Lamia - WikiHQ

thumb|The Kiss of the Enchantress ([[Isobel Lilian Gloag, ), inspired by Keats's "Lamia", depicts Lamia as half-serpent, half-woman]]

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 myths, 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. 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.

The lamiai () also became a type of phantom, synonymous with the empusai 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 Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe, daughter of King Crotopos.

Snake-like traits also appear in other ancient mythological figures such as the Medusa and the Chimera.

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.

Etymology

A scholiast to Aristophanes claimed that Lamia's name derived from her having a large throat or gullet (; laimós). Modern scholarship reconstructs a Proto-Indo-European stem , "nocturnal spirit", whence also comes lemures.

Classical mythology

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (vii.5) refers to the lore of some beastly lifeform in the shape of a woman, which tears the bellies of pregnant mothers and devours their fetuses. An anonymous commentator on the passage states this is a reference to the Lamia, but muddlingly combines this with Aristotle's subsequent comments and describes her as a Scythian of the Pontus (Black Sea) area.

De-mythologized

Diodorus Siculus () gave a de-mythologized account of Lamia as a queen of Libya who ordered her soldiers to snatch children from their mothers and kill them, and whose beauty gave way to bestial appearance due to her savageness. The queen, as related by Diodorus, was born in a cave. Heraclitus Paradoxographus (2nd century) also gave a rationalizing account.

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.

Genealogy

Lamia was the daughter born between King Belus of Egypt and Lybie, according to one source.

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.

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. This was later incorporated into Edward Topsell's 17th-century envisioning of the lamia. a generic is also supported by the definition as some sort of a "wild beast" in the Suda.

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. Such practices are recorded by the 1st century Diodorus,

Numerous sources attest to the Lamia being a "child-devourer", one of them being Horace. Horace in Ars Poetica cautions against the overly fantastical: "[nor should a story] 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. The lexicon also has an entry under mormo (), stating that Mormo and the equivalent (mormolykeion) are called lamía, and that all these refer to frightful beings.

"Lamia" has as synonyms "Mormo" and "Gello" according to the scholia to Theocritus.

Other bogeys have been listed in conjunction with "Lamia", for instance, the Gorgo (), the eyeless giant Ephialtes, and a Mormolyce () named by Strabo.

As a seductress

In later classical periods, around the 1st century A.D.,

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..-->A longstanding joke makes a word play between Lamia the monster and Lamia of Athens, the notorious hetaira courtesan who captivated Demetrius Poliorcetes (died 283 BC). The double-entendre sarcasm was uttered by Demetrius's father, among others. The same joke was used in theatrical Greek comedy, and generally. 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 Thessalian

"witches", Meroe and her sister Panthia, who are called lamiae in one instance.

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.

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.

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 Argos and killed by Coroebus. It is referred to as Poine or Ker in classical sources, but later in the Medieval period, one source does call it a lamia (First Vatican Mythographer, century).

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. According to a scholiast to Ovid, it had a serpent's body carrying a human face.

In Pausanias's version, the monster is called Poinē (), meaning "punishment" or "vengeance", but there is nothing about a snake on her forehead.

One evidence this may be a double of the Lamia comes from Plutarch, who equates the word empousa with poinē.

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". The idea that these creatures were lamiai seems to originate with Alex Scobie (1977), 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.

The Vulgate used "lamia" in Isaiah 34:14 to translate "Lilith" of the Hebrew Bible.

Christian writers also warned against the seductive potential of lamiae. In his 9th-century treatise on divorce, Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, listed lamiae among the supernatural dangers that threatened marriages, and identified them with geniciales feminae, female reproductive spirits.

Interpretations

upright|thumb|Lamia (first version) by [[John William Waterhouse (1905).]]

upright|thumb|Lamia (second version), with snakeskin on her lap, [[John William Waterhouse (1909)]]

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.

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.