2

Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

In the last chapter we saw that the ancient world associated werewolves on the
one hand with witches and with sorcerers on the other, in both a direct fashion
(that is, by constructing tales in which the two categories interacted with each
other) and in a broader thematic fashion (that is, by more loosely featuring the
two categories in the same texts). Similarly, the ancient world also associated
werewolves with ghosts in both direct and thematic ways.1 Once again, we will
review the evidence in broadly chronological fashion, after first considering the
case for the general associations between wolves and death in the ancient world.

Wolves and Death in Greece and Italy

There is significant evidence for an association between wolves and death in the
ancient world, this relating principally to the non-Latin parts of Italy.

Wolves and Death in the Greek world?

Both Carla Mainoldi (in 1984) and Daniel Gershenson (in 1991) have maintained
that the wolf had a particular association with death for the Greeks, as is more
obviously true for the dog (their devouring of corpses cast out, Cerberus, the
Aidos kyneē, etc.).2 But the case for the wolf is not a strong one. None of the
ex­amples Gershenson adduces in support of his thesis seem to me to be cogent
(most of his discussion devoted to the Lykaia). More promisingly, the principal
example in Mainoldi’s portfolio is the Hero of Temesa, mentioned later in this
chapter and then discussed more fully in the dedicated Chapter 5. However, we
must exclude him from our considerations at this point if we are to avoid petitio
principii. Beyond this, the only significant wolves Mainoldi can point to in as­so­ci­
ation with death have the look of being minor and exotic variations of dogs in
similar roles. Thus, in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Antigone protests that she
will not leave her brother’s body exposed to be devoured by wolves, this instead of

1 We shall articulate this point in a slightly more formal way in the Conclusion.
2 Mainoldi 1984:28–30 (for the wolf) and 37–51 (for the dog); Gershenson 1991:98–117.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 61

the more usual dogs.3 In the fourth-century ad Great Magical Papyrus in Paris,
Hecate, the underworld goddess of the all-pervasive canine imagery, is given
(amongst a great many others) the epithets Lykō and Lykaina, which may both be
construed as ‘She-wolf ’.4 In the later fifth century bc Sophron had already

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

described Mormolyke (‘Bogey-wolf ’), a member of Hecate’s entourage, as ‘the
nurse of Acheron’ (Acheron being one of the fabled underworld rivers).5

Etruscan Aita-Calu

Etruscan art reveals a profound association between wolves, death, and the dead in
that culture. The Etruscan reflex of the Greek Hades was Aita/Eita, and he was iden-
tified with the indigenous Calu.6 Examples abound from the fourth century bc
onwards of his depiction in head or bust only wearing a wolf-head cap. It is possible
that the latter is the Etruscan version of the dogskin cap of invisibility attributed to
Hades in Greek mythological sources.7 Of particular interest are a pair of fourth-
century bc tomb paintings, one from the Golini I tomb at Orvieto and one from
the c. 340–320 bc Orcus II tomb at Corneto (Tarquinia). In both images Aita is
accompanied by his wife Persephone (‘Phersipnai’), both figures being named. In
the Golini tomb the pair reclines at a banquet with the dead man and his family,
and Aita wears a wolf-head cap, while holding a sceptre around which there winds a
snake.8 In the Corneto tomb Aita and Persephone are housed in a cave within the
underworld, and he sits on a rock throne. He again wears a wolf-head cap.9 The
notion that Aita-Hades might dress in a wolf-head cap might suggest an ironic
reading of the assertion of Petronius’ Niceros that his soldier companion was ‘as
brave as Orcus [i.e. Hades again]’, just prior to his wolf transformation.10
Also of great interest here is the striking series of eight scenes on s­ econd-century
bc Etruscan cinerary urns in alabaster or terracotta. On these a wolf, sometimes a
quite terrifying one, a wolf-headed humanoid, or a humanoid wearing a wolfskin,
with the head as cap, precisely à la Aita, attempts to emerge from a puteal

3 Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes 1041–2; for dogs as the traditional and iconic devourers of the
cast-out or the battlefield dead, see Homer Iliad 1.1–5; further references in Chapter 1.
4 Lyko: PGM IV.2276 (4th c. ad). Lykaina: PGM IV.2546. Cf. Mainoldi 1984:29.
5 Sophron F4B KA/Hordern (cf. Apollodorus of Athens FGrH 244 F102a, apud Stobaeus
Anthology 1.49–50, pp.418–20 W). For Mormolyke see Hordern 2004:137–8, Johnston 1999a:161–99,
Patera 2005 esp. 377–81, 2015:106–44. Note also the mormolykeion, referred to at Aristophanes
Thesmophoriazusae 413–17, Plato Phaedo 77e, Heliodorus Aethiopica 6.2.1, Proclus Commentary on
Plato’s Republic 180.19, Hesychius s.v. μορμολυκεῖα, schol. Aelius Aristides Panathenaicus 102.5
(iii p.42 Dindorf), etc.; cf. Mainoldi 1984:29.
6 For Aita and his place in the Etruscan underworld, see Cook 1914–40:i, 98–9, Krauskopf 1987,
1988, Jannot 2005, 54–71, Rissanen 2012:129–34.
7 E.g. Homer Iliad 5.845, Hesiod Shield 227, Aristophanes Acharnians 390, Plato Republic 612b.
8 LIMC Aita/Calu 5.
9 LIMC Aita/Calu 6. Weber-Lehmann 1995:72–100, with pl. 21–4, offers a detailed analysis of this
tomb’s images.
10 Petronius Satyricon 61–2.
62 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

(a well head), perhaps symbolic of an exit from the underworld, but is prevented
from doing so by a group of men around it, who strenuously hold the creature
back with a chain round its neck or by threatening it with weapons. A calmer man
holds a patera over it and Vanth, the Etruscan female underworld demon and psy-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

chopomp, winged and torch-bearing, often attends the scene. The scene evidently
represents some sort of dangerous ritual, and it is usually thought to represent an
offering to the ghost of a dead man. Chierici, a little ambitiously, regards these
scenes as representing, more specifically, Etruscan versions of scenes from Greek
myth in which groups of warriors make offerings to dead heroes: Odysseus and his
men with the ghost of Elpenor, or the Argonauts with the ghost of Sthenelus.11

The Etruscan Tityos Painter’s Wolfman

Surely relevant here too—somehow or other—is a much older Etruscan image,

the superb ‘wolfman’ painted by the Tityos Painter (c. 540–510 bc) on the tondo
of a Pontic Plate found in Vulci and now in Rome’s Museo Etrusco di Villa Giulia.
This perky running figure has a wolf ’s head and a humanoid body covered in
wolfskin (see Figure 5.1).12 We shall speak of him again in Chapter 5.

