholia to Theocritus.
Other bogeys have been listed in conjunction with "Lamia", for instance, Gorgons (ἡ Γοργώ), the eyeless giant Ephialtes, a (μορμολύκη named by Strabo.
It purports to give a full account of the capture of "Lamia of Corinth" by Apollonius, as the general populace referred to the legend. An apparition ( phasma φάσμα) which in the assumed guise of a woman seduced one of Apollonius's young pupils.
Here, Lamia is the common vulgar term and empusa the proper term. For Apollonius in speech declares that the seductress is "one of the empousai, which most other people would call lamiai and ". The use of the term lamia in this sense is however considered atypical by one commentator.
Regarding the seductress, Apollonius further warned, "you are warming a snake ( ophis) on your bosom, and it is a snake that warms you". It has been suggested from this discourse that the creature was therefore "literally a snake". The empousa admits in the end to fattening up her victim (Menippus of Lycia) to be consumed, as she was in the habit of targeting young men for food "because their blood was fresh and pure". The last statement has led to the surmise that this lamia/empusa was a sort of blood-sucking vampiress. Perseus Project "
Another aspect of her powers is that this empusa/lamia is able to create an illusion of a sumptuous mansion, with all the accoutrements and even servants. But once Apollonius reveals her false identity at the wedding, the illusion fails her and vanishes.
Meroe has seduced a man named Socrates, but when he plots to escape, the two witches raid his bed, thrust a knife in the neck to tap the blood into a skin bag, eviscerate his heart, and stuff the hole back with sponge. 1=http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi1212.phi002.perseus-lat1:1.12–17
Some commentators, despite the absence of actual blood-sucking, find these witches to share "vampiric" qualities of the lamiae ( lamiai) in Philostratus's narrative, thus offering it up for comparison.
The story surrounds the tragedy of the daughter of King Crotopus of Argos named Psamathe, whose child by Apollo dies and she is executed for suspected promiscuity. Apollo as punishment then sends the child-devouring monster to Argos.
In Statius' version, the monster had a woman's face and breasts, and a hissing snake protruding from the cleft of her rusty-colored forehead, and it would slide into children's bedrooms to snatch them.Statius, Thebaid, I. 562–669, quoted by ; Latin text:
In Pausanias's version, the monster is called Poena (ποινή), meaning "punishment" or "vengeance", but there is nothing about a snake on her forehead.Pausanias, translated by Jones, W.H.S.; Ormerod, H.A., 1=http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0525.tlg001.perseus-eng1:1.43, 1. 43. 7 - 8
One evidence this may be a double of the Lamia comes from Plutarch, who equates the word empusa with poinē.Plutarch, Moralia 1101c, cited by .
The Vulgate Bible used "lamia" in Isaiah 34:14 to translate "Lilith" of the Hebrew Bible. Pope Gregory I (d. 604)'s exegesis on the Book of Job explains that the lamia represented either heresy or hypocrisy.
Christian writers also warned against the seductive potential of lamiae. In his 9th-century De divortio, Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, listed lamiae among the supernatural dangers that threatened marriages, and identified them with geniciales feminae,Hincmar, De divortio ("On Lothar's divorce"), XV Interrogatio, MGH Concilia 4 Supplementum, 205, as cited by Bernadotte Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005, p. 305. female reproductive spirits.In his 1628 Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, Du Cange made note of the geniciales feminae, and associated them with words pertaining to generation and genitalia; entry online.
Another double of the Libyan Lamia may be Lamia, daughter of Poseidon. Lamia by Zeus gave birth to a Sibyl according to Pausanias, and this would have to be the Libyan Lamia, yet there is a tradition that Lamia the daughter of Poseidon was the mother of a Sibyl. Either one could be Lamia the mother of Scylla mentioned in the Stesichorus (d. 555 BC) fragment, and other sources. Scylla is a creature depicted variously as or serpent-bodied.
In the 1st-century Life of Apollonius of Tyana the female empousa-lamia is also called "a snake", which may seem to the modern reader to be just a metaphorical expression, but which Daniel Ogden insists is a literal snake. Philostratus's tale was reworked by Keats in his poem Lamia, "Vampire" where it is made clear she bears the guise of a snake, which she wants to relinquish in return for human appearance.
