The Ancients - Werewolves and Strix-Witches

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

It’s werewolf time on the Ancients! In this episode Exeter University’s Professor Daniel Ogden highlights how these mythical creatures have their origins in ancient times and thrived in a story world shared by witches, ghosts, demons and dragons. Join Tristan and Daniel as they shine a light on werewolf (or werewolf-related) stories that survive from antiquity. From Homer’s Circe to Petronius’ Satyricon. Also making an appearance is the Strix-Witch, a Roman phenomenon and persistent feature of their folklore. Daniel’s new book, The Werewolf in the Ancient World, is out now.For behind the scenes and extra Ancients, follow Tristan on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ancientstristan/

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's podcast, well, it's werewolf time, it's Strixwich time. Strixwich being a specific type of witch,

very much created by the Romans, very much a Roman phenomenon. And in this podcast, we're going to be talking you through a series of stories from antiquity which mention either one or both of these creatures from ancient history. And joining me to talk through these stories going from Circe and Greek myths all the way down to Imperial Rome and Petronius' Satyricon, I was delighted to get on the show Professor Daniel Ogden from the University of Exeter. Daniel has recently written a new book all about the werewolf in antiquity. He's also written books on the Strixwitch. I believe he's also written a book about dragons in the ancient world. This guy has picked an awesome area of ancient history to dedicate his academic life to.

Now, we did have some issues with the audio whilst editing this podcast, but our heroic editor, Pete, he has edited this episode as best he can. There are some really, really interesting stories, so I do hope you enjoy it nonetheless. And without further ado, here's Daniel to talk all about the werewolf in the ancient world. Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Delighted to be here. Now, move over medievalists.

We see the werewolf in the ancient Mediterranean world. That's right, yeah. And first of all, Daniel, of all these mythical creatures, why the werewolf? Well, I think really the question is why not the werewolf? Because werewolves are ancient and they are persistent features of Western folklore. So given that that is the case, it's something that has to be argued for, but that is the case, then of course we're going to find them in the ancient world. It certainly is a really cool topic and a really unique book to write, I must admit. So let's dive

into one of these most extraordinary passages from the ancient literature that we have, also one of the most amazing. Daniel, first of all, what is Petronius' Satyricon? Petronius' Satyricon is a Latin novel. Or I should say, what we have of it is a fragment of it. Now, if you go into a good bookshop, you can buy a Pegwood Classic. It's a sort of regular length book called Petronius' Satyricon. And it's a good read, and in some ways a challenging read, because it's very elusive in many ways.

But what you might not initially realise when you get hold of that book is, in fact, it's only something like an eighth of the original novel. So the original novel was titanic, something like war and peace. And we just have this chunk of it, which is actually a decent length novella, frankly, still. We have a few fragments, but mainly what we have is one chunk. We have a few fragments, but mainly what we have is one chunk. The central boss and highlight of that chunk is the narrative of a dinner party, which is thrown by a sort of grotesquely tasteless Nouveau-Riche freedman, a freed slave who's made his own packet.

And he thinks he knows everything. He thinks he's got all the culture down. But in fact, he doesn't know anything at all. um yes all his literature and all his mythology mixed up and so petronius has a lot of fun at this character's expense and in the middle of this dinner party trimalchio himself used to host and a fellow freedman called nicoros exchange a couple of stories and what you might call campfire horror stories and the the tone of these, I should say, is rather different in many ways to all the text around them. And they kind of like stand out as their own little thing, really. They're two very, very good stories. There is a sort of comic aspect to the way they're told and presented. And Petronius, as a very sophisticated writer,

is playing some sort of literary games. But nonetheless, despite all that, what we have here are two fantastic, clearly very typical tales from Roman folklore. So one of them is about the werewolves, Nicaros's tale is about the werewolves, the werewolf, I should say, and Trimalchi's own tale is about some witches, a category of witch called the Strixwitch. Wow, I mean, the Strixwitch, we'll definitely get onto that in a bit, I'm sure. But the story

of the werewolf in this text by the Freedmen, what is the story with the werewolf? Right. Well, it might be simpler just to read out. I thought you might ask about this. I won't read the whole thing, but just to set it up. So Nicolaus, as I say, is telling a story back from his youth. Obviously he's an older man now. And he's telling how one night, the setting is not entirely clear, somewhere in Campania, not very specific about the details.