The Faliscan Hirpi Sorani of Soracte

Ancient authors were intrigued by the cult performance of the Hirpi Sorani on
Mount Soracte, in the Faliscan region 45 kilometres north of Rome, who would
walk barefoot over wood embers in honour of Apollo of Soracte.13 The first extant

11 (1 and 2) Volterra, Museo Guarnacci, inv. 350–1 = LIMC Olta nos. 3 and 5 (from Volterra); (3)
Florence, Museo archeologico, inv. 5781 = LIMC Olta no. 2 (from Chiusi); (4) Pisa, Camposanto, inv.
1906/117 = LIMC Olta no. 4 (from Volterra); (5, 6, and 7) Perugia, Museo archeologico, inv. 107 (or
341, from San Sisto), 367 = LIMC Olta no. 8 (from Palazzone?) and a lost item without inventory
number; (8) Gubbio, Palazzo dei Consoli, inv. 5801 (unknown provenance). Images of all these items
except (7) are reproduced at Chierici 1994:355–61; cf. also Szilágyi 1994, Elliot 1995 and Rissanen
2012:130–4. For Elpenor, see Homer Odyssey 11.1–83 and the Elpenor vase, Boston, Museum of Fine
Arts 34–79 = LIMC Odysseus 149; discussion at Ogden 2001 esp. 43–60, with further references. For
Sthenelus see Apollonius Argonautica 2.911–29, Valerius Flaccus Argonautica 5.87–95; perhaps he is
the perky warrior emerging from his barrow on an askos lid in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 13.169,
as Schefold and Jung 1989:30 suggest (there is no entry for this Sthenelus in LIMC).
12 The plate was found in Vulci’s Osteria Necropolis, Tomb 177. See Elliot 1995:24–7,
Rissanen 2012:133–4. We might also point to two humanoid figures with wolf-heads attending scenes
of Achilles’ ambush of Troilus on Etruscan Black Figure vases, illustrated at Simon 1973:39 figs. 8–9;
cf. Mainoldi 1984:29.
13 Virgil Aeneid 11.784–8, Strabo C226, Pliny Natural History 7.19, Silius Italicus 5.175–183,
Solinus 2.26. For general discussion, see Wissowa 1894–90, Otto 1913, Franklin 1921:29–31,
Piccaluga 1976, Negri 1982, Rissanen 2012 (where these texts are conveniently reproduced), di
Fazio 2013, Vé 2018:172–8. Strabo identifies the deity in receipt of this sacrifice rather as a goddess,
Feronia, this seemingly a mistake arising from the name of the local town, Lucus Feroniae; cf.
Rissanen 2012:119 n.30.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 63

author to mention them is Virgil in his Aeneid. His Arruns prays on the ­battlefield
to ‘Apollo, guardian of sacred Soracte’, of whom he declares himself to be a pri-
mary devotee and for whom he professes to walk through the embers. He then
asks the god to help him kill Camilla, and his prayer is granted. But when her

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

companions rally to her as she dies, ‘Arruns fled . . . and in a state of confusion
removed himself from sight, in just the same way as the wolf immediately makes
for the pathless places and hides himself in the high mountains after killing a
shepherd or a great steer, before he can be pursued with hostile weapons. With a
feeling of guilt for his act of audacity, he slackens his tail and tucks it under his
belly as it trembles, and seeks out the woods.’14
Virgil’s commentator Servius offers the following explanatory note on the
prayer and the rite:

‘Apollo, guardian of sacred Soracte.’ Mount Soracte is located on the Via

Flaminia amongst the Hirpini. Once on this mountain, when a sacrifice was
being made to Father Dis [Dis Pater] – for it was sacred to the ancestral dead –
wolves suddenly arrived and snatched the entrails from the fire. After the shep-
herds had followed them for a long time, they were brought to a certain cave,
which emitted a pestilential gas, so lethal that it killed anyone that stood near it.
A pestilence arose from there, because they had followed the wolves. When they
consulted an oracle they were told that the pestilence could be brought under
control if they imitated wolves, that is, if they lived by rapine. After they turned
to this, those peoples were called the ‘Hirpi Sorani.’ For in the Sabine tongue
wolves are called hirpi. They are called ‘Sorani’ because of Dis, for the father of
Dis is called Soranus. They are effectively being called ‘the wolves of Father Dis
[or: the wolves of the father of Dis].’ Virgil is mindful of this when a little later on
he compares Arruns to a wolf, inasmuch as he is a ‘Hirpinus Soranus.’
Servius on Virgil Aeneid 11.785

Hirpus is indeed the Faliscan dialect equivalent of Latin lupus.15 But Servius
also makes some confusions here: first, he confuses the Hirpi with the Hirpini,
who lived some 200 kilometres distant, around Ampsanctus; secondly, after
correctly explaining the name phrase Hirpi Sorani, in which Sorani is a geni-
tive singular, ‘the Hirpi of Soranus’, he immediately proceeds in the final
words here as if Sorani is, rather, a masculine plural adjective agreeing
with Hirpi.16
Servius’ notion that the Hirpi Sorani lived by plundering is probably a falla-
cious explanation added by the commentator himself (or a prior source) into the

14 Virgil Aeneid 11.784–815 (785, 806, 809–14 quoted).

15 See Strabo C226, Festus p.106M; cf. Rissanen 2012:117, with further references.
16 Rissanen 2012:117, 123–4.
64 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

traditional aetiology. Rather, the Hirpi resembled wolves because, in memory of

the wolves’ original raid upon the fiery altars, they imitated them by walking
through fire (there is no particular reason to suppose that, beyond this, they actu-
ally dressed up as wolves for the purpose, or that they had anything to do with

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

werewolfism as such).17 An Etruscan vase in a private collection in Basel, made
half a millennium before Virgil, c.500 bc, seems relevant here: on one side a man
tends an altar; on the other side brands burn on another altar, which is sur-
rounded by images of creatures that could be either dogs or wolves standing on or
running over sticks or plants lying at different angles. Do these represent the
original wolf-thieves walking over the wood embers to steal the meat, or the Hirpi
Sorani-as-wolves doing the same? Or do they represent a similar myth or rite
practised by another Italian people?18
For Servius, the sacrifice is no longer to Apollo but to Dis Pater, god of the
underworld, and the wolves are accordingly his servants. The god Soranus was
identified with Apollo from at least the fifth century bc, but Servius’ words sug-
gest rather an identification—perhaps rather an original identity—with the
Etruscan god Śuri, who was indeed oracular like Apollo, but also, like Dis Pater, a
god of the underworld.19 A series of bronze figurines perhaps representing Dis
Pater bear a superficial resemblance to the image of Aita: he too is shown as a
bearded figure wearing a wolfskin, the wolf ’s head serving as the cap in familiar
fashion, and holding a bowl.20

Herodotus’ Neuri (again)

We return now to Herodotus’ Neuri (see Chapter 1), whom the historian describes
as goētes.21 What did he mean by this? His own work affords us no further clues,
unfortunately. He only applies the term elsewhere to a remote race of pygmies
living south of the Libyan desert, without further elaboration.22