Modern commentators have also tried to establish that she may have originally been a dragoness, by inference.: "This is not to say that the notion of an archetypal Lamia preceded the notion of lamiai as a category of monster". Daniel Ogden argues that one of her possible reincarnations, the monster of Argos killed by Coroebus had a "scaly gait", indicating she must have had an form in an early version of the story, although the Latin text in Statius merely reads inlabi (declension of ) meaning "slides".
One of the doubles of Lamia of Libya is the Lamia-Sybaris, which is described only as a giant beast by Antoninus Liberalis (2nd century).Antoninus Liberalis (2nd century), Metamorphoses 8, paraphrasing Nicander, 2nd century B.C., quoted by It is noted that this character terrorized Delphi, just as the dragon Python had.
Close comparison is also made with the serpentine Medusa. Not only is Medusa identified with Libya, she also had dealings with the three Graeae who had the removable eye shared between them. In some versions, the removable eye belonged to the three , Medusa and her sisters.
From around the mid-15th century into the 16th century, the lamia came to be regarded exclusively as witches.
A Lamia appears in the 1914 story "An Episode of Cathedral History" by M. R. James.
English composer Dorothy Howell composed a tone poem Lamia which was played repeatedly to great acclaim under its dedicatee Sir Henry Wood at the London Promenade concerts in the 1920s. It has been recorded more recently by Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for Chandos Records in a 2019 release of British tone poems.
The 1982 novel Lamia by Tristan Travis sees the mythological monster relocated to 1970s Chicago, where she takes bloody vengeance on sex offenders while the cops try to figure out the mystery.
Lamia, also known as Ramia, also appears as a boss in the Nintendo DS action role-playing game Deep Labyrinth.
Lamia is the main antagonist in the 2009 horror movie Drag Me to Hell. In the film, Lamia is described as "the most feared of all Demons" and having the head and hooves of a goat. A gypsy curse associated with him has Lamia torment the victim for three days before having its minions drag them into Hell to burn in its fires for all eternity.
A Lamia appears in the BBC series Merlin in series 4. Described as having the blood of both woman and serpent, she draws the life out of men through a kiss in her seductress form before turning into a serpent-like creature. She is killed by Prince Arthur.
Lamia appears as an antagonist in Rick Riordan's The Demigod Diaries, appearing in its fourth short story "The Son of Magic". She is depicted as the daughter of Hecate and as having glowing green eyes with serpentine slits, shriveled-up hands with lizard-like claws on them, and crocodile-like teeth.
In the manga and anime Monster Musume, the character Miia is a lamia. The main character of Dropkick on My Devil!, Jashin-chan, is also a lamia.
In Gerald Brom's Lost Gods, Lamia serves as the primary antagonist, depicted as an ancient succubus who prolongs her life by drinking the blood of her children and grandchildren.
Lamias are featured in the progressive rock album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis on the track "The Lamia". They are depicted as female creatures with "snake-like" bodies and seduce the protagonist Rael in an attempt to devour him, but as soon as they "taste" Rael's body, the blood that enters the lamias' bodies causes their death.
Lamia is mentioned several times in the Iron Maiden song "Prodigal Son" from their 1981 album Killers. The band often refer to mythology and mythical beasts in their compositions.
The American TV series Raised by Wolves features a character named Lamia, an android mother, who has removable eyes and the ability to shapeshift.
The 2024 British fantasy TV series Domino Day, set in modern-day Manchester, features Siena Kelly as the titular lead character, a witch who feeds on the energy of her dating-app hook-ups. She eventually realizes that she is actually a lamia.
Later traditions referred to many lamiae; these were folkloric monsters similar to and succubus that seduced young men and then fed on their blood.