He tells how he set out with a soldier friend who was staying with his master. He was still a slave himself at this point. And he set out to make a visit to his girlfriend, Melissa, who had a pub and a farm. I guess it was an elaborate tavern. I guess they kept the animals that they needed

to sell to their customers. Anyway, so, he's talking about making the trip by night. And from now on, I'm going to just read out my own translation of Petronius' story. Absolutely no problem. The moon was shining like the midday sun. Now I have the moon already there.

The moon was shining like the midday sun. We arrived among the roadside tombs. My man went for a pee against the gravestone. I held back, singing and counting the stones. Then, when I looked back at my companion, he'd taken all his clothes off and laid them down beside the road. I almost died of fright. He peed a circle around them and suddenly became a wolf. He began to howl and ran into the woods. At first I didn't know where I was, but then I went to his clothes to pick them up. They'd turned to stone. Whoever died of fright,

if I didn't then. But I drew my sword and hacked at the ghosts until i arrived at my girlfriend's house if you'd come earlier she said at least you would have helped us for a wolf got into the estate he was draining the blood out of the flocks like a butcher to get a spear to his neck. When I heard this, I couldn't even think of sleep, but when it was fully light, I ran off home. My soldier was lying on his bed like an ox, and the doctor was tending to his neck. I realised that he was a skin-changer, a versatileist, and I couldn't thereafter bring myself to taste bread with him. Wow, that's quite a story. And for the words that he uses for this time, is this quite a unique story mentioning a werewolf?

Well, there aren't that many stories from the ancient world. One of the jobs I've given myself in this book is to try to not only collate, as it were, such obvious stories as do remain, but try to reconstruct others that might have existed through illusions in other texts. And I suppose there's probably about four or five decent stories we might talk about. This story in itself, as I say, it's a complex text. I mean, you know, one can enjoy it just as a pure romp, and one should, but it is a complex text, as one can see if one reads between the lines. So, for example, that very last line of the story was, you know, and I realised he was a werewolf because of the story was, you know, and I realised he was a werewolf because of the very common motif in medieval werewolf stories and in the early modern ones, the motif of the identifying wound. Okay, the wolf got a wound through its neck,

this man has a wound in his neck, therefore he's the werewolf. But it's a bizarre detail in this story, given that he had already seen the guy turn into a wolf. So we get the sense that, in fact, there's a whole world of folkloric werewolf stories out there with the sort of recurring set of motifs. I'm sure Petronius has done this knowingly. In a sense, he's trying to undermine the narrator of the story. But nonetheless, in working with material he has, he's shown us that there's a whole world of these stories out there with their common, familiar, comfortable motifs that a teller of a story like this might easily and quickly turn to. Of course, it provides an insight into perhaps the many, many stories that we've unfortunately lost because of antiquity. Exactly. Exactly that, yes. But Daniel, what is so interesting there, one of the other aspects, because I'd love to mention this now, and you kind of highlighted it earlier, was in this story we also hear of something, of an aspect which seems to be linked with the ancient werewolf, which is ghosts.

Yes, indeed. So it's a surprising thing, isn't it? Well, in some ways it's surprising, in some ways it isn't. Again, if you think about the modern horror repertoire, in fact, ghosts and werewolves and vampires, they all belong together. They all live in the same world, don't they? You know, you pay for your cinema ticket to go see a Hammer horror movie. You know you want to see one or more of these things together. But yeah, so this story does seem to tie werewolves and ghosts together very strongly because obviously the transformation happens in a graveyard and once Nicaros has seen the transformation he imagines himself to be assailed by ghosts on all sides so he's making that fundamental connection himself and it's possible actually again it's a kind of dodgy case it's a very good story but we possibly do have a case of a werewolf who is dead.

Now, we think, well, ghosts are dead. Vampires, I guess, are kind of dead or undead. But werewolves are living, aren't they, for us? Werewolves are live things. But in the ancient world, probably they could be living or dead. And the story to tell here is the story of the hero of Temessa. Again, you mentioned this already yourself. So there are different accounts of it, but if I can sort of just draw them together,

what seems to have happened is that one of Odysseus' men, Polites, when Odysseus on his travels back, his security travels back home, called him in southern Italy at a place called Temessa. His crewman, Polites, raped a local girl, and therefore the locals stoned him to death, appropriately. But unfortunately, his ghost came back. His ghost was a very terrible ghost, not at all happy about the treatment he'd just received. And it was a marauding ghost that would seize and destroy people randomly.

