Empusa orEmpousa (/ɛmˈpjuːsə/;[1]Ancient Greek:Ἔμπουσα;plural:ἜμπουσαιEmpusai) is ashape-shifting female being inGreek mythology, said to possess a single leg of copper, commanded byHecate, whose precise nature is obscure.[2] InLate Antiquity, the empousae have been described as a category ofphantoms or spectres, equated with thelamiai andmormolykeia, thought to seduce and feed on young men.
The primary sources for theempousa inAntiquity areAristophanes's plays (The Frogs andEcclesiazusae) andPhilostratus'sLife of Apollonius of Tyana.[3]
The Empusa was defined in the Sudas and byCrates of Mallus as a "demonic phantom"[a][4] withshape-shifting abilities.[4][5] Thus in Aristophanes's plays she is said to change appearance from various beasts to a woman.[6]
The Empusa is also said to be one-legged,[5] having onebrass leg,[b] or adonkey's leg, thus being known by the epithetsOnokole (Ὀνοκώλη)[5] andOnoskelis (Ὀνοσκελίς), which both mean "donkey-footed".[7]Afolk etymology construes the name to mean "one-footed" (from Greek *έμπούς,*empous:en-, one +pous, foot).[5][4]
In Aristophanes's comedyThe Frogs, an Empusa appears beforeDionysus and his slaveXanthias on their way to the underworld, although this may be the slave's practical joke to frighten his master. Xanthias thus sees (or pretends to see) the empousa transform into a bull, a mule, a beautiful woman, and a dog. The slave also reassures that the being indeed had one brass (copper) leg, and another leg of cow dung[c] besides.[6]
The Empusa was a being sent byHecate (as one scholiast noted),[5] or was Hecate herself, according to a fragment of Aristophanes's lost playTagenistae ("Men of the Frying-pan"), as preserved in the Venetus.[d][5]
By theLate Antiquity in Greece, this became a category of beings, designated asempusai (Lat.empusae) in the plural. It came to be believed that the spectre preyed on young men for seduction and for food.[3]
According to the 1st-centuryLife of Apollonius of Tyana, the empousa is a phantom (phasma) that took on the appearance of an attractive woman and seduced a young philosophy student in order eventually to devour him.[8] In a different passage of the same work, when Apollonius was journeying from Persia to India, he encountered an empousa, hurling insults at it, coaxing his fellow travellers to join him, whereby it ran and hid, uttering high-pitched screams.[9]
Anempousa was also known to others aslamia ormormolyke.[8] Thisempousa confessed it was fattening up the student she targeted to feed on him, and that she especially craved young men for the freshness and purity of their blood,[8] prompting an interpretation as blood-suckingvampire bySmith'sDictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849).[3][12]
In modern times, folklore has been collected about a being fitting the description of anempousa: an extremely slender woman with multiple feet, "one of bronze, one a donkey's foot, one an ox's, one a goat's, and one human", but she was referred to as a woman with the lamia-like body and gait. The example was fromArachova (Parnassus) and published byBernhard Schmidt [de] (1871).[13][14] Schmidt only speculated that oral lore ofempousa might survive somewhere locally.[15] A field study (Charles Stewart, 1985) finds thatempousa is a term that is rarely used in oral tradition, compared to other terms such asgello which has a similar meaning.[16]
Empusa is a character inFaust, Part Two byGoethe. She appears during the ClassicalWalpurgis Night as Mephisto is being lured by the Lamiae. She refers to herself as cousin to Mephisto because she has a donkey's foot and he has a horse's.
έχει κορμί τής Λάμνιας ή πώς περβατεί σαν τη Λάμνια.. mehr als zwei und zwar verschiedenartig gebildete Füsse hat, der eine ist von Erz, der andere ist ein Eselsfuss, wieder ein anderer ein Ochsenfuss, ein Ziegenfuss, ein Menschenfuss u. s. w.