Who is Lamia?
The best-known version comes from the Greek historian Duris of Samos, around 280 BC: Lamia was a queen in Libya and a lover of Zeus. Out of jealousy, Hera killed her children. Lamia was driven mad by grief and began to steal and kill the children of other mothers. Plutarch writes that she could take out her eyes and put them in a jar. She is only dangerous when she has her eyes in.
The bride of Corinth
In later stories, the lamia is a beautiful seductress. In the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Philostratus tells of the young Menippus in Corinth, who wants to marry a rich and beautiful woman. Apollonius unmasks her at the wedding: she had meant to fatten up the groom so she could drink his blood.
Origins and relatives
An ancient commentator on Aristophanes derives the name from laimós, throat or gullet. Related figures are the Greek bogeys Gello and Mormo, used to frighten children. The scholar of religion Sarah Iles Johnston interprets them as demons that gave shape to the fear of infants and women dying in childbirth. An even older forerunner is the Mesopotamian Lamashtu, against whom pregnant women wore amulets. In the Vulgate, the Church Father Jerome translated the Hebrew word Lilith in Isaiah 34:14 as “lamia.”
Episode on this topic
Further reading
- Duris of Samos, fragment FGrH 76 F 17.
- Plutarch: On Curiosity 2.
- Philostratus: Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.25.
- Antoninus Liberalis: Metamorphoses 8.
- Walter Farber: Lamaštu. An Edition of the Canonical Series, Eisenbrauns 2014.
- Sarah Iles Johnston: Restless Dead, University of California Press 1999.