Eventually, they sort of came to a sort of an accommodation with the ghost, whereby the ghost had a sort of cult. Polius had a cult, and they would offer to him the prettiest girl they had every year. I guess they had a beauty contest. Not so much of a first prize, though. And they would give it to him. Now, it's not entirely clear what giving her to him consisted of. And well, it's all myth anyway. Poss possibly the idea was that she was just sort of giving him he had a kind of doit de seigneur that he deflowered the girl and then she was sent off again or and this does seem to be one strand in the story he basically ate her killed her and or ate her and ultimately the hero in both senses of the word euthymus comes along euthymus of lochry

falls in love with the girl who is about to be given to the so-called hero of Temessa, and decides to go up against the hero, and we're told chases him into the sea, and that's the end of the hero. What's so interesting about all this, you might be saying, where are the werewolves? Where are the werewolves?

The hero is described as a demon, a daimon, which can mean ghost. He's also described as a phantom, I think. But anyway, he's a ghost in a wolfskin. Now, I don't think that means he's just wearing a wolfskin as a fashion choice. He is basically inside a wolfskin. So he is, I think, he is a dead werewolf. That's maybe a bit strange for your listeners to think that werewolves could be dead, but it would be less weird if you have any listeners in the Balkans, in places like Greece or Bulgaria, where they have the Vrykola Kass, and the Vrykola Kass is variously interpreted, this famous monster terror they have is variously interpreted as either a vampire or as a werewolf.

So there is that sort of notion of the dead werewolf, I think, in that part of Europe still today. Is that one of the really interesting things of studying this ancient werewolves, as it were, trying to look at the texts that we have surviving and trying to think, could this be a werewolf or is this something else? What is this creature that's mentioned?

Yeah, well, of course, I suppose the philosophically minded might want to approach these texts with a definition of a werewolf in their mind. I've tried to keep quite an open mind about it, and I'm happy to consider anybody that changes between human and wolf form as a potential example. I thought it might be different if we have somebody who's turning into a whole range of different animal forms. You might say, well, he's not a werewolf, is he? But the story I'm talking about, that is the transformation. I mean, you might say, what's special about wolves? Why change into a wolf? Why single out that animal to change into? Well, I think there's a number of reasons. First of all, I think a wolf, I mean, I suppose wolves,

even European grey wolves of yesteryear, probably a little bit smaller than an adult person, but they're kind of in the ballpark of our signs. It's not such a stretch as it were to think of the same bulk of person being transferred into a wolf. So there's that sort of fellowship in a strange way. Wolves are often, of course, said to be sort of the iconic wild creature you know a savage cruel wild creature so already you're setting up that antithesis between the civilized human and the wild fierce cruel flesh-eating you know even man-eating animal so they make a nice sort of there's a nice polarity there that one can think about. However, I don't think it's as simple as that, because as I'm sure most of your listeners will know,

wolves in themselves are actually the most civilised of animals, the most social of animals, and in many ways the most human of animals. Of course, they gave us our doggies. And again, if you look at a wolf pack in a zoo, or any of the documentaries on the telly, it's a very different story. These guys are not horrors. They are wonderful, really wonderful, delightful, little ideal societies. loric idea is actually because the wolf already in itself is a kind of werewolf because it already embodies the wildness on the one hand and the civilization on the other well that's my guess that is so interesting in itself and we've talked recently about obviously this greek myth the hero tamisa talked about the werewolf and ghosts. But the other folkloric

context, which I know you highlight a lot in your book, which I'd love to go on to now, and keeping on Greek mythology in particular, is the idea of witchcraft. And perhaps we may even see an example as early as the Odyssey and the story of Circe. Yes. Well, again, those of your listeners who know a bit of Greek mythology will probably be familiar with the famous Circe episode. And what Circe does is, of course, change Odysseus' men into pigs. But when Odysseus' men first approach her house, they find it surrounded by seemingly tame wolves and lions.