17 So Marbach 1929:1131 and Rissanen 2012:121. Rissanen further makes the tendentious claim
(124–6) of a certain parallelism between the myth of the Hirpi Sorani and the rite of the Roman
Lupercalia, in which, as he sees it, ‘wolves’, the luperci, emerge from and return to the Lupercal cave,
supposedly also an underworld entrance. For the Lupercalia see Appendix C: I consider that the as­so­
ci­ation of this rite with wolves and certainly with anything resembling werewolves has been overstated.
18 Etruscan late black-figure neck amphora, c.500 bc. Private collection, Basel; the vase is repro-
duced at Rissanen 2012:120–1, figs. 1–2.
19 Colonna 1985:76–7, 2007:113–14, Rissanen 2012:122–3, 129.
20 Cook 1914–40:i, 96–8; but scepticism from Belloni 1986.
21 Herodotus 4.105–7: κινδυνεύουσι δὲ οἱ ἄνθρωποι οὗτοι γόητες εἶναι. Metzger 2011:220–4 dis-
cusses Herodotus’ use of the term here in some detail, without, it seems to me, hitting the key points.
22 Herodotus 2.32–3. It is conceivable that the race’s small stature was a factor in Herodotus’ deci-
sion to deploy the word here, given the term’s application, already in the Phoronis, to the tiny Idaean
Dactyls: see below.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 65

The term goēs (this is the singular form) is conventionally translated as

‘­sorcerer’. The (10th-c. ad) Suda contends, however, that ‘Goēteia is applied to the
bringing up of a dead man by calling upon him; the term is derived from the wail-
ings [gooi] and the lamentations of people at the tomb.’23 Modern historians of

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

religion and—more reassuringly—comparative philologists agree that the term is
indeed derivative of the noun gooi (singular goos) and the verb goaō, which refer
to the wailing of grief, and they hold, accordingly, that it originally designated a
practitioner that specialized in manipulating the souls of the dead.24 Let us briefly
consider the usages of the terms built on the goēt- root from their earliest
­attestation in the c.500 bc Phoronis, down to the works of Plato, who exploits
them voraciously. Beside the noun goēs itself, attention must be given to the
derived verb goēteuō (with its compounds ekgoēteuō and katagoēteuō), and to
the abstract nouns goēteia and goēteuma.25
Diogenes Laertius cites Satyrus for the information that Gorgias had claimed
to be present when Empedocles was being a goēs (goēteuonti). He then reproduces
a fragment of Empedocles that Satyrus had adduced to lend credence to Gorgias’
claim. In this fragment Empedocles proclaims that he will teach his followers
spells (pharmaka) against ills and old age, the ability to control rain and the
winds, and finally the ability to ‘bring from Hades the strength of a dead man’.26 If
we can trust this chain of Chinese whispers, it would seem that Gorgias con­
sidered the manipulation of the souls of the dead to be part of the work of a goēs.
It is noteworthy that Empedocles is elsewhere associated with other early Greek
soul-manipulating ‘shaman’ figures and other shamanistic tendencies.27 And here
let us note that the Tiberian Strabo was subsequently to invoke the greatest of the
early Greek shaman figures, Aristeas of Proconnesus, as the goēs par excellence
(see Chapter 4 for more on Aristeas).28 Phrynichus Arabicus (2nd c. ad ) may
indicate that the necromantic ‘Evocators’ or, more literally, ‘Soul-drawers’ of
Aeschylus’ play Psychagōgoi employed goēteiai in order to summon up souls from
the underworld.29 In the Laws Plato does indeed associate the verb goēteuō with

23 Suda s.v. γοητεία: γοητεία δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνάγειν νεκρὸν δι’ ἐπικλήσεως, ὅθεν εἴρηται ἀπὸ τῶν γόων καὶ
τῶν θρήνων τῶν περὶ τοὺς τάφους γινομένων.
24 Reiner 1938 passim, Vermeule 1979:17–19, Burkert 1962 esp. 44–5, Johnston 1999a:103, 1999b:96,
Ogden 2001:110–12, Chantraine 2009 s.v. γοάω, Beekes 2010 s.v. γοάω. Some scepticism from
Bremmer 2016:64–5.
25 It is a pity that the fragments of Aristomenes’ lost comedy Goētes are so uninformative for their
subject.
26 Diogenes Laertius 8.58, incorporating Satyrus F6 Kumaniecki, Gorgias A3 DK and Empedocles
B111 DK/F101 Wright.
27 Porphyry Life of Pythagoras 28–9 (Pythagoras, Abaris, Epimenides); cf. Burkert 1962,
Ogden 2009:9–16, Ustinova 2009:186–7, 194–6, 209–17. I explain my use of the term ‘shaman’ in
Chapter 4.
28 Strabo C589: ἀνὴρ γόης, εἴ τις ἄλλος.
29 Phrynichus Arabicus Praeparatio sophistica p.127 de Borries, reproduced (without being classi-
fied either as a fragment or a testimonium) at TrGF iii p.370: οἱ δ’ ἀρχαῖοι τοὺς τὰς ‘ψυχὰς’ τῶν
τεθνηκότων γοητείαις τισὶν ‘ἄγοντας’. τῆς αὐτῆς ἐννοίας καὶ τοῦ Αἰσχύλου τὸ δρᾶμα ‘Ψυχαγωγός’ [sic];
cf. Aeschylus Psychagogoi FF273-5 TrGF.
66 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

the verb psychagōgeō and apply it to sorcerers that claim (inter alia) to be able to
draw up the souls of the dead. Here the term psychagōgeō is also used in a vivid
metaphorical fashion to describe the ‘soul-drawing’ deception practised by such
sorcerers on the souls of the living, inasmuch as they bamboozle them with their

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

bogus arts.30 Elsewhere, Gorgias (twice) and Plato himself (twice) use words of
the goēt- root in similarly vivid metaphors to describe the effect of deceitfully per-
suasive, manipulative speech upon the souls on the living. In particular, in Plato’s
Meno Meno asserts that his soul and his mouth have been paralysed by Socrates
the goēs.31 In the Phaedo Plato further uses the term to speak of the bewitching
effect of pleasures upon the souls of the living.32
Beyond this, from Euripides onwards, words of the goēt- root are frequently
applied, in a partially derived usage, to deceitfully persuasive, manipulative
speech directed towards the living, albeit without the explicit specification that
their effect is upon the soul itself. This application is particularly common in
Plato, where the words are often associated with the term ‘sophist’.33 Plato simi-
larly applies the root twice also to the bewitching effect of pleasures on the living,
again without specification of the soul.34 In further derived usages, Xenophon
applies katagoēteuō to the deceitful effects of Cyrus’ Median dress, and Plato
applies it to the deceitful effects of lifelike painting.35
It is of particular interest for the present study that a strong secondary as­so­ci­
ation of the goēt- root is the transmutation of forms. Fragments of the c.500 bc
Phoronis, the c.456 bc Pherecydes, and of Hellanicus, who wrote shortly after
Herodotus, all preserved by a scholiast to Apollonius’ Argonautica, apply the term
goētes to the tiny ‘finger-sized’ Idaean Dactyls specifically in respect of their abil-
ity to transform base ore into brilliant metal objects.36 Even more germanely,
Plato applies the term in the Euthydemus to the shape-shifter par excellence of
Greek myth, Proteus, and in the Republic three times to the gods themselves, this
in the context of the (rejected) notion that they might manifest themselves before
men in a range of different forms.37 Why would such a significance sit com­fort­
ably with that of soul manipulation? Presumably because there is an underlying
notion that when a form is transmuted an inner core is made to pass, as it were,
between outer carapaces, like a soul in metempsychosis or reincarnation.

