Strigae

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The Strigae (Sing. Striga ) are blood-sucking, bird-like demons in Roman mythology , who are primarily after children.

They are similar to the lamias in Greek mythology , the lesbian Gello and the Lillim , the children of Lilith , in Jewish mythology .

ovid

Ovid reports about them in the Fasti following the story of Cardea , who gives Janus the branch of the hawthorn as a penance for the stolen virginity , with the help of which the Strigae are deterred.

According to Ovid, they are ugly, nocturnal birds that supposedly get their name from their hissing call. The name is derived from the Latin stridere ("to hiss"), which in turn is derived from the Greek  τρίζω ("to whir ", "to hiss"), a word that Homer already uses for the sounds of fluttering souls that Odysseus hears in the underworld .

Ovid goes on to say that the Strigae are not harpies , but whether birds or witches who have turned into bird-like beings, one does not know. In any case, they would have a large head, sharp beak, and hard claws. They would suck blood from the infants and target the bowels as well. According to Ovid, the only five-day-old Proca , the future king of Alba Longa , who lay unguarded in his cradle, almost fell victim to Strigae: the cheek is already clawed and the skin color is pale as autumn leaves, when the nurse notices it Misfortune and calls to Cardea. She rushes over and works her magic: She touches the door post and the threshold with the leaves of the strawberry tree three times , sprinkles the entrance with water, takes the entrails of a two-month-old pig in her hand and speaks the blessing:

Take care, you birds of the night, the boy's bowels. The tender animal is sacrificed for the tender boy. Take heart for heart, entrails for entrails. We give this life to you for the better.

Then she lays the pieces of the victim outside, which no one is allowed to look for, and finally a branch of hawthorn is placed in the window. Then the boy gets well again.

Petronius

In the feast of the Trimalchio of Titus Petronius , the host tells a ghost story in which the Strigae also appear: A beautiful boy named Iphis had died. The mother was very distressed about this and many people were with her to comfort her. Suddenly a pack of Strigae appeared and fell upon the corpse "like greyhounds over a hare". A Cappadocian slave took heart and pierced one of the strigae with his sword in the middle after carefully wrapping his left hand. The others heard a sigh but saw nothing. But the caution was of no use to the Cappadocian: the “evil hand” had touched him and his whole body was brown and blue as if from a whip. After a few days he fell into a frenzy and eventually died. But the mother, when she wanted to embrace the body of her son, only covered a skin full of rubbish: the Strigae had fetched the boy with heart and gut and left a changeling . Here the Strigae are firstly expressly called “women” and secondly do not attack living children, but rather the dead.

A little later appearing strigae again at Petronius, as a predator of virility of Encolpius so that the was no longer able to satisfy itself of boys.

Ancient science

Pliny mentions the striges in connection with birds that are said to have nipples . He considers reports that the Striges had breasts and used them to give milk to infants and sees them in connection with the old stories of the witch-like night demons. In fact, harpies , sirens and similar dubious hybrid figures are often portrayed with breasts.

Isidore of Seville is less skeptical than Pliny; After him the owls were called amma ( ear owl ) because they are so fond of children ( from amando parvulos ) and because they breastfeed newborns. Elsewhere, of course, he says that Strigae are enchanted people.

In connection with the vampire-like strigae , garlic appeared as a repellent alongside the hawthorn in ancient times . In the Liber medicinalis of the Serenus Sammonicus , garlic is recommended as an effective remedy against the milking in of poison by the Strigae .

Strix as a witch bird

Strigae is a vulgar form of Latin striges , the plural of strix , which means the eared owl as an animal species , especially the scops owl .

In the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis the horned owl is a changed man, but not a witch, who slips to sinister purposes owl shape but polyphonte that as punishment for their sons Agrios and Oreios was transformed committed sacrilege in the Strix , which "in the night cries, takes neither food nor drink, head down and the ends of the feet up, a messenger of war and riot ”. It is not clear whether the ancient authors mean by Strix the owl or rather the bat . Hanging upside down and having nipples clearly point in the direction of the bat.

Owl feathers appear at Horace as part of a witch's recipe for a love potion, the production of which also includes the murder of an innocent boy. The owl also appears as a witch bird in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius , because there the witch Pamphilia transforms into an owl by being smeared with an ointment.

In the "Frenzied Herakles" ( Hercules furens ) of the younger Seneca , the Striges and other nocturnal birds inhabit the underworld . Seneca paints the picture of such a hideous area: “The pool of lazy Cocytus lies repulsive ; here a vulture croaks, the ominous eagle owl there, and the misfortune call of the unfortunate owl echoes. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ovid, Fasti 6: 127-168
  2. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 24.7.
  3. ↑ That they eat out the bowels is also stated in Plautus , Pseudolus 3,2,21.
  4. ↑ Carna is with Ovid, but he confuses the two anyway.
  5. ↑ Ovid, Fasti 6,159ff:

    … Noctis aves, extis puerilibus inquit
    parcite: pro parvo victima parva cadit.
    cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras.
    hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.

  6. ↑ Petronius, Satyrica 63.
  7. ↑ Petronius, Satyrica 134.1-2: quae striges comederunt nervos tuos […] ne a puero quidem te vindicasti?
  8. ↑ Pliny Naturalis historia 11.95 (232): fabulosum enim arbitror de strigibus, ubera eas infantium labris inmulgere. eat in maledictis iam antiquis strigem convenit, sed quae sit avium, constare non arbitror.
  9. ↑ Isidor, Etymologiae 12,7,42: Haec avis vulgo amma dicitur, ab amando parvulos; unde et lac praebere fertur nascentibus.
  10. ↑ Isidore, Etymologiae 11,4,2.
  11. ↑ Serenus Sammonicus, Liber medicinalis 58 v. 1035f.
  12. ^ Antoninus Liberalis, Metamorphoses 21.
  13. ↑ Horace, Epodes 5: 21f:

    The feathers of the gloomy eagle owl and eggs
    colored with the blood of the gray toad ...

  14. ↑ Apuleius, Metamorphoses 3.21.
  15. ↑ Seneca the Younger, Hercules furens 687f: Hinc vultur, illinc luctifer bubo gemit / omenque triste resonat infaustae strigis.