Wolves are mentioned first. Again, so we're hearing the story through the mouth of one of Odysseus' sailors. And he presumes that somehow they'd been bewitched so that leaves it vague in a way and people do debate about whether these are wild creatures that Cersei has magically tamed to be her pets or whether they are just like Odysseus's crewmen are about to be, human sailors who've arrived at the island and she's arbitrarily changed them into these other animals, in which case they're getting into the werewolf frame, as it were. Now, although scholars debated, in fact, if one reads Homer carefully and reads on a bit further into the description of the episode, it is quite clear

that Homer's view, whoever Homer was, is that they are precisely that they are human beings who have been transformed. So it then becomes very interesting that as it were, that the first creature that we learn of Cersei transforming, the first one that's mentioned is a wolf. And one begins to think, well, why is the wolf first? Well, perhaps because people are already familiar with the idea that witches will turn people into wolves. So if Homer is, let's say, 8th or 7th century BC, and this is in regard to Circe changing people into wolves,

it's not whether it actually happened or not, it's the fact that this is in their imagination that far back. Of course. Yeah, sure. And so going on from that we've talked about mythology let's go on to actual history itself and the father of history at least in the ancient mediterranean world herodotus because he mentions a case as well doesn't he yes it's very interesting although there's not much there it's a killer reference for werewolves but unfortunately it's frustratingly succinct. He just talks about people called the Nuri,

who are associated with the Scythians, and he says that they're wizards. Goetes is the word he uses, which we normally translate as wizard, and that every so often they turn into wolves, and it's implied back. So brief as it is, and frustratingly underexplained as it is, that's a very clear statement of werewolfism and it's such a shame

it doesn't tell us any more about them. But it's so interesting how and it even seems to be just that one word goertes which can give it that clear link to sorcery to magic that we talked about earlier. Yeah. Okay well let's move on then from that from

Herodotus and Greek history so let's then go on to the roman stuff our next example and this is forgive me if my time's wrong but this is late republican rome and in virgil's text because that's when we next hear possibly of another reference to the werewolf right yes ken it's very succinct this is moiris yeah so in Virgil's Eclogues, we just hear of Moiris, who I assume he's a male sorcerer. I mean, the name Moiris is ambiguous. Could be a female name in terms of its form. I just noticed the other day, I forget where it was, that some scholar or other had assumed that Moiris was a female, was a witch. But the reason I think Moiris is male is because Virgil uses the name Moiris elsewhere in the Eclogues for clearly a different person,

but that person is male. So I think it would be rather weird if Virgil was flipping genders on the same name within the same work of poetry, as it were. So we're just told that he uses herbs, work of poetry, as it were. So we're just told that he uses herbs, he can call up ghosts, and he can turn himself into a wolf. So again, as a passing reference, there are many sort of what I tend to call thumbnail descriptions of witches and their powers in ancient Roman poetry, less so wizards. But this is kind of like a parallel thumbnail description of a wizard and his powers. And it's nice to have it there so these are basically none so the use of herbs as a witch would use for that matter um for various effects uh the calling of a ghost the manipulation of ghosts again for various magical effects and right in there with with these you

might say these basic elements of the magical repertoire is turning into a wolf so all this again is a very brief passing reference but it's but it's a very kind of informative one for the way the werewolf fits into the ancient Roman imagination at that point. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push, find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at

onepeloton.ca. Just before we move on to the Imperial Roman time and the werewolf at that time, we've talked about these examples, but the whole perception of the werewolf by the ancients, do we have any idea of how the ancients perceived the werewolf, i.e. what parts of this animal were human elements, what parts were the lupine elements, was this the inside, the outside, of this animal were human elements? What parts were the lupine elements? Was this the inside or the outside? What do we know? Well, what does seem to be consistent is that the ancients

visualised the werewolf as one creature inside another. So we're talking like a Russian doll. But what's interesting is that they didn't have a consistent view as to which creature was the outside creature and which one was the inside creature. Or, you might creature was the outside creature and which was the inside creature or you might say the real creature which is the false creature and that's

not a discussion we have so well let's talk about a couple of the examples that we've already mentioned that makes it clearest so Petronius's story the werewolf the soldier taking his clothes off laying them down and of course even though it's not elaborated in the story, it's obvious what he's doing. So he pees around his clothes and turns them to stone, clearly to protect them, to preserve them, and so that he can recover them and recover his human form. So with that story, the clothes themselves are kind of like identified with the outer human skin. Of course, the clothes are emblematic of civilization and humanity. So he takes his clothes off, and the wolf is revealed, as it were, inside.