30 Plato Laws 909b. 31 Gorgias Helen 10, 14; Plato Menexenus 235a, Meno 80a–b.
32 Plato Phaedo 81b.
33 Euripides Hippolytus 1038, Bacchae 234; Xenophon Anabasis 5.7.9; Plato Euthydemus 288b
(sophist), Gorgias 483e-484a, Laws 922a, Hippias Minor 371a, Republic 412e-413d (repeatedly), 598d,
Sophist 234c-235a (sophist), 241b (sophist), Statesman 291c (sophist), 303c (sophist), Symposium
203d (sophist).
34 Plato Philebus 44c, Republic 584a. 35 Xenophon Cyropaedia 8.1.40; Plato Republic 602d.
36 Scholiast Apollonius Argonautica 1.1128, incorporating, inter alia, Phoronis F2 West, Pherecydes
FGrH 3 F47/Fowler and Hellanicus FGrH 4 F89/Fowler. With some weariness I must point out that,
pace Johnston 1999b:96 and (tralatitiously, I presume) Stratton 2007:28, the Phoronis was a poem,
not a poet.
37 Plato Euthydemus 288b; Republic 380d, 381e, 383a.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 67

Let us note also, for completeness’ sake, the frequent association of the
goēt- root with other magic-related terms. In particular, it is frequently associated
with words of the ‘drug’/‘spell’ root, pharmakon, pharmakeus (the male equivalent
of phamakis) and pharmassō, from Pherecydes onwards,38 and also with words

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

derived from the ‘incantation’ root epaoid-, from Gorgias onwards.39 It is associ-
ated once with kēleō, ‘charm’,40 once with both manganeiai, ‘trickeries’, and kata-
deseis, ‘(magical) bindings’,41 and only once too, a little surprisingly, with mageia
(‘magic’) itself, this last by Gorgias.42
So Herodotus’ description of the werewolf Neuri as goētes is potentially very
rich: it may well imply an understanding that they transmute their own forms pri-
marily by means of the manipulation of their own souls.

Virgil’s Moeris and Tibullus’ Bawd-witch

Let us return briefly to two of the passages of Latin poetry considered in the last
chapter. As we saw there, Virgil (39 bc) closely associates Moeris’ turning of
himself into a werewolf with his raising of ghosts: ‘By their [sc. Pontic herbs’]
power I often saw Moeris change into a wolf and hide himself in the woods, and
I often saw him use them to rouse ghosts from the bottom of their tombs.’43
Tibullus prays that his bawd-witch should scrabble for her herbs (the tools of her
witchcraft and a wretched meal alike) on graves, and scrabble also for bones
abandoned by her fellow wolves, perhaps in the same place, before transforming
into a wolf: ‘May starvation goad her to madness and send her searching for
herbs on graves and bones abandoned by fierce wolves. May she run bare-
groined and howling through the city . . . .’ There surely is an association here
between the graves and the werewolfism, though Julia Doroszewska may read
these lines a little too reductively in asserting that the witch actually transforms
into a wolf in the graveyard itself.44

38 Pherecydes FGrH 3 F47 Fowler; Gorgias Helen 14 (cf. A3 DK); Plato Laws 649a, 933a, Meno
80a-b, Symposium 203d.
39 Gorgias Helen 10; Euripides Hippolytus 1038, Bacchae 234; Plato Gorgias 483e-484a, Laws 909b,
933a, Meno 80a-b, = Symposium 202e-203a.
40 Plato Republic 413b. 41 Plato Laws 933a.
42 Gorgias Helen 10. However, Xenophon’s reference to Cyrus’ adoption of Median dress as an act
of katagoēteuein (cited above) brings us close to the realm of the mages (magoi) of the Persian empire,
whom Herodotus held to originate in Media (1.101, 107–8, 120, 128), seemingly correctly, even if his
explicit reason for making the connection is his supposition that they took their origin from the witch
Medea (7.62; cf. Hesiod Theogony 956–62, this passage evidently being a post-mid-sixth-century bc
interpolation). Scholars now hold that the magos (Persian makuš) had initially been a priest of a local
Median religion centred around the god Zurvan. For the historical mages of the Persian empire see
Benveniste 1938, Bickerman and Tadmor 1978, Burkert 1983b, Handley-Schachler 1992: 39–69b, 367,
Briant 2002:94–6, 130–4, 244–6, 266–8, Bremmer 2008:235–48, Panaino 2011, and Trampedach 2017.
43 Virgil Eclogues 8.94–100.
44 Tibullus 1.5.53–4; the fuller context and the Latin are supplied in Chapter 1; Doroszewska 2017:15;
Schmeling 2011:256–7 (‘Werewolves are believed to haunt graveyards’).
68 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

Petronius’ Niceros

In the superb werewolf tale Petronius gives to Niceros, with which we began,
ghosts and the underworld assert themselves repeatedly and prominently.45

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

Before the featured soldier is shown to turn himself into a werewolf, Niceros
describes him as ‘as brave as Orcus,’ the king of the underworld, as we have
already noted.46 In travelling with the soldier, he tells that they moved amongst
the tombs (which would have been lining the road) in the moonlight, where the
soldier made his transformation. Niceros says of himself, as he saw the trans­
form­ation, ‘I almost died of fright [literally: my soul was in my nose],47 and I
stood there like a dead man.’ Thereafter, he tells us, ‘I drew my sword and † hacked
at the shades . . . I was like a ghost (in larvam) when I got in, and almost bubbling
out my final breath . . . my eyes were dead.’ Niceros concludes his narrative by
asserting its truth in a forceful way: ‘But if I’m lying, may your guardian spirits
exercise their wrath upon me (genios vestros iratos habeam).’48 The ghostly context
could not be stronger: not only does Niceros, in experiencing the werewolf,
im­agine that he is confronted by ghosts from all directions, and that his own soul
is on the point of departing his body to become one, but he also invokes them in
his para-narrative.

