WEBVTT - How Does the Monstrous Lamia Work? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:10.640 Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. When it comes to 0:00:10.880 --> 0:00:15.400 terrifying fictional characters to fear from children's stories, though, which 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.800 from Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga of many Slavic 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:23.040 myths certainly come to mind. But there's one character from 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.360 Greek mythology who might top them all in terms of 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:32.159 sheer scope of evil, Lamia. There are a lot of 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:36.319 roots and offshoots of this character, but she's basically a 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:41.800 female demon known for devouring children. For the article this 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.440 episode is based on, has to Work, spoke with mythology 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:48.800 expert Richard P. Martin, professor in Classics at Stanford University. 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.960 He explained she would get you if you disobeyed or 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.520 so kids were instructed. She once lived in Libya in 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.880 North Africa. The story goes that, like many a demon, 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.280 she used to be a beautiful woman. Zeus, as was 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.720 his usual habit, seduced and slept with her. The chief 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.920 God's wife, Harrah, got jealous and then killed the children 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.840 of Lamia. The poor mortal woman was so overcome by 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.759 continual grief that she became horribly ugly In appearance, and 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.000 then she began to kill the children of other women 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.400 in a sort of madness of revenge. According to Martin, 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.520 one version of the Lamia tale suggests that she was 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.880 actually the queen of Libya and ordered all newborn babies 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.040 to be snatched from their mothers and slaughtered, a tale 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.520 he points out that sounds similar to the story of 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.120 Herod in the Gospel of Matthew. Martin said there are 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:42.800 hints from late sources that she was thought of as 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:48.720 personally eating children. Hera, the queen of the gods, was 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.160 the ruler of marriage and family and the protector of women, 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:56.760 especially during childbirth. But the Greek gods were often epically 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:01.400 and humanly flawed characters. Harra was equally as known for 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.800 her fiercely protective instincts as she was for her pride 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:09.560 and jealousy, and her husband Zeus often tested those fiery 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:16.120 qualities with his constant infidelity. The stories go that Harra's 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:19.919 revenge in the case of Lamia was literal overkill, and 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.320 she murdered all of Lamia's children, regardless of whether Zeus 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:27.119 was the father or not. The loss pushed Lamia to madness, 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:29.320 and she then made it her mission to kidnap the 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:33.360 children of others and eat them, and these monstrosities made 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:39.120 her monstrous, a possibly serpentine or maybe shark light. Martin said. 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.800 Aristotle records in his History of Animals from the fourth 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.200 century BC that Lamia was the name of a kind 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.800 of shark, and other versions of the tale come with 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:55.160 other horrific details, and Martin said a one story preserved 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.680 only in late antique and medieval sources says Haara caused 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.680 Lamia to be bliss as well as killing her children. 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:05.360 So Zeus to give Lamia the opportunity to have some 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:08.920 rest made her eyes removable. That way they would not 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:13.640 always be open, at least not in her head. Lamia 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:17.240 was just one of several boogeymen or perhaps boogey women. 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.720 In Greek folklore, a monstrous is used to scare or warn, 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.280 Martin said. At taking the form of beautiful women and 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.960 then sucking the blood of their victims seems to have 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:31.360 been common features in the tales about these demon types, 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:36.040 and modern folklore in the region still preserves some of 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:40.640 these traditional stories. Martin said, maybe every culture needs a 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.440 way for mothers to keep their kids from doing dangerous 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.360 things like wandering off into the woods alone or just 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.560 from misbehaving. In the early nineteenth century, for example, British 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.960 nursemaids would frighten children with stories of Bony coming to 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:56.800 get them uh the dreaded enemy of the realm Napoleon 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:01.280 Bonaparte imagined as an ogre. An ancient Greece, a demonus 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:06.520 called Lamia played the same role. Scary stories often fill 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:10.400 a societal need to discuss and deal with very real 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.280 terrors or anxieties about terrible things happening, and thus you 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.000 can find Lamia like figures in any number of other 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:21.800 tales and cultures of female figures who are childless or 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.320 have lost their children, and who thus steal others children. 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.680 Martin gave an example from North America quote in the 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.479 Southwest and generally in Latin America, it seems la Urona, 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.160 the wailing woman, supposedly drowned her own children or they 0:04:38.240 --> 0:04:41.040 drowned on their own, and now haunts places at night, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.160 crying and stealing other children. Mother's worn kids that la 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:47.560 Roma will snatch them if they get too close to 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:53.039 the water, And as with many female demons, Lamia also 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:57.200 became associated with the sort of dangerous sexuality, and some 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.000 stories had the monstrous Lamia in disguise, seducing and then 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:04.760 sometimes eating men. John Keats wrote a poem All the 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.520 Way in eighteen nineteen based on some of those. Martin 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:12.480 said Lamia in every day Greek or Latin could also 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:16.039 be used as an insult hurled at any threatening, powerful, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.960 or ugly woman in some ancient fictional stories. Courteson's get 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.839 called this as do, which is a clearly male anxiety 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.920 at work here, blaming seductive women for the guy's own 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:36.719 lust fueled ruin. Today's episode is based on the article Lamia, 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.839 the female demon who devoured children in Greek Mythology on 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:43.480 how stuff Works dot com, written by Michelle Konstantinovski. Brain 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:45.760 Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.200 how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang. 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:51.840 For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:54.920 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.