And then if we go back to the other example that we mentioned, I mean, the hero of Temessa, again, he's described as a daimon in a wolf skin. So the daimon presumably is kind of like the continuation of the humanoid ghost, Polites, and the wolf skin, as it were, is on the outside there. So those are both ways of thinking about a werewolf in the ancient world. I can't help but mention here one of the early medieval stories. Again, there's a big gap in our evidence from after Augustine, around about 400 AD until the 12th century AD,

when we get a wonderful flowering anew of werewolf stories. And one of these stories is an Irish story about the werewolves of Ossory. And in that, a friendly werewolf, again, he's subject to a curse. The friendly werewolf, I should say, is in wolf form, but he's talking. And he asks a priest to give his wife, who's also in wolf form, the last rites. And the priest says, no, I can't do that. It's not allowed to give the last rites to an animal. And the werewolf man, as it were, nuzzles back the fur of his dying wife to show that there's a woman inside the wolfskin. For some reason, the wolfskin can't be taken off completely,

but it can be pulled back a bit to show that there's a human woman inside it. Anyway, so the priest relents and gives the dying lady werewolf the last rites. But he still gets in trouble for that with the Pope in the end. But again, that's a nice idea. And again, very, very clearly expressed version of the idea that a werewolf is a human inside a wolfskin. And forgive me if I'm barking the wrong tree but this is something that really caught my eye when reading your book the hairy heart right is this in relation to this too well again you know i think it's only fair to your listeners to issue a caveat here

it may be that this isn't really to do with werewolves but i think it's it's certainly um should i say a parallel way of thinking even if it's not to do with werewolves. But I think it's certainly, shall I say, a parallel way of thinking, even if it's not to do with werewolves. And so another favourite of mine from Greek mythology is Aristomenes of Mycenae. Now, he's a really, really interesting guy, and he deserves to be a lot more famous than he is. It's a misfortune that his great story is not told

in something like Homer or a tragedy, but actually in Pausanias, who, again, your listeners may know, is the author of basically a sort of tourist guide to Greece. Not exactly the place where you might expect to find a good story like this. But when Pausanias wants to do his guide for Mycenae, this is his fourth book, he finds actually that Mycenae doesn't have a whole lot of monuments that he can talk about. And so he fills that book with something else, which is, you might say, a mythological monument, which is the story of Aristomenes. Aristomenes is kind of like the Robin Hood, both the King Arthur and the Robin Hood of Mycenae. So a very interesting guy. And in his most distinctive episode, he's captured by the Spartans. We're in

the age where Mycenae is constantly at war with Sparta. And eventually Sparta will conquer Mycenae and enslave the population. But Aristomenes is the great resistance hero before that finally happens. He's captured by the Spartans at one point. And they decide to execute him by throwing him, along with a lot of other captured warriors, down avasse which they call the caedas down this sort of deep hole i guess it must be uh over near mount tagetus or something above sparta so they do this but as he's descending an eagle we're told zeus's eagle appears from somewhere swoops underneath him and bears him gently down to the bottom therefore saving his life now we're also told in other contexts that Aristomenes has an eagle blaze on on his shield well we're told he was thrown down with his arms so my theory

actually is that again in a fuller version of this story he was actually his own shield a legal image from his shield that sort of became reified and saved him anyway so he's at the bottom of the ravine but he's still trapped so he's going to die anyway and there he is trapped amongst all these moldering bodies and uh so you know so he lies down there and just sort of waits to die anyway but then he notices a fox has somehow got in and this uh you know making the most of the corpses there and aristomenes realizes if the fox can get in it can get out probably that's not completely certain logic is it but nonetheless that's what he reckons so he grabs hold of the fox's tail

because he tries to turn around and bite him but in the end it just runs and aristomenes is sort of dragged along after it and pulled through the fox's little secret tunnels and eventually escapes from the ravine so he does have this very strong identification with a canid in his most signal story but when he is finally captured he's always been captured by the spartans but then he always escapes him because that's the sort of guy he is when he's finally captured and killed they they then investigate his body. They know there's something special about him, something different about him, and they cut him open and they discover that he has a hairy heart. That is not explained any further. It's very frustrating. What does it mean to have a hairy heart? But the Fox story

