Lamia (/ˈleɪmiə/ ⓘ;Ancient Greek:Λάμια,romanized: Lámia), in ancientGreek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit or "daimon".
In the earliestmyths, Lamia was a beautiful queen ofancient Libya who had an affair withZeus and gave birth to his children. Upon learning of this, Zeus's wifeHera robbed Lamia of her children, either by kidnapping them and hiding them away, killing them outright, or forcing Lamia to kill them.[1] The loss of her children drove Lamia insane, and she began hunting and devouring others' children.[2] Either because of her anguish or hercannibalism, Lamia was transformed into a horrific creature. Zeus gifted Lamia the power ofprophecy and the ability to take out and reinsert her eyes, possibly because Hera cursed her withinsomnia or the inability to close her eyes.[3]
Thelamiai (Ancient Greek:λάμιαι,romanized: lámiai) also became a type of phantom, synonymous with theempusai who seduced young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. An account ofApollonius of Tyana's defeat of a lamia-seductress inspired the poem "Lamia" byJohn 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 aslamiai, which are part-snake beings. These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the "Libyan myth" told byDio Chrysostom, and the monster sent toArgos byApollo to avengePsamathe, daughter of King Crotopos.
In previous centuries, Lamia was used in Greece as abogeyman to frighten children into obedience, similar to the way parents in Spain, Portugal and Latin America used theCoco.
Ascholiast toAristophanes claimed that Lamia's name derived from her having a large throat orgullet (λαιμός;laimós).[5] Modern scholarship reconstructs aProto-Indo-European stem*lem-, "nocturnal spirit", whence also comeslemures.[6]
Aristotle'sNicomachean 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 thePontus (Black Sea) area.[7][8]
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 ashapeshifting ability in the process.[9][10]
Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) 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.[1][11]Heraclitus Paradoxographus (2nd century) also gave a rationalizing account.[12]
Diodorus's rationalization was that the Libyan queen in herdrunken 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.[1]Heraclitus'seuhemerized account explains that Hera, consort of Zeus, gouged the eyes out of the beautiful Lamia.[13]
Lamia was the daughter born between KingBelus of Egypt andLybie, according to one source.[a][9][14]
According to the same source, Lamia was taken by Zeus to Italy, and that Lamos, the city of the man-eatingLaestrygonians, was named after her.[9] A different authority remarks that Lamia was once queen of the Laestrygonians.[17][b][c]
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.[19][d] This was later incorporated intoEdward Topsell's 17th-century envisioning of the lamia.[20]
It is somewhat uncertain if this refers to the one Lamia[21] or to "a Lamia" among many, as given in some translations of the two plays;[22] a generic lamia is also supported by the definition as some sort of a "wild beast" in theSuda.[23]
The "Lamia" was abogeyman orbugbear term, invoked by a mother or ananny to frighten children into good behavior.[15][24] Such practices are recorded by the 1st century Diodorus,[1] and other sources in antiquity.[9][25]
Numerous sources attest to the Lamia being a "child-devourer", one of them beingHorace.[26] Horace inArs Poetica cautions against the overly fantastical: "[nor should a story] draw a live boy out of a Lamia's belly".[e][27] 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.[28]
The Byzantine lexiconSuda (10th century) gave an entry forlamía, with definitions and sources much as already described.[29] The lexicon also has an entry undermormo (Μορμώ), stating that Mormo and the equivalentμορμολυκεῖονmormolykeion[f] are called lamía, and that all these refer to frightful beings.[30][31][32]
"Lamia" has as synonyms "Mormo" and "Gello" according to thescholia to Theocritus.[17]
Other bogeys have been listed in conjunction with "Lamia", for instance,the Gorgo (ἡ Γοργώ), the eyeless giant Ephialtes, aMormolyce (μορμολύκη named byStrabo.[33]
In later classical periods, around the 1st century A. D.,[34] the conception of this Lamia shifted to that of a sultry seductress who enticed young men and devoured them.[35][34]
A representative example isPhilostratus's novelistic biographyLife of Apollonius of Tyana.[35]
It purports to give a full account of the capture of "Lamia ofCorinth" by Apollonius, as the general populace referred to the legend.[37] An apparition (phasmaφάσμα[38][g]) which in the assumed guise of a woman seduced one of Apollonius's young pupils.