Phlegon of Tralles’ Red Wolf and the Talking Head

of Publius (potential case)

The paradoxographer Phlegon was a freedman of the emperor Hadrian. The third
of his delightful Marvels brings together two stories of prophecies of doom issued
to the Romans under Glabrio after their defeat of Antiochus III at Thermopylae
and the Aetolians at Heraclea in 191 bc. Phlegon claims to have taken them from
one Antisthenes, possibly the second-century bc historian Antisthenes of
Rhodes. Their ultimate origin must have been in Aetolian resistance propa­
ganda.49 In the second of these stories the Roman general Publius (his name per-
haps intended to evoke the historical Publius Cornelius Scipio) goes mad and
starts uttering prophecies for his fellow Romans, first of a further victory for them
against Antiochus, but secondly of an eventual vengeful doom to return upon

45 Petronius Satyricon 61–2; cf. Bettini 1989–91:73.

46 Donecker 2012:293 strangely takes ‘Orcus’ to be the soldier’s personal name.
47 As Smith 1975 ad loc. observes, the departing soul is supposed to leave through the nose (appro-
priately enough, given its assimilation to breath). We may note also that when the Jewish exorcist
Eleazar exorcized a demoniac before Vespasian, he drew the demon out through the patient’s nose
with the help of a magic ring (Jewish Antiquities 8.42–9).
48 For the significance of the genius, the spirit of an ancestor often (curiously) embodied in the
form of a serpent, see Hild 1877–1919, Otto 1910, Rose 1923, Latte 1967: 103–7.
49 See Jacoby (FGrH) ad loc., Gauger 1980, Hansen 1996:101–12 and McInerney (BNJ) ad loc.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 69

them from Asia. He then climbs a tree, from which he proclaims that the truth of
his prophecies will be guaranteed by the fact that a huge red wolf (lykos pyrrhos)
will now come and devour him. The wolf duly appears and Publius presents him-
self to it for consumption. The wolf leaves behind his head, which then proceeds

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

to spout yet more prophecies of doom for the Romans. They build a shrine to
Apollo Lykios, the epithet here evidently to be read as signifying ‘Of the Wolf ’,50
in the place the wolf has deposited the head, and return to their own country. The
key passage reads as follows:

‘Men of Rome and other soldiers, it is for me to be killed and devoured by a

massive red wolf on this very day. You must recognise that what I have told you
will all come to pass for you. Take the imminent manifestation of the beast and
my own death as proof of the fact that I have told you the truth, which has come
to me from a divine revelation.’ After saying this, he ordered them to stand at a
distance. He told them that none of them should interfere with the beast’s arrival
and that it would not turn out well for them if they drove it off. The crowd did as
he asked, and it was not long before the wolf arrived. When he saw it, Publius
came down from the oak and lay down supine. The wolf tore him open and
feasted upon him whilst all looked on. It consumed the entirety of his body, save
for his head, and then turned to the mountain.
Phlegon of Tralles Mirabilia, FGrH/BNJ 257 F3.11–12

This story aligns closely with another that Phlegon tells in the second of his
Marvels, this one derived from an unidentifiable Hieron of Ephesus or Alexandria,
and in this case the story evidently originated rather in anti-Aetolian propaganda.
Here Polycritus the Aetolarch (a fictionalized version of Polycritus of Callion) has
died, leaving his wife pregnant. As the local townspeople hold a debate in the
agora about what to do with the ensuing baby, which they find to constitute an ill
omen as being hermaphrodite, the ghost or revenant of the Aetolarch manifests
itself, seizes the baby, devours its body, and leaves its head behind on the ground.
This head then proceeds to utter prophecies of doom for the Aetolians.51 In this
way, we can see that the big red wolf of the Publius tale is structurally equivalent
to the ghost in the Polycritus tale. We may also note that some have contended
that the colour red could in itself also be particularly associated with the dead in
the ancient world.52

50 Cf. the discussion of this term in Chapter 1.

51 Phlegon of Tralles FGrH/BNJ 257 F2; cf. Proclus Commentary on Plato’s Republic 2.115, who
tells that Hieron wrote about these matters to Antigonus—presumably Antigonus II Gonatas. See
Jacoby (FGrH) ad loc., McInerney (BNJ) ad loc. and Hansen 1996:85–101; cf. also Brisson 1978.
52 So Gauger 1980:237–8, with further references in n.36; Hansen 1996:111.
70 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

Both of these stories fit comfortably into a tradition of necromantic talking

heads.53 Aristotle tells of the decapitated head of a priest of Zeus Hoplosmios in
Arcadia that sang the name of his killer, Cercidas.54 Aelian tells that the sup­
posed­ly mad King Cleomenes I of Sparta discussed all his plans with the decapi-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

tated head of his friend Archonides, which he preserved in a jar of honey.55
Philostratus tells that, after he was beheaded by the Thracian women, Orpheus’
head took up residence ‘in a nook, in a cranny’ in Lesbos, from where it issued
prophecies.56 A recipe in a fourth-century ad grimoire amongst the Greek
Magical Papyri provides instructions for the practical manufacture of such a talk-
ing head: one performs the rites prescribed upon a skull and then is visited in
one’s sleep by the associated ghost.57
There is, let us be clear, no attempt on Phlegon’s part to identify the wolf here
more specifically as a werewolf. Are there any indications that it could have been
one? There is perhaps a vague one from a folkloric perspective. A French were-
wolf tradition from admittedly long after the period of our primary focus is sug-
gestive. Pierre de Lancre, writing in 1612, reports the notorious case of Jean
Grenier, subject of the last werewolf trial to take place in western Europe, at
Coutras in 1603. A girl of 13 testified that a large red wolf had grabbed her and
torn her dress, but that she had beaten it off with a stick; Grenier, a boy of 13 or
14, had, she said, admitted to being the creature; she had heard that Grenier had
also eaten a boy, a girl, and some dogs. A girl of 8 testified that he used a red
wolfskin to transform himself into a wolf. After arrest Grenier confessed that in a
forest he had met a man in black, on a black horse, who had kissed him with an
extremely cold mouth. This was the Lord of the Forest, and he had promised him
money if he would serve him; he gave him wine and marked him on the buttocks
with a pin. Grenier further confessed to killing more children. He told that he
transformed himself by rubbing on some grease that the Lord of the Forest had
given him, and then by donning the wolfskin. He could not produce the skin or
the lotion, as the Lord of the Forest kept them. His stepmother had left his father
when she had seen him vomit up the paws of dogs and the hands of children. He
was sentenced to death, but the Parlement de Bordeaux intervened, reinvestigated
the case, and resolved instead to lock him up in a monastery for the rest of his life.
Pierre de Lancre visited him there in 1610, where he continued to confess to his
crimes, and declared that he was still possessed by the desire to eat little girls.58
(Other werewolves too manifest themselves in the forms of wolves of distinctive