aside, there's quite a lot of wolf imagery in other parts of Aristomenes' story. I think there's a notion there that somehow or other, Aristomenes has this sort of secret element of wolf inside him. And the hairy heart is the proof of that. And so, I mean, whether you'd call him a werewolf, I'm not sure. But I think he's getting there. He's getting there he's getting there and I think the notion is that his wolfiness is what allows him to get away with so many of his sort of secret

night time raids and things like that again he's a very sort of wolfy wolfy warrior in the way he attacks the Spartans Now we've talked about the Greek mythology we've talked about these amazing stories Herodotus and Virgil and I feel like we're now going onto a big topic

before we finish it all off, because we're going into the Imperial Roman period alongside Petronius, because it's here that we see, correct me if I'm wrong, but we see werewolves becoming more and more persistently associated with a certain terrible character,

the Strixwitch. First of all, what is a Strixwitch? The Strixwitch is First of all, what is a Strixwitch? The Strixwitch is herself a Roman phenomenon. She does have affinities in Greek myth and law, things like Lamias, but basically the Strixwitch is a Roman phenomenon. Now, in summary, what does she do? Typically, she's always a woman. There may be male Strixes later in the medieval period, but certainly in ancient Roman terms, male Strixes later in the medieval period, but certainly in ancient Roman terms, they're women, they're old women. They transform souls either into owls, and the word Strix actually is supposedly a form of owl. We typically translate it as screech owl, but whether it is really tied

to a particular variety of owl is less clear. They transform into this owl or they project their souls from their bodies and in either form they seek to penetrate domestic houses which have little babies in them in order to either steal the baby as a whole, to kill it, to drain its blood, to steal its body parts either openly or more likely surreptitiously. Sometimes they can get inside and steal inside parts and disappear. And actually it's not entirely clear what they're doing with these parts. They're probably by default eating them. And again they're old women so probably this is a way of recovering youth. It's possible that they're retaining the body parts for various other magical operations. If you think about Apuleius' novel, we get a description of a witch's,

not actually a Strix witch, but a more general witch's, laboratory or workshop, the workshop of Pamphili. And again, she's got all these jars with little body parts in, which she's going to use to evoke ghosts, the ghosts of the relevant body. So that could be happening too. And there are various ways of protecting against the Strix Witch, including using various plants to guard doorways and windows and to hang around the baby's neck to protect it.

So we're very much here. Maybe your listeners are already ahead of me. We're kind of in the world of the vampire here. Strix Witches are not dead. They are living, but they're after blood, and they can be deterred by strategically placed plants, you know, like the garlic in Bram Stoker's novel. So, yeah, I should say the Strix witch is very much an antecedent of the vampire.

I mean, it's not really right to call her a vampire, but she's scratching that itch for the ancients that the vampire scratches for us. So obviously she has this iconic and central ability to transform into an owl, but in these ancient Roman texts there is a sort of

kind of hint that secondarily they also transform themselves into wolves. Again, it's not entirely clear why, but it's something they can do. But yes, that does sort of bring werewolves and strict witches together a bit. If we don't focus on Petronius' Cicero compass, we've been using that example already so far. Of course, you may use many other brilliant examples in your book on this topic. But it's so interesting how we've talked about the relationship

between the werewolf and the ghost in this tale before but you also mentioned earlier how included in this story are also the strict witches so in this whole story it seems like you've got perhaps an ancient equivalent to the vampire the strict witch you've got the werewolf and you've got the ghost elements of it all together yes i should well i should say scrupulously that with petronius we've got two separate stories i'll say so gemalchio okay yeah gemalchio is telling this story of the six witches and actually that's a good little story itself it's maybe worth telling briefly so gemalchio talked about when he himself was a young slave and they had a young boy in the house again a young slave who died and he was laid out ready for burial the next boy in the house, again a young slave who had died, and he was laid out ready for

burial the next day in the house. And the house was beset by Strix witches, not one but a whole coven, let's say a coven of them. They couldn't be seen, they were invisible, they just heard the screeching. And perhaps since they couldn't be seen, these are soul projecting Strix witches. You might think that a soul can pass through any little crack in a house or any little keyhole or anything. But what's interesting is that the witches trick the householders into opening the door. Basically there's

a sort of big lunking slave called a Paphlagonian, described as a Paphlagonian I should say, in the house. And he runs out and manages actually to kill one of the witches. Again we hear a scream but we still don't see her. And then he returns, but the other witches have got to him and they've given him a magical beating.