Here, Lamia is the common vulgar term andempousa the proper term. For Apollonius in speech declares that the seductress is "one of theempousai, which most other people would calllamiai andmormolykeia".[40][36] The use of the termlamia in this sense is however considered atypical by one commentator.[41]
Regarding the seductress, Apollonius further warned, "you are warming a snake (ophis) on your bosom, and it is a snake that warms you".[42][38] It has been suggested from this discourse that the creature was therefore "literally a snake".[43][h] Theempousa 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".[36] The last statement has led to the surmise that this lamia/empusa was a sort of blood-sucking vampiress.[44]
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.[38]
A longstanding joke makes a word play between Lamia the monster andLamia of Athens, the notorioushetaira courtesan who captivatedDemetrius Poliorcetes (d. 283 BC). Thedouble-entendre sarcasm was uttered by Demetrius's father, among others.[i][45][46] The same joke was used in theatricalGreek comedy,[47] and generally.[48] The word play is also seen as being employed in Horace'sOdes, to banter Lucius Aelius Lamia the praetor.[j][49]
InApuleius'sThe Golden Ass[k] appear twoThessalian "witches",[l] Meroe and her sister Panthia, who are calledlamiae in one instance.[52][53][m][n]
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 withsponge.[56]
Some commentators, despite the absence of actual blood-sucking, find these witches to share "vampiric" qualities of thelamiae (lamiai) in Philostratus's narrative, thus offering it up for comparison.[57]
Lamia's possible kindred kind appear in Classical works, but may be known by other names except for isolated instance which calls it alamia. Or they may be simply unnamed or differently named. And those analogues that exhibit a serpentine form or nature have been especially noted.
One such possible lamia is the avenging monster sent byApollo against the city ofArgos and killed byCoroebus. It is referred to asPoine orKer[58] in classical sources, but later in the Medieval period, one source does call it a lamia (First Vatican Mythographer,c. 9th to 11th century).[59][60]
The story surrounds the tragedy of the daughter of KingCrotopus of Argos namedPsamathe, whose child byApollo dies and she is executed for suspected promiscuity. Apollo as punishment then sends the child-devouring monster to Argos.
InStatius' 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.[61] According to a scholiast to Ovid, it had a serpent's body carrying a human face.[62]
InPausanias's version, the monster is calledPoinē (ποινή), meaning "punishment" or "vengeance", but there is nothing about a snake on her forehead.[63][64]
One evidence this may be a double of the Lamia comes from Plutarch, who equates the wordempousa withpoinē.[65]
A second example is a colony of man-eating monsters in Libya, described byDio 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".[66][67][o] The idea that these creatures werelamiai seems to originate with Alex Scobie (1977),[69] and to be accepted by other commentators.[70]
By theEarly Middle Ages,lamia (pl.lamiai orlamiae) was being glossed as a general term referring to a class of beings.Hesychius of Alexandria's lexicon (c. 500 A.D.) glossedlamiai as apparitions, or even fish.[p][12]Isidore of Seville defined them as beings that snatched babies and ripped them apart.[12]
TheVulgate used "lamia" inIsaiah 34:14 to translate "Lilith" of the Hebrew Bible.[71]Pope Gregory I (d. 604)'s exegesis on theBook of Job explains that the lamia represented eitherheresy orhypocrisy.[71]
Christian writers also warned against the seductive potential oflamiae. In his 9th-centurytreatise on divorce,Hincmar,archbishop of Reims, listedlamiae among the supernatural dangers that threatened marriages, and identified them withgeniciales feminae,[72] female reproductive spirits.[73]
This Lamia of Libya has her double in Lamia-Sybaris of the legend aroundDelphi, both indirectly associated with serpents. Strong parallel with theMedusa has also been noted. These, and other considerations have prompted modern commentators to suggest she is a dragoness.[74][75]
Another double of the Libyan Lamia may beLamia, 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.[76] Either one could be Lamia the mother ofScylla mentioned in theStesichorus (d. 555 BC) fragment, and other sources.[78][79] Scylla is a creature depicted variously asanguipedal or serpent-bodied.
Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), for instance, describes Lamia of Libya as having nothing more than a beastly appearance.[1] 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.[80]
In the 1st-centuryLife of Apollonius of Tyana the femaleempousa-lamia is also called "a snake",[38] which may seem to the modern reader to be just a metaphorical expression, but whichDaniel Ogden insists is a literal snake.[43] Philostratus's tale was reworked by Keats in his poemLamia,[81] 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.[82][83] Daniel Ogden argues that one of her possible reincarnations, the monster of Argos killed byCoroebus had a "scaly gait", indicating she must have had ananguipedal form in an early version of the story,[84] although the Latin text in Statius merely readsinlabi (declension oflabor) meaning "slides".[61]
One of the doubles of Lamia of Libya is the Lamia-Sybaris, which is described only as a giant beast byAntoninus Liberalis (2nd century).[85][86] It is noted that this character terrorizedDelphi, just as the dragonPython had.[86]
Close comparison is also made with the serpentineMedusa. Not only is Medusa identified with Libya, she also had dealings with the threeGraeae who had the removable eye shared between them. In some versions, the removable eye belonged to the threeGorgons, Medusa and her sisters.[87]
Some commentators have also equated Lamia withHecate. The basis of this identification is the variant maternities ofScylla, sometimes ascribed to Lamia (as already mentioned), and sometimes to Hecate.[88][79] The identification has also been built (usingtransitive logic) since each name is identified withempousa in different sources.[43][90]
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.[91]
Lamia may originate from the Mesopotamian demonessLamashtu.[92]
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Renaissance writerAngelo Poliziano wroteLamia (1492), a philosophical work whose title is a disparaging reference to his opponents who dabble in philosophy without competence. It alludes toPlutarch's use of the term inDe curiositate, where the Greek writer suggests that the termLamia is emblematic of meddlesome busybodies in society.[93] Worded another way, Lamia wasemblematic of thehypocrisy of such scholars.[94]
From around the mid-15th century into the 16th century, the lamia came to be regarded exclusively as witches.[95]
InEdward Topsell'sHistory 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 goatlikehind quarters with large and filthy "stones" (testicles) that smell like sea-calves, on authority of Aristophanes. It is covered with scales all over.[20]
John Keats's "Lamia" in hisLamia 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'sThe Anatomy of Melancholy.[96]August Enna wrote an opera calledLamia.[34]
A Lamia appears in the 1914 story "An Episode of Cathedral History" byM. R. James.
English composerDorothy Howell composed a tone poemLamia which was played repeatedly to great acclaim under its dedicateeSir Henry Wood at the London Promenade concerts in the 1920s. It has been recorded more recently byRumon Gamba conducting theBBC Philharmonic Orchestra forChandos Records in a 2019 release of British tone poems.
The 1982 novelLamia 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 aboss in theNintendo DSaction role-playing gameDeep Labyrinth.[97]
Lamia is the main antagonist in the 2009 horror movieDrag 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 Romani 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 seriesMerlin 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 inRick Riordan'sThe Demigod Diaries, appearing in its fourth short story "The Son of Magic". She is depicted as the daughter ofHecate 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 animeMonster Musume, the character Miia is a lamia. The main character ofDropkick on My Devil!, Jashin-chan, is also a lamia.
InGerald Brom'sLost 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 theprogressive rock albumThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadway byGenesis 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 theIron Maiden song "Prodigal Son" from their 1981 albumKillers. The band often refer to mythology and mythical beasts in their compositions.
The American TV seriesRaised by Wolves features a character named Lamia, an android mother, who has removable eyes and the ability to shapeshift.[98]
The 2024 British fantasy TV seriesDomino Day, set in modern-day Manchester, featuresSiena 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.[99]
In modernGreek folk tradition, the Lamia has survived and retained many of her traditional attributes.[100] John Cuthbert Lawson remarks "the chief characteristics of the Lamiae, apart from their thirst for blood, are their uncleanliness, their gluttony, and their stupidity".[101] The contemporary Greek proverb, "της Λάμιας τα σαρώματα" ("the Lamia's sweeping"), epitomises slovenliness;[101] 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.[101]
Later traditions referred to manylamiae; these were folkloric monsters similar tovampires andsuccubi that seduced young men and then fed on their blood.[102]
In a 1909 painting byHerbert James Draper, the Lamia who moodily watches the serpent on her forearm appears to represent ahetaera. 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 Renaissanceemblems, Lamia has the body of aserpent and the breasts and head of a woman, like the image ofhypocrisy.[citation needed]
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