#Devour synonym and antonym free#

ĭiodorus's rationalization was that the Libyan queen in her drunken state was as if she could not see, allowing her citizens free rein for any conduct without supervision, giving rise to the folk myth that she places her eyes in a vessel. He also gifted her with a shapeshifting ability in the process. Lamia's eyes Īccording to one myth, Hera deprived Lamia of the ability to sleep, making her constantly grieve over the loss of her children, and Zeus provided relief by endowing her with removable eyes. An anonymous commentator on the passage states this is a reference to the Lamia, but muddlingly combines this with Aristotle's subsequent comments and describes her as a Scythian of the Pontus (Black Sea) area. Īristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (vii.5) refers to the lore of some beastly lifeform in the shape of a woman, which tears the bellies of pregnant mothers and devours their fetuses. Heraclitus Paradoxographus (2nd century) also gave a rationalizing account. The queen, as related by Diodorus, was born in a cave. ĭiodorus Siculus ( fl. 1st century BC) gave a de-mythologized account of Lamia as a queen of Libya who ordered her soldiers to snatch children from their mothers and kill them, and whose beauty gave way to bestial appearance due to her savageness. She became disfigured from the torment, transforming into a terrifying being who hunted and killed the children of others. In the myth, the Lamia was originally a beautiful woman beloved of Zeus, but Zeus's jealous wife Hera robbed her of her children, either by kidnapping and hiding them away, killing them, or causing Lamia herself to kill her own offspring.

Modern scholarship reconstructs a Proto-Indo-European stem * lem-, 'nocturnal spirit', whence also comes lemures. In previous centuries, Lamia was used in Greece as a bogeyman to frighten children into obedience, similar to the way parents in Spain, Portugal and Latin America used the Coco.Ī scholiast to Aristophanes claimed that Lamia's name derived from her having a large throat or gullet ( λαιμός laimós). These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the 'Libyan myth' told by Dio Chrysostom, and the monster sent to Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe (Crotopus). Lamia has been ascribed serpentine qualities, which some commentators believe can be firmly traced to mythology from antiquity they have found analogues in ancient texts that could be designated as lamiai (or lamiae) which are part- snake beings. An account of Apollonius of Tyana's defeat of a lamia-seductress inspired the poem Lamia by John Keats. The lamiai ( Greek: λαμίαι) also became a type of phantom, synonymous with the empusai who seduced young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. Zeus gave Lamia the power of prophecy and the ability to take out and reinsert her eyes, possibly because she was cursed by Hera with insomnia or because she could no longer close her eyes, so that she was forced to always obsess over her lost children. Because of her cruel acts, her physical appearance changed to become ugly and monstrous. The loss of her children drove Lamia insane, and in vengeance and despair, Lamia snatched up any children she could find and devoured them. Upon learning this, Zeus's wife Hera robbed Lamia of her children, the offspring of her affair with Zeus, either by kidnapping or by killing them.

In the earliest stories, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Ancient Libya who had an affair with Zeus. Lamia ( / ˈ l eɪ m i ə/ Greek: Λάμια), in ancient Greek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit ( daemon). 1890), inspired by Keats's Lamia, depicts Lamia as half-serpent, half-woman The Kiss of the Enchantress ( Isobel Lilian Gloag, c. For the Bulgarian dragon, see Slavic dragon. For the Basque lamia, see Lamia (Basque mythology). This article is about a creature from Greek mythology.

Devour synonym and antonym