So he's sort of black and blue, and he's raving mad. So he raves in his bed for a few days and then dies. So that's the witch's revenge on him. But clearly, also, because he opened the door to go out and attack them, that's how the witches got in. And when the householders finished fussing around the Bafflegonian, and they returned to the dead boy, he's gone. And he's been replaced by a sort of straw dummy. Somehow, the witches have managed to infiltrate into the house. So again, it's a very sinister, very creepy story, even though it's sort of told for laughs in a way.

So that is a separate story to the world story. But as I say, it's like, you know, which film are you going to watch other than Hammer Horror Double Bill? These creatures still belong in the same general story world, even if they're not quite brought together in the same story. That's going to be the next thing. I mean, forgive me, I was just thinking of an ancient being human episode,

to be honest, but that's what I remember growing up, watching those films with the vampire, the werewolf and the ghost all living together in the same house. You mentioned story right there because that was what I wanted to really aim at next. Because this is an extraordinary series of stories that we've talked about so far in this podcast. And this idea of the story, I mean, what context do you think these stories were told in antiquity? Well, that is a good question. I mean, I think these stories were told in antiquity? Well, that is a good question. I mean, I think probably stories were told everywhere.

But if we look at, again, look at ancient texts, we can see that, as it were, them describing themselves, the sorts of context in which stories like this might be told. Now, I've already been talking so much about Petronius. Let's go back to that. So these are a pair of stories told at a dinner party um and again it's kind of kind of a strange posh dinner party even though the people in it aren't posh but one can

well imagine that any uh dinner parties it gets late at night these sorts of stories might come out let me revert to that phrase once more horror, you know. And if we go back to Apuleius' novel, there's a fantastic story about witches, not exactly strict witches, but they're very similar. They plunder people for body parts. There's a wonderful story told right in the first book of that novel, and it's told between travellers on the road. And, you know, one can see, yeah, these are stories of the road. These are stories to, as it were, to lighten the journey aren't they and another thing that's worth saying is that a lot

of these weird stories involve innkeepers i mentioned that melissa and her husband kept an inn and again the witches in in this first book of our place they're again they're innkeepers too the fact that the innkeepers keep coming around like this in these weird and wonderful stories preserved from the ancient world rather suggests to me that actually the inn, the tavern, is a place where you tell these stories. I think that's why they're included. That's why they're a recurring theme. But again, that's stories of the road, isn't it?

But there are other contexts too. You might say more formal contexts in which stories of the road, isn't it? But there are other contexts too. You might say more formal contexts in which stories of this sort are preserved. What is clear more generally in the ancient world is that temples served as museums in all sorts of ways. But museums, both the things and museums of stories too, I think, often stories attached to things in the museum,

in the temple rather. So for example, Herodotus, whom we mentioned before, has all sorts of wonderful weird stories to tell about Samos. And what's interesting about these stories, he has five or six stories about the island of Samos. What's interesting is that each one of them features an object

which somehow or other ended up on display in the great temple of Hiraver. And so what becomes apparent is that Herodotus has had the tour of the temple and an old trusty temple warden has taken him around, looking at the walls and all the displays and told him the story that attaches to each object. And these are the stories that Herodotus is giving us in turn.

Oh, by the way, also in, I think it's the Horion at Samos, but certainly some temple somewhere, they found some nice, not exactly dinosaur bones, but prehistoric mega beast bones, like a Miocene giraffe or something like that. That was actually in the ruins of the temple. So clearly, you can see what's going on there. Somebody's found these amazing bones.

