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What this episode is about
Lamia is one of the oldest bogeys humanity has. In this episode I follow her from a vampire bride in Corinth to a Libyan queen and on to the rivers of Mesopotamia, and I ask what fear lies behind her.
The bride of Corinth
Around AD 220, Philostratus tells the story of Menippus, a young philosopher. On the road to Cenchreae, a beautiful, wealthy woman declares her love for him. On the wedding day, the sage Apollonius of Tyana exposes the house, the gold and the bride as an illusion. She had wanted to fatten up the groom so she could drink his blood. It is one of the first vampire stories in world literature.
What people whispered
Greek nurses threatened naughty children with Lamia. People said she could take out her eyes and put them in a bowl. She belongs to a whole group of related figures such as Empusa, Mormo and Gello.
The queen of Libya
The oldest version we can trace comes from Duris of Samos, around 280 BC. Lamia is a queen and a lover of Zeus, and Hera takes all her children from her. Driven mad with grief, she becomes a child killer. Later, Diodorus turns her into a cruel tyrant. In both versions, what you find at the start is not a monster but a mother whose children were taken from her. One ancient commentator derives the name from laimós, the gullet.
The beast on the mountain
Antoninus Liberalis records the story of the monster on Mount Cirphis near Delphi, to which a young man is to be sacrificed until Eurybatus takes his place. Statius tells a similar story in the Thebaid.
Older than Greece
In Mesopotamia people feared Lamashtu, a lion-headed demoness who attacked women in childbirth and newborns. Walter Farber published a comprehensive study of her in 2014. In Jewish tradition the same figure appears as Lilith, and in the Vulgate, Jerome translated her name as “Lamia.”
The envious dead
Sarah Iles Johnston reads Lamia, Gello and Mormo as demonesses behind whom stood the ghosts of women who died too young. On ancient gravestones, parents blamed the death of their children on an “envious demon.” Byzantine charms against the demoness Gyllou and amulets on the cradle were meant to protect them.
The beautiful serpent
The image of the seductive snake woman was shaped above all by John Keats and his narrative poem Lamia from 1819. Underneath it, there is still the queen in her cave who lost everything.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Lamia in Greek mythology?
A Libyan queen and lover of Zeus whose children were taken by Hera. Out of grief she became a child killer, and later a figure of terror and a seductress.
What do Lamia, Lilith and Lamashtu have in common?
All three threaten babies and women giving birth. Over thousands of years, the fear of children dying suddenly is concentrated in them.
More in the lexicon: Lamia.
About this episode
She waits at the roadside, she is beautiful, she loves you — and she is fattening you to drink your blood. The Lamia is one of humanity’s oldest bogeys and one of its saddest. In this episode we follow her from an ancient vampire bride in Corinth, back to a queen of Libya whose children were all taken by a jealous goddess, and down to the rivers of Mesopotamia, where her ancestor Lamashtu was feared a thousand years earlier. And we ask what this demoness reveals about a fear that never went away — the fear for our children, of death without reason, and of the woman who was given the face of the monster.
📚 SOURCES & FURTHER READING
- Duris of Samos (c. 280 BC), fragment (FGrH 76 F 17) – transmits the archetypal Lamia legend of the Libyan queen, daughter of Belus.
- Aristophanes, Peace (421 BC) and its scholia – earliest literary mentions; the scholiast derives the name from laimós (“gullet”).
- Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 20.41 (c. 30 BC) – rationalized version of the Lamia as a cruel, hard-drinking queen; explanation of the “removable eyes.”
- Plutarch, On Curiosity 2 (c. 100 AD) – the fable of the eyes the Lamia sets in a vessel.
- Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana 4.25 (c. 220 AD) – the vampire bride of Corinth and Menippus; calls the creature empousa/lamia.
- Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 8 (c. 150 AD, after Nicander) – the legend of the Lamia/Sybaris on Mount Cirphis near Delphi and her killing by Eurybatus.
- Statius, Thebaid 1.562–669 (92 AD) – the child-killing monster Apollo sends against Argos, slain by the hero Coroebus.
- Byzantine Sisinnios/Gyllou incantation texts – the demoness is forced to reveal her “twelve and a half names”; the background to protective amulets against infant death.
- Sappho, fragment 178 (c. 600 BC) – earliest naming of the related Gello.
- Jerome, Vulgate, Isaiah 34:14 (c. 400 AD) – translates the Hebrew Lilith as Lamia.
- Walter Farber, Lamaštu. An Edition of the Canonical Series (Eisenbrauns, 2014) – standard edition on the Mesopotamian precursor Lamashtu.
- Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead. Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 1999) – reads Lamia, Gello and Mormo as “reproductive demons,” the ghosts of those who died too young or in childbirth.
- John Keats, Lamia (1819), after Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) – shapes the modern image of the serpent-bodied seductress.
Note: the ancient sources contradict one another on many details. This video presents the main strands of the tradition.