Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here. When it comes to
Speaker 1: terrifying fictional characters to fear from children's stories, though, which
Speaker 1: from Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga of many Slavic
Speaker 1: myths certainly come to mind. But there's one character from
Speaker 1: Greek mythology who might top them all in terms of
Speaker 1: sheer scope of evil, Lamia. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: roots and offshoots of this character, but she's basically a
Speaker 1: female demon known for devouring children. For the article this
Speaker 1: episode is based on, has to Work, spoke with mythology
Speaker 1: expert Richard P. Martin, professor in Classics at Stanford University.
Speaker 1: He explained she would get you if you disobeyed or
Speaker 1: so kids were instructed. She once lived in Libya in
Speaker 1: North Africa. The story goes that, like many a demon,
Speaker 1: she used to be a beautiful woman. Zeus, as was
Speaker 1: his usual habit, seduced and slept with her. The chief
Speaker 1: God's wife, Harrah, got jealous and then killed the children
Speaker 1: of Lamia. The poor mortal woman was so overcome by
Speaker 1: continual grief that she became horribly ugly In appearance, and
Speaker 1: then she began to kill the children of other women
Speaker 1: in a sort of madness of revenge. According to Martin,
Speaker 1: one version of the Lamia tale suggests that she was
Speaker 1: actually the queen of Libya and ordered all newborn babies
Speaker 1: to be snatched from their mothers and slaughtered, a tale
Speaker 1: he points out that sounds similar to the story of
Speaker 1: Herod in the Gospel of Matthew. Martin said there are
Speaker 1: hints from late sources that she was thought of as
Speaker 1: personally eating children. Hera, the queen of the gods, was
Speaker 1: the ruler of marriage and family and the protector of women,
Speaker 1: especially during childbirth. But the Greek gods were often epically
Speaker 1: and humanly flawed characters. Harra was equally as known for
Speaker 1: her fiercely protective instincts as she was for her pride
Speaker 1: and jealousy, and her husband Zeus often tested those fiery
Speaker 1: qualities with his constant infidelity. The stories go that Harra's
Speaker 1: revenge in the case of Lamia was literal overkill, and
Speaker 1: she murdered all of Lamia's children, regardless of whether Zeus
Speaker 1: was the father or not. The loss pushed Lamia to madness,
Speaker 1: and she then made it her mission to kidnap the
Speaker 1: children of others and eat them, and these monstrosities made
Speaker 1: her monstrous, a possibly serpentine or maybe shark light. Martin said.
Speaker 1: Aristotle records in his History of Animals from the fourth
Speaker 1: century BC that Lamia was the name of a kind
Speaker 1: of shark, and other versions of the tale come with
Speaker 1: other horrific details, and Martin said a one story preserved
Speaker 1: only in late antique and medieval sources says Haara caused
Speaker 1: Lamia to be bliss as well as killing her children.
Speaker 1: So Zeus to give Lamia the opportunity to have some
Speaker 1: rest made her eyes removable. That way they would not
Speaker 1: always be open, at least not in her head. Lamia
Speaker 1: was just one of several boogeymen or perhaps boogey women.
Speaker 1: In Greek folklore, a monstrous is used to scare or warn,
Speaker 1: Martin said. At taking the form of beautiful women and
Speaker 1: then sucking the blood of their victims seems to have
Speaker 1: been common features in the tales about these demon types,
Speaker 1: and modern folklore in the region still preserves some of
Speaker 1: these traditional stories. Martin said, maybe every culture needs a
Speaker 1: way for mothers to keep their kids from doing dangerous
Speaker 1: things like wandering off into the woods alone or just
Speaker 1: from misbehaving. In the early nineteenth century, for example, British
Speaker 1: nursemaids would frighten children with stories of Bony coming to
Speaker 1: get them uh the dreaded enemy of the realm Napoleon
Speaker 1: Bonaparte imagined as an ogre. An ancient Greece, a demonus
Speaker 1: called Lamia played the same role. Scary stories often fill
Speaker 1: a societal need to discuss and deal with very real
Speaker 1: terrors or anxieties about terrible things happening, and thus you
Speaker 1: can find Lamia like figures in any number of other
Speaker 1: tales and cultures of female figures who are childless or
Speaker 1: have lost their children, and who thus steal others children.
Speaker 1: Martin gave an example from North America quote in the
Speaker 1: Southwest and generally in Latin America, it seems la Urona,
Speaker 1: the wailing woman, supposedly drowned her own children or they
Speaker 1: drowned on their own, and now haunts places at night,
Speaker 1: crying and stealing other children. Mother's worn kids that la
Speaker 1: Roma will snatch them if they get too close to
Speaker 1: the water, And as with many female demons, Lamia also
Speaker 1: became associated with the sort of dangerous sexuality, and some
Speaker 1: stories had the monstrous Lamia in disguise, seducing and then
Speaker 1: sometimes eating men. John Keats wrote a poem All the
Speaker 1: Way in eighteen nineteen based on some of those. Martin
Speaker 1: said Lamia in every day Greek or Latin could also
Speaker 1: be used as an insult hurled at any threatening, powerful,
Speaker 1: or ugly woman in some ancient fictional stories. Courteson's get
Speaker 1: called this as do, which is a clearly male anxiety
Speaker 1: at work here, blaming seductive women for the guy's own
Speaker 1: lust fueled ruin. Today's episode is based on the article Lamia,
Speaker 1: the female demon who devoured children in Greek Mythology on
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, written by Michelle Konstantinovski. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.