They've taken them to the temple and that's where they're on display, and of course a wonderful story will have been spun around them. This is the dragon that so-and-so slew or whatever. So temples in the ancient world were really fascinating places, I think. Locuses for storytelling, and

just broadening that out. The great Panhellenic shrines, like Olympia too. Pausanias again has lots of weird and wonderful stories about different great athletes from the past. And these seem to have been attached to, I mean, not physically attached, but attached to statues and monuments

for these athletes that he's seen at Olympia. So again, I think, again, the local temple warden, or temple wardens, there would have been thousands of them, have been sort of, you know, pumping up the tourists with all these great stories. David, just listening to that, and all that we've been chatting about for the last 40 minutes or so, all these different examples, I know there are more.

I shan't mention the Arcadian Lukaya Festival, which seems really interesting in itself. But it just seems that from the outside, the whole topic of wells and H-World, it must have been so fun to research. Well, yes, it was. Yes. I mean, as I kind of indicated to start with, I didn't really do it in one big blob. You know what I mean? It's just stuff I sort of acquired along the way for the most part, you know, and just sort of salted it away. So yeah, there wasn't any like one big reveal moment. But yeah obviously it's

fascinating well daniel go on then i've got to ask because my brain is telling me you've got to ask about it because i mentioned it just then the arcadian lucaia festival right i mean just a brief overview before we finish i mean what exactly is it and does it have a link to to werewolves well it's very plainly and centrally about werewolves although in what way in the end is a bit baffling okay so as part of the rites of zeus lykaios which means wolfy well the name can be construed as meaning wolfy zeus on mount lykaion which can be construed as meaning wolfy mountain um at the festival of lykaia which can be construed as meaning the wolf festival, certain young men of the Arcadians, don't know how many, would hang their clothes on a tree.

Take their clothes off, hang them on a tree, so again, we know what territory we're in here already. Swim across a pond and then emerge on the other side of the pond as wolves and live as wolves for a certain period again i think the ancient evidence for this is all a bit mixed up so i'm not going to get into that but i would suggest probably one or two years uh they then return across the pond and recover their clothes and their humanity and then go on as it were to live their lives as humans. So this is all part of a rite of wolfish use. And the way it's spoken about in Pausanias and other sources, Pliny talks about it,

it's all a bit odd, but certainly the ancients seem to believe that this rite was practiced at least at one point. Now, you're going to say, assuming that men cannot really turn into wolves, what actually happened? Well, the way it's normally construed is that this is a rite of passage, because we have a number of phenomena in other ancient societies, whereby the younger men, so-called ephebes, between the ages of 1820, something like that, undergo a period of, again, this is sort of anthropologist talk, ritual marginalization, whereby typically they serve as light-armed sort of stealth warriors in the wild areas, the boundary areas of the state. So, for example, the Athenian, so-called Athibes,

would patrol the outer boundaries of the state with light arms. In Sparta, you have this thing called the cryptaea, the secret force, the hidden force. And it was the job of the boys in the cryptaea secretly to murder the serfs who were causing trouble. Sparta's serf population. Again, so stealthily, by night, secret stuff. And then when they emerged from this period of ritual marginalization,

they're then integrated back into society as full adults and as heavy-armed, fully-armed warriors. So it's possible that this right is a similar thing. So what is going on is that the youths are, as it were, symbolically going off to spend this two years as these sort of light-armed patrolling warriors before coming back and being fully reintegrated into the state as adults. Now what I would say is that that is an example of the metaphorical use of the idea of the werewolf. I'm convinced that the idea of the werewolf is much more ancient than ancient Greece and is deeply embedded and that that is, as I said, a handy metaphorical use of the idea.

But many other people would say, when they look at ancient werewolves, they would say they would start with that because somehow the evidence for the Lycaeus Festival seems to be the most tangible. They will often start with that and say, oh, well, the whole concept of the werewolf in ancient Greece, in the ancient world,

even maybe in Europe generally, is a product of a rite of passage. There is some association between rites of passage and werewolfism in the early modern period, it must be said. But I have to say, I don't think that's the key. I think they're getting it the wrong way around. I think the folklore comes first. The folklore structures the way you think about a rite of passage, not vice versa. Well, there we go. Folklore is first. The folklore structures the way you think about a rite of passage, not vice versa. Well, there we go. Folklore is first. And I love the idea that werewolves, the idea of werewolves

is more ancient than ancient Greece too. Daniel, this has been an absolutely brilliant chat. Just before we go, your new book on this topic is called? The Werewolf in the Ancient World. There we go. Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Thank you. It's been great fun.