Also called Lamiae.
The tale
The lamia was a Greek monster who stole and ate children, and Roman writers took her over as a figure of fear. Horace warns poets not to write absurd tales in which a living boy is drawn from the belly of a lamia who has dined on him. In Apuleius's novel, witches in Thessaly are called lamiae, and they cut out a man's heart in the night. She overlaps with the striges, the night-birds who attacked infants.
When they are met
- Kalends of June, with Cardea, to protect children
- None; she is warded off, not honoured
Staying on their good side
- Hawthorn at the window
- Salt at the threshold
- Bells and bronze to scare her
Honouring them, or keeping safe
- Ask Cardea or the Lares to guard children rather than addressing her.
- Hang hawthorn at the nursery window.
- Treat her as a story, not a being to invoke.
What their tales teach
- Protection of children
- Night fears
Symbols
- serpent
- night
- devoured child
The Roman lamia is a literary borrowing and close to the strix.
Sources
- Horace, Ars Poetica 340
- Apuleius, Metamorphoses 1.17
- Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos 3
More Roman folklore
- Genius Loci The guardian spirit of a place
- Lemures The hungry ghosts of May
- Striges The screech-owls of the night
- The Sibyl of Cumae The prophetess of the hundred-mouthed cave
- Fauns The goat-legged spirits of the woods
- The Versipellis The werewolf by the tombs
- Larvae Malevolent ghosts of the restless dead
- Mania Mother of the dead and nursery bogey