53 See Deonna 1925, Nagy 1990, Ogden 2001:208–16, 2009:202–5.

54 Aristotle Parts of Animals 673a. 55 Aelian Varia Historia 12.8.
56 Philostratus Heroicus 28 (p.172 Kayser); the scene is illustrated on a fine red-figure Hydria,
Basel, Antikenmuseum, BD 48 = LIMC Orpheus 68, Mousa/Mousai 100; cf. Schmidt 1972.
57 PGM IV.1928–2240. Cf. Apuleius Apology 34 (with Hunink 1997 ad loc.) and Hippolytus
Refutations 4.41.
58 De Lancre 1612 §4.2–4; cf. Baring-Gould 1865:67–76, Summers 1933:231–4, Otten 1986:62–8,
Douglas 1992:147–50, Milin 1993:129–33, Sconduto 2008:169–78.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 71

colour, as for example in the case of the French folktale ‘The White Wolf ’ ­collected
by Cosquin and published in 1887.)59
However, even if we exclude all suspicion of werewolves from Phlegon’s story, it
retains some value for us insofar as it does at least seem to provide us with a

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

ghostly wolf, and this in itself will resonate with the arguments advanced in
Chapter 4.

Marcellus of Side’s Medical Lycanthropes

Marcellus of Side’s earlier-second-century ad hexameter poem on medicine is

lost, but his words on medical lycanthropy are refracted in a series of later authors,
with Aëtius of Amida’s mid-fourth-century ad summary constituting the most
important witness to them:60

Marcellus On Lycanthropy or On Cynanthropy [‘Were-dog-ism’]. Men afflicted

with the disease of so-called cyanthropy or lycanthropy go out by night in the
month of February61 in imitation of wolves or dogs in all respects, and they tend
to hang around tombs until daybreak. These are the symptoms that will allow
you to recognize sufferers from this disease. They are pallid, their gaze is listless,
their eyes are dry, and they cannot produce tears. You will observe that their
eyes are sunken and their tongue is dry, and they are completely unable to put
on weight. They feel thirsty, and their shins are covered in lacerations which
cannot heal because they are continually falling down and being bitten by dogs.

59 A father is about to set out on a journey. He asks his three daughters what gift they would like
him to bring back. The elder daughters ask for dresses, but the youngest asks for a talking rose. He
despairs of satisfying her request but at long last comes across a beautiful castle. Hearing voices from
within, he enters and finds himself in a courtyard with a rose bush full of talking flowers. He picks one
for his daughter, whereupon a white wolf falls upon him and threatens to kill him for taking one of his
roses. Upon hearing of the man’s daughter, however, the wolf relents and lets the man go, and take the
rose, on condition that he brings back to him the first person he meets on his return. This is indeed his
youngest daughter, whom he duly takes back to the wolf. The wolf says he has no intention of harming
them: he tells them that he is a fairy condemned to be a wolf by day, but that everything will turn out
well for them if they keep his secret. He gives them a splendid dinner and by night shows himself to
them in the form of a handsome lord. He tells the girl he will marry her and she will be queen of his
castle. The father returns home, whereupon his wife and other daughters press him for the where­
abouts of the girl. He eventually tells them, with the result that one of the elder daughters goes to visit
her and demands to know what is going on. Eventually she reveals her lord’s secret, at which point she
hears a terrible howl and the white wolf comes to her only to fall dead at her feet. See Cosquin 1887:ii,
215–17 (no. lxiii), with commentary at 217–30.
60 For Marcellus of Side and his medical poem, see Metzger 2011:150–2.
61 Burkert 1983a:89, Bremmer 2007b:72 and Metzger 2011:161–2 find the significance of February
here in the fact that this was the month of the Roman Lupercalia, but the role of wolves in this festival
has been significantly over-egged (see Appendix C). One might, rather, be tempted to find significance
in the Feralia festival, which took place on 21 February: while the name Feralia signifies ‘Festival of
the beasts’, it was in fact a festival of the dead: Ovid Fasti 2.533–70; cf. Frazer 1929 ad loc. (ii, 431–46),
Wiseman 1995b:70–1.
72 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

Such are their symptoms. One must recognize that lycanthropy is a form of mel-
ancholia. You will treat it by opening a vein at the time of its manifestation and
draining the blood until the point of fainting. Then feed the patient with food
conducive to good humours. He is to be given sweet baths. After that, using the

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

whey of the milk, cleanse him over three days with the gourd-medicine of Rufus
or Archigenes or Justus. Repeat this a second and third time after intervals. After
the purifications one should use the antidote to viper bites. Take the other meas-
ures too prescribed earlier for melancholia. As evening arrives and the disease
manifests itself, apply to the head the lotions that usually induce sleep and
anoint the nostrils with scents of this sort and opium. Occasionally supply sleep-
inducing drinks too.62 Aëtius of Amida Libri medicinales 6.11

Let us note also the words of the eleventh-century ad Psellus:

Lycanthropy is a matter of black bile. It is absolute misanthropy. You will

know a man that has fallen into it because you will see him running around
tombs by night, pale, dejected, dried up, apathetic.
Psellus Ponema iatrikon 837–4163

In fact the second passage quoted here is ultimately derivative of the first.64 We
are told baldly that sufferers of lycanthropy go about in imitation of wolves in all
respects, but beyond this there is little attempt to describe precisely how their
symptoms relate to wolves or werewolves. Indeed, the most significant point of
contact with werewolves would seem to be, precisely, the sufferers’ propensity to
hang around tombs. If this is indeed the principal justification for designating
their disease lycanthropy, then it at least indicates that the association between
werewolves, ghosts, and their haunts was a fundamental one. A lesser point of
contact with wolves or werewolves might be the harrying dogs: as we saw in the
previous chapter, Tibullus’ witch is to be harried by dogs upon transformation
into a wolf.65
This venerable tradition of, as it were, medical lycanthropy continued into the
twentieth century, or at any rate was recreated then. In Old Calabria Norman

62 For this text see Metzger 2011:152–64 63 Cf. Metzger 2011:256–7.

64 Marcellus’ words are also refracted at Oribasius Synopsis 8.9 (late 4th c. ad; a less accurate repre-
sentation of the original text than Aëtius’; cf. Photius Bibliotheca cod. 218); Paul of Aegina 3.16 (7th c.
ad; dependent upon Oribasius); Paul Nicaeus 24 (7th–9th c. ad; in turn dependent upon Paul of
Aegina). Psellus is similarly dependent upon Paul of Aegina. Note also Joannes Actuarius On
Diagnosis 1.35 (c. ad 1300) and anon. Περὶ λυκανθρωπίας (probably post-Paul Nicaeus; at
Ideler 1842:ii, 282). See above all Metzger 2011:150–70, 256–9 and 2012:137–42, 150–3; cf. also
Roscher 1897, Summers 1933:38–51, Eckels 1937:45–8, Burkert 1983a:89, Gordon 2015:31. For a
medieval Arabic reflex of Greek medical lycanthropy see Ullmann 1976.
65 Tibullus 1.5.43–60; cf. Gilgamesh (Standard Version) vi.58–63, where the herdsman transformed
into a wolf by Ishtar is harried by his own dogs (also discussed in Chapter 1).
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 73

