Empusa
Empusa ( Greek Ἔμπουσα ) is in Greek mythology a female ghost figure and a specter.
The etymology of the name Empusa is unclear. In appearance it resembles other demons like the Lamia and Mormolyken . She is one of the eerie ghosts ( Hekataia ) sent by the goddess Hecate to frighten wanderers and unfortunate people and has the ability to appear in the most varied of shapes. Sometimes she is equated with Hecate.
The figure of Empusa is first tangible in Greek comedy , especially in Aristophanes ' around 405 BC. First performed work Die Fösche . When the god Dionysus and his slave Xanthias are on their way to the underworld, Empusa appears in different animal forms (beef, mule, dog) and as a beautiful woman. She has a fiery face and one leg made of ore and one made of cow or donkey dung. According to other sources, however, one leg is a donkey's foot (hence its nickname Onoskelis ). At another point, Aristophanes says that Empusa is wrapped in a blood-swollen bladder.
The Greek sophist Flavius Philostratos tells in his Life of Apollonios of Tyana that this miracle man met an Empusa, depicted here as a kind of night ghost, and was able to scare her away by shouting insults to her, whereupon she ran off with a high-pitched tone. In the same work, Philostratos explains that the Empusa appeared to men in the form of a beautiful woman and seduced them in order to suck out their blood and to consume their flesh in their sleep after enjoying love.
An Ephesian fairy tale by Aristocles also belongs to the realm of the Empusa myth. According to this story, a noble Ephesian hated women and therefore had sex with a donkey, who then gave birth to a beautiful girl who was named Onoskelia (or Onoskelis ).
Popular ideas of the figure of Empusa as a bloodthirsty ghost are similar to the later belief in vampires in the Balkans.
In the Walpurgis Night described in the second part of his Faust , Goethe also lets an Empusa and Lamien appear.
literature
- Otto Waser : Empusa. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume V, 2, Stuttgart 1905, Col. 2540-2543.
Web link
- "Empousai" at Theoi Greek Mythology (English)
Remarks
- ↑ Scholien zu Apollonios von Rhodos 3, 861 et al
- ↑ Aristophanes , The Frogs 285–295.
- ↑ Aristophanes, The Women's People's Assembly 1056.
- ↑ Philostratus , Life of Apollonios from Tyana 2: 4.
- ^ Philostratus, Life of Apollonios from Tyana 4:25 .
- ↑ Aristocles in Stobaius , Florilegium 64, 37, cf. Pseudo- Plutarch , Greek and Roman Parallel Stories 29, p. 312e.