The same Lamia, it is recorded[441], is also known on the coasts of Elis as a dangerous foe to sailors; for her work is the waterspout and the whirlwind, whereby their ships are engulfed. Among the Cyclades too the same belief certainly prevails (though I have never obtained there any details concerning the character of the Lamia); for on seeing a waterspout the sailors will exclaim, ‘the Lamia of the Sea is passing’ (περνάει ἡ Λάμια τοῦ πελάγου), and sometimes stick a black-handled knife into the mast as a charm against her[442].
In these somewhat meagre accounts of the Lamia of the Sea, there are several points in harmony with the general conception of Nereids. She is beautiful; she seeks the love of young men, even though that love mean death to them; she is sweet of voice and untiring in dance; and she passes to and fro in waterspout or whirlwind. It is not surprising then to find that in Elis she is actually named queen of the Nereids[443], that is, without doubt, of the sea-nymphs only, since she herself has her domain only in the sea. And the title ‘queen of the shore’ which I learnt of my boatman from Scyros points to the same belief; for as we found Artemis, ‘queen of the mountains,’ to be the leader of all the Nereids of the land, so should ‘the queen of the shore’ be ruler over the Nereids of the sea.
How far this conception of the Lamia of the Sea accords with classical tradition, it is impossible to decide. Only in one passage, a fragment of Stesichorus[444], is there any evidence of the connexion of a Lamia with the sea. There the marine monster, Scylla, was made ‘the daughter of Lamia,’ a phrase which has given rise to the conjecture that the ancients like the moderns, as we shall see in the next section, recognised more than one species. A marine Lamia would supply the most natural parentage for Scylla; and if her mother may be identified with the modern Lamia of the Sea, the foe of ships and creator of the waterspout, the character of Scylla is true to her lineage.
But the other traits in the character of the modern Lamia of the Sea can hardly be hers by such ancient prescription. It is difficult to suppose that Stesichorus pictured Scylla’s mother as a thing of beauty; and the charm of the modern Lamia’s love-songs which seduce men to their death is perhaps an attribute borrowed from the Sirens. It is therefore in virtue of acquired rather than original qualities that the Lamia of the Sea has come to be queen of the sea-nymphs.
§ 11. Lamiae, Gelloudes, and Striges.
The three classes of female monsters, of whom the present section treats, have ever since the early middle ages[445] been constantly confounded, and the special attributes of each assigned promiscuously to the others. This is due to the fact that all three possess one pronounced quality in common, the propensity towards preying upon young children; and wherever this horrible trait has absorbed, as it well may, the whole attention of mediaeval writer or modern peasant, the distinctions between them in origin and nature have become obscured. Yet sufficient information is forthcoming, if used with discrimination, to enable some account to be given of each class separately.
The Lamiae are hideous monsters, shaped as gigantic and coarse-looking women for the most part, but, with strange deformities of the lower limbs such as Aristophanes attributed to a kindred being, the Empusa[446]. Their feet are dissimilar and may be more than two in number; one is often of bronze, while others resemble those of animals—ox, ass, or goat[447]. Tradition relates that one of these monsters was once shot by a peasant at Koropíon, a village in Attica, and was found to measure three fathoms in length; and her loathsome nature was attested by the fact that, when her body was thrown out in a desert plain, no grass would grow where her blood had dripped[448]. The chief characteristics of the Lamiae, apart from their thirst for blood, are their uncleanliness, their gluttony, and their stupidity. The details of the first need not be named, but would still furnish a jest for Aristophanes in his coarser mood as they did of old[449]. Their gluttony is clearly proved by their unwieldy corpulence. Their stupidity is best shown in their sorry management of their homes; for even the Lamiae have their domestic duties, being mated usually, according to the folk-tales[450], with dragons (δράκοι), and making their abode in caverns and desert places. They ply the broom so poorly that ‘the Lamia’s sweeping’ (τῆς Λάμιας τὰ σαρώματα) has become a proverb for untidiness[451]; they are so ignorant of bread-making that they put their dough into a cold oven and heap the fire on top of it[452]; they give their dogs hay to eat, and bones to their horses[453]. But they have at least the redeeming virtue of sometimes showing gratitude to those who help them out of the ill plight to which their ignorance has brought them[454].
Their stupidity also is regarded by the Greeks as a cause of honesty. Though they are often rich, as being the consorts of dragons whose chief function it is to keep guard over hidden treasure, they have not the wit to keep their wealth, but foolishly keep their word instead. Athenian tradition tells of a very rich Lamia (known by the name of ἡ Μόρα, perhaps better written Μώρα, a proper name formed from μωρός, ‘foolish’), who used to walk about at night, seizing and crushing men whom she met till they roared like bulls. But if her victim kept his wits about him and snatched her head-dress from her, she would, in order to get it back, promise him both life and wealth, and keep her word[455].
Such aspects of the Lamiae however are by no means universally acknowledged; nine peasants out of ten, I suspect, could give no further information about their character than that they feed on human flesh and choose above all new-born infants as their prey. Hence comes the popular phrase (employed, it would appear, in more than one district of Greece) in reference to children who have died suddenly, τὸ παιδὶ τὸ ἔπνιξε ἡ Λάμια[456], ‘the Child has been strangled by the Lamia.’
But in general I think the ravages of Lamiae have ceased to inspire much genuine fear in the peasants’ minds. One there was, so I heard, near Kephalóvryso in Aetolia, whose dwelling-place, a cave beside a torrent-bed, was to some extent dreaded and avoided. But in most parts the Lamia only justifies the memory of her existence by serving to provide adventures for the heroes of folk-stories; by lending her name, along with Empusa and Mormo (who still locally survive[457]), as a terror with which mothers may intimidate naughty children, or by furnishing it as a ready weapon of vituperation in the wordy warfare of women.