Douglas reports an incident as he was driving by night in the summer of 1911

from Spezzano to Vaccariza:

We passed a solitary man, walking swiftly, with bowed head. What was he

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

doing there?
‘Lupomanaro,’ said the driver.
A werewolf . . .
I had always hoped to meet with a werewolf on his nocturnal rambles, and now
my wish was gratified. Douglas 1915:17666

Omnia in peiora ruunt. The modern psychiatric literature devoted to medical

lycanthropy as a going concern appears by and large to lack scientific rigour—
admittedly to one without medical training.67 When contemporary patients pre-
sent themselves to the authorities with the claim of being werewolves, their
primary source of inspiration transpires to be the cinema.68

Pausanias’ Hero of Temesa

Pausanias’ intriguing (later second-century ad) tale of the Hero of Temesa, the
wolfskin-sporting ghost of Polites, should feature next here in our chronological
review: indeed, it is the star witness for the association between werewolves and
ghosts in the ancient world. But, given both its complications and its points of
interest, discussion of it is deferred to a dedicated chapter, Chapter 5.69 We will,
however, need to make comparative reference to it in the section immediately
following.

Philostratus’ Dog-demon of Ephesus

In his Life of Apollonius, written after ad 217, perhaps with some irony, Philostratus
ascribes many miracles to the sage, the Neo-Pythagorean from Tyana. Amongst
them is the following:

When the plague fell upon the Ephesians, and no defence could be found against
it, they sent to Apollonius, and made him their doctor for the disease. He

66 Douglas 1915:176; cf. Johnston 1932. We will encounter a nineteenth-century medical lycan-
thropy patient in C. R. Maturin’s 1824 novel The Albigenses in Chapter 3.
67 E.g. Coll et al. 1985, Keck et al. 1988, Fahy 1989, Koehler et al. 1990, Blom 2014, Moselhy and
Macmillan 2014; cf. Douglas 1992:1–19.
68 De Blécourt 2015b:19. 69 Pausanias 6.6.7–11.
74 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

thought that this was a trip he could not put off, but on saying ‘Let us go’ he was
already in Ephesus.70 I think he did the same thing as Pythagoras, who contrived
to be at once in both Thurii and Metapontum. Apollonius assembled the
Ephesians and said, ‘Do not worry, for I will put an end to the disease this day.’

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

Saying this, he led all the people into the theatre, where the statue of the Averter
is now sited. There he found what appeared to be an old beggar contriving to
squint. He carried a wallet and morsel of bread in it.71 He was dressed in rags
and had a squalid face. Apollonius grouped the Ephesians around the beggar
and said, ‘Collect as many stones as you can and throw them at this enemy of the
gods.’ The Ephesians were taken aback by this instruction, and thought it terrible
to kill a stranger in such an unfortunate condition. The beggar himself was
beseeching Apollonius and begging for pity, but Apollonius was insistent and
urged the Ephesians to get on with the job and not to let the man go. When
some of the people began to pelt him with stones, the man who had been pre-
tending to be squinting suddenly looked up at them and showed that his eyes
were full of fire.72 The Ephesians then recognized that he was a demon [daimōn]
and so they stoned him to death so thoroughly that they built up a heap of stones
over him. Apollonius waited a little and then asked them to remove the stones
and see what creature they had killed. When they got down to what they thought
was the man they had stoned, he had disappeared, but they saw a dog resem-
bling the Molossian breed in form, but the greatest lion in size. It had been
crushed by the stones and was spitting foam from the side of its mouth, like
those that are rabid [lyttōntes]. The statue of the Averter, that is, Heracles, is set
up in the place in which the apparition/ghost [phasma] was pelted to death.
Philostratus Life of Apollonius 4.10

We may wonder whether it is appropriate to consider a dog entity, such as we

seem in the first instance to have here, in the context of werewolfism.73 But, for
what is it worth, Marcellus Sidetes, and after him Aëtius of Amida, in their treat-
ments of the medical reflex of werewolfism, unselfconsciously identify lycan-
thropy with cynanthropy, the latter being the canine equivalent of the former, as
we have just seen.74 More generally, the Greeks do seem to have recognized the
sometime close affinity between wolves and dogs. Plato notes that wolves are very
similar to dogs, the wildest of animals resembling the tamest of them. Aristotle is
aware that wolves and dogs can interbreed. Diodorus explains that the Egyptians
70 See Chapter 4 for this mysterious detail.
71 πήραν ἔφερε καὶ ἄρτου ἐν αὐτῇ τρύφος.
72 Cf. the case of the mid-nineteenth-century Portuguese werewolf-woman Joana, who was simi-
larly said to have sported fiery eyes. See Latouche 1875:25–34. Further discussion of this tale in
Chapter 3.
73 For dogs in the ancient world generally see Orth 1910, Mentz 1933, Burriss 1935, Scholz 1937,
Hull 1964, Merlen 1971 (unreferenced), Lilja 1976, Bodson 1980, Zaganiaris 1980, Mainoldi 1984,
Phillips and Willcock 1999.
74 Aëtius of Amida Libri medicinales 6.11.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 75

honour wolves because their nature is so similar to that of dogs (for him, seemingly
in all respects), and again he refers to their ability to interbreed.75 The problem of
the extent to which wolves and dogs are the same or different is well articulated
across the range of Aesop’s Fables.76 In some of these the cunning wolf is con-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

trasted with the more stolid dog: wolves attempt to make peace with the sheep, on
condition that they surrender their sheepdog guards;77 the wolf refuses to accept
the dog’s easy meals at the price of wearing his enslaving collar;78 dogs are set on a
wolf to protect goats.79 In another fable the fundamental affinity of the two crea-
tures is assumed: a wolf reared with the sheepdogs ends up filching from the flock
and sharing the meat with the dogs.80 Other fables again turn on the very ambi-
guity of the relationship: the wolves persuade the sheepdogs to betray the flock
and share it with them on the basis of their kinship, but then destroy the dogs
before taking the flock for themselves;81 a dog general compares and contrasts his
dog army with that of the wolf army ranged against him;82 a wolf helps an under-
fed sheepdog to secure better meals from his owner, but once the dog has suc-
ceeded in this he repays the wolf in a half-hearted way which culminates in the
latter’s capture and death.83
Returning to Philostratus’ tale, of all the common dog breeds in the ancient
world the large, fierce mastiff-like Molossians were probably the most lupine,
even when not supernaturally inflated to the size of a lion. And wolves do in any
case lurk just beneath the surface of the Greek text here. The verb utilized to sig-
nify ‘to be rabid’, lyttaō/lyssaō, is derived directly from the word for wolf, lykos
(via *lyki̯aō), and would certainly have been heard and read as such: literally, and
manifestly, ‘to go wolf ’.84
The passage is included in this chapter on the basis that the beggar-dog is some
sort of ghost or revenant, or is akin to such. This may at first seem odd given that

