Erichtho
Erichtho is a Thessalian witch of Roman ancient literature .
In the poems of Lucan - the creator of this figure - called Pharsalia (VI, 507-830) , she tells the Sextus Pompeius about the outcome of the battle of Pharsalus .
In the Divine Comedy of Dante she is mentioned in Inferno, IX 23 . There Virgil reports that she forced him to descend into the deepest circle of hell and retrieve a soul.
In the 2nd act of Faust II , Erichtho appears in the Pharsalische Feld as a harbinger of the classical Walpurgis Night . The gloomy reporter of the story confuses by mixing the pre-Olympic epoch of Greece, the time of the Roman civil war and the Greek liberation struggle from Goethe's time. She flees when the pilots Faust, Mephisto and Homunculus approach.