Did the classical world know of vampires?
Ogden, D
Date: 24 August 2022
Journal
Preternature
Publisher
Penn State University Press
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Did the Classical world know of vampires? No. This piece asks instead what phenomenon of
the Classical world most closely anticipates the modern conceptualisation of the vampire — a
conceptualisation extracted from the two classics of Victorian vampire fiction, Sheridan le
Fanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Consideration is ...
Did the Classical world know of vampires? No. This piece asks instead what phenomenon of
the Classical world most closely anticipates the modern conceptualisation of the vampire — a
conceptualisation extracted from the two classics of Victorian vampire fiction, Sheridan le
Fanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Consideration is given first to a series of
ancient entities in later Greek literature that approach a simplistic definition of ‘returning
from the dead and eating people: Phlegon’s Philinnion and Polycritus, Pausanias’ Hero of
Temesa, and Philostratus’ Lamia and Achilles. But it is then contended that if one considers
the full sweep of motifs associated with the modern vampire in the round, a better overall
alignment is to be found for it with the Roman figure of the strix-witch, as described by Ovid
and Petronius and later on by John Damascene and Burchard of Worms, for all that she is not
actually dead.
Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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