Genealogy
Lamia was the daughter born between King Belus of Egypt and Lybie, according to one source.Diodorus Siculus, 20.41.3-6, Scholia to Aristophanes, Wasps 1035; Commentary 37 to Heraclitus the Allegorist
Aristophanes
Aristophanes wrote in two plays an identically worded list of foul-smelling objects which included the "Lamia's testicles", thus making Lamia's gender ambiguous.Aristophanes, The Wasps, 1035; Peace 758, cited by , p. 91, note 117. This was later incorporated into Edward Topsell's 17th-century envisioning of the lamia.
Hellenistic folklore
As children's bogey
The "Lamia" was a bogeyman or bugbear term, invoked by a mother or a nanny to frighten children into good behavior., "Witchcraft and Lamiae in 'The Golden Ass'" Folklore 105, p. 77. Such practices are recorded by the 1st century Diodorus, and other sources in antiquity.Tertullian, Against Valentinius (ch. iii)
As a seductress
In later classical periods, around the 1st century A. D., the conception of this Lamia shifted to that of a sultry seductress who enticed young men and devoured them. Perseus Project "
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Apollonius of Tyana
A representative example is Philostratus's novelistic biography Life of Apollonius of Tyana.
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Lamia the courtesan
A longstanding joke makes a word play between Lamia the monster and Lamia of Athens, the notorious hetaira courtesan who captivated Demetrius Poliorcetes (d. 283 BC). The double-entendre sarcasm was uttered by Demetrius's father, among others.Plutarch, 1=http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg057.perseus-eng1:19 19, Perrin, Bernadotte, ed. The same joke was used in theatrical Greek comedy,, citing Lamia O'Sullivan, Lara (2009), pp. 53–79, esp. p. 69 and generally.:"This is a pejorative expression, not a formal classification, but it is still meaningful"; "..labeling of a dangerous woman as a lamia was not uncommon.. Aelian records.. a notorious prostitute.. ( Miscellany 12.17, 13.8)". The word play is also seen as being employed in Horace's Odes, to banter Lucius Aelius Lamia the praetor.
Golden Ass
In Apuleius's The Golden Ass appear two Thessaly
"witches", Meroe and her sister Panthia, who are called lamiae in one instance.Apul. Met. 1.17. : "Admittedly, Apuleius' use of the term "Lamiae" is an isolated occurrence. Elsewhere, Meroe and her sister are referred to as witches or sorcerer".
Kindreds
Lamia's possible kindred kind appear in Classical works, but may be known by other names except for isolated instance which calls it a lamia. Or they may be simply unnamed or differently named. And those analogues that exhibit a serpentine form or nature have been especially noted.
Poine of Argos
One such possible lamia is the avenging monster sent by Apollo against the city of Ancient Argos and killed by Coroebus. It is referred to as Poine or Keres Greek Anthology 7.154, cited by in classical sources, but later in the Medieval period, one source does call it a lamia (First Vatican Mythographer, century).
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Libyan myth
A second example is a colony of man-eating monsters in Libya, described by Dio Chrysostom. These monsters had a woman's torso and beastly hands, and "all the lower part was snake, ending in the snake's baleful head".Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 5.1, 5–27, quoted by Cohoon, J. W. tr., ed.
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/a> 5 (Loeb Classics). The idea that these creatures were lamiai seems to originate with Alex Scobie (1977),, cited by and to be accepted by other commentators.
Middle Ages
By the Early Middle Ages, lamia (pl. lamiai or lamiae) was being glossed as a general term referring to a class of beings. Hesychius of Alexandria's lexicon () glossed lamiai as apparitions, or even fish. Isidore of Seville defined them as beings that snatched babies and ripped them apart.
Interpretations
This Lamia of Libya has her double in Lamia-Sybaris of the legend around Delphi, both indirectly associated with serpents. Strong parallel with the Medusa has also been noted. These, and other considerations have prompted modern commentators to suggest she is a dragoness., as the female counterpart of the Python, also of Delphi; and passim.
Identification as a serpent-woman
Diodorus Siculus (), for instance, describes Lamia of Libya as having nothing more than a beastly appearance. Diodorus, Duris of Samos and other sources which comprise the sources for building an "archetypal" picture of Lamia do not designate her as a dragoness, or give her explicit serpentine descriptions.: "Nothing here explicitly declares.. a serpentine element" (Duris and Scholium), ; "nothing here, again, speaks directly of a serpentin nature" (Diodorus and Heraclitus Paradoxographus), .
Hecate
Some commentators have also equated Lamia with Hecate. The basis of this identification is the variant maternities of Scylla, sometimes ascribed to Lamia (as already mentioned), and sometimes to Hecate. Odyssey 12.124 and scholia, noted by Karl Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks 1951:38 note 71. The identification has also been built (using transitive logic) since each name is identified with empusa in different sources.
Stench of a lamia
A foul odor has been pointed out as a possible common motif or attribute of the lamiai. The examples are Aristophanes's reference to the "lamia's testicles", the scent of the monsters in the Libyan myth which allowed the humans to track down their lair, and the terrible stench of their urine that lingered in the clothing of Aristomenes, which they showered upon him after carving out his friend Sophocles's heart.
Mesopotamian connection
Lamia may originate from the Mesopotamian demoness Lamashtu.
Modern age
Renaissance writer Angelo Poliziano wrote Lamia (1492), a philosophical work whose title is a disparaging reference to his opponents who dabble in philosophy without competence. It alludes to Plutarch's use of the term in De curiositate, where the Greek writer suggests that the term Lamia is emblematic of meddlesome busybodies in society. Worded another way, Lamia was of the hypocrisy of such scholars.
Bestiary
In Edward Topsell's History of Four-footed Beasts (1607), the lamia is described as having the upper body (i.e., the face and breasts) of a woman, but with goatlike Buttocks with large and filthy "stones" (testicles) that smell like sea-calves, on authority of Aristophanes. It is covered with scales all over.Topsell, Edward (1607), " Of the lamia, The historie of foure-footed beastes.
Adaptations
John Keats's "Lamia" in his Lamia and Other Poems is a reworking of the tale in Apollonius's biography by Philostratus, described above. In Keats's version, the student Lycius replaces Menippus the Lycian. For the descriptions and nature of the Lamia, Keats drew from Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy.Keats made a note to this effect at the end of the first page in the fair copy he made: see William E. Harrold, "Keats' 'Lamia' and Peacock's 'Rhododaphne'". The Modern Language Review 61.4 (October 1966:579–584). p. 579 and note with bibliography on this point. August Enna wrote an opera called Lamia.
Modern folk traditions
In modern Greece folk tradition, the Lamia has survived and retained many of her traditional attributes.Lamia receives a section in Georgios Megas and Helen Colaclides, Folktales of Greece (Folktales of the World) (University of Chicago Prtes) 1970. John Cuthbert Lawson remarks "the chief characteristics of the Lamiae, apart from their thirst for blood, are their uncleanliness, their gluttony, and their stupidity".Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (Cambridge University Press) 1910:175ff. The contemporary Greek proverb, "της Λάμιας τα σαρώματα" ("the Lamia's sweeping"), epitomises slovenliness; and the common expression, "τό παιδί τό 'πνιξε η Λάμια" ("the child has been strangled by the Lamia"), explains the sudden death of young children.
Fine arts
In a 1909 painting by Herbert James Draper, the Lamia who moodily watches the serpent on her forearm appears to represent a hetaera. Although the lower body of Draper's Lamia is human, he alludes to her serpentine history by draping a shed snakeskin about her waist. In Renaissance , Lamia has the body of a serpent and the breasts and head of a woman, like the image of hypocrisy.
See also
Explanatory notes
Citations
General and cited references
(2025). 9780252029295, University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252029295
(2025). 9780230604292, Springer. ISBN 9780230604292
(2025). 9780520040915 ISBN 9780520040915
External links
Categories: Bogeymen, Children Of Poseidon, Classical Oracles, Daimons, Deeds Of Hera, European Demons, Female Demons, Greek Legendary Creatures, Legendary Serpents, Libyan Characters In Greek Mythology, Metamorphoses Into Monsters In Greek Mythology, Monsters In Greek Mythology, Mortal Women Of Zeus, Mythological Cannibals, Mythological Hematophages, Queens In Greek Mythology, Succubi
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