75 Plato Sophist 231a; Aristotle Generation of Animals 2.7, 5.2, History of Animals 6.35, 8.28;
Diodorus 1.88.6; cf. Eckels 1937:13, Mainoldi 1984:193, Buxton 1987:65, 76 n.16, Gordon 2015:27.
Dogs and wolves can and do interbreed both in the wild and domestically (today hybrids are deliber-
ately created to serve as pets). Indeed, all members of the Canis genus are interfertile, with the only
obstacle to interbreeding being the disproportionate sizes of individual animals: Musiani et al.
2010b:3–4, Coppinger et al. 2010:45. The ‘genetic distance tree’ of European wolf and dog populations
reproduced at Wayne 2010:27 (after Luchini et al. 2004) demonstrates that (a) dogs as a group are no
further removed from wolves than different subsets of European wolves are from each other; and (b)
Spanish wolves are particularly close to dogs as a group. Neither archaeologists nor biologists can
decide when dogs were first bred out of wolves, possibly in two separate episodes: guesses range
between c.15,000 BP (‘before present’) and c.40,000 BP; see Spotte 2012:19–32.
76 General discussion of dogs and wolves in the Fables at Mainoldi 1984:201–9.
77 Aesop 153 Perry. 78 Aesop 346 Perry. 79 Aesop 699 Perry.
80 Aesop 267 Perry. 81 Aesop 342 Perry. 82 Aesop 343 Perry
83 Aesop 701 Perry. The perceived similarity between wolves and dogs justifies the inclusion of the
brief Appendix B on the ancient world’s Cynocephali, ‘Dog-heads’.
84 The verb is built on the intermediate noun lyssa, ‘wolf-madness’, <*lyki̯a. See above all
Chantraine 2009 and Beekes 2010 s.v. λύσσα (the latter even going so far as to suggest that lyssa ori­gin­
al­ly signified ‘she-wolf ’ in itself); cf. also Latouche 1875:30, Lincoln 1975, Mainoldi 1984:175–6,
Marcinkowski 2001:20 n.97.
76 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

the entity is seemingly killed within the tale, but some contextual details in the
beggar’s description point strongly to this: the description ‘He was dressed in rags
and had a squalid (auchmērōs) face’85 is suitable enough for a beggar, but it is
particularly appropriate also to the traditional representation of ghosts. The

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

house-haunting ghost faced down by Arignotus in Lucian’s Philopseudes is
described as ‘squalid (auchmēros), dishevelled and blacker than the dark’.86 And
this is how Apuleius describes the ghost or revenant of a woman sent by a witch
to murder the miller in his Metamorphoses:

She was only semi-clothed, with a pitiful piece of patchwork. Her feet were bare
and uncovered. She was yellow like boxwood and foully emaciated. Her unkempt
hair was partially grey and caked in the ashes that had been scattered over it. It
hung down and covered most of her face.
Apuleius Metamorphoses 9.30

Before this, in Euripides’ Orestes, when Orestes had declared himself meta­phor­ic­
al­ly dead, Menelaus had told him, ‘Your squalid (auchmēros) hair has gone wild,
wretched one.’87 Clothing of rags, foul face, and unkempt hair are clearly standard
topoi for ghost descriptions.
The term phasma, applied to the creature, may also of course specifically desig-
nate a ‘ghost’. And there are a great many instances in Greek literature where this
is plainly and simply the case: it is used for, inter alia, the ghost of Orpheus’ wife
Eurydice in the underworld, the ghosts that occupy haunted houses, and the
ghosts of the vengeful dead and the sex-starved.88 But the word admittedly has a
broad and complex semantic field. The long-standing need for a detailed study of
it has at last been addressed by Flaminia Beneventano della Corte in a University
of Siena thesis. The term is a nomen rei actae derived from the verb phainō and so
can designate anything that has been shown. Generally speaking, it can designate

85 ῥάκεσί τε ἠμφίεστο καὶ αὐχμηρῶς εἶχε τοῦ προσώπου.

86 Lucian Philopseudes 31: αὐχμηρὸς καὶ κομήτης καὶ μελάντερος τοῦ ζόφου; cf. Ogden 2007:216,
223 n.40.
87 Euripides Orestes 385–91 (387 cit.).
88 Thus: Euripides Alcestis 1127 (the possibility that Alcestis, delivered from clutches of Death, is
merely a ghost); Plato Symposium 179d (the ghost of Eurydice in the underworld); Philemon Phasma
(the ‘ghost’ comedy adapted by Plautus for his haunted-house play Mostellaria); Menander Phasma
(the ‘ghost’ comedy summarized by Donatus on Terence Eunuch 9, in which a living girl is mistaken
for a ghost); Memnon FGrH/BNJ 434 F1 (the tyrant Clearchus is terrified by the ghosts of those he has
killed); Plutarch Cimon 6 (the ghost of Cleonice harries her murderer, the regent Pausanias), Theseus
35 (the ghost of Theseus appears before the Athenians at Marathon), Moralia 1105e (visions of dead
friends), Lucian Philopseudes 14 (the summoned-up ghost of Alexicles), 15 (ghosts deterred by the
clanking of metal), 16 (exorcism of ghosts), 29 (phasmata associated with daimones and ‘the souls of
the dead’ in a context that implies the three terms to be equivalent), 31 (the house-haunting ghost laid
to rest by Arignotus), Menippus 7 (the ghosts that might harm Menippus as he enters the under-
world); Phlegon of Tralles Mirabilia 1 (the ghost/revenant of Philinnion returns to sleep with her par-
ents’ lodger). Some of these examples are discussed at Beneventano della Corte 2017:79–104.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 77

‘apparition’, ‘spectral appearance’, ‘phantom’, ‘vision’, ‘omen’, ‘monster’, ‘prodigy.’

More specifically, the term is likely to be used in the following contexts: super-
natural entities delivering instructions to human addressees or siring extra­or­din­
ary children; prophetic visions seen in dreams; and ghosts and revenants of all

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

sorts. A more particular use of the term is to designate brightly shining meteoro-
logical or celestial phenomena and Beneventano della Corte proceeds from this
to show the importance of brightness, shiningness, and clarity in almost all
en­tities designated as phasmata, not merely the celestial ones: it is noteworthy
that phasmata visions consisting of fiery weapons and fiery phalluses abound.89
In this regard, the beggar’s fiery eyes again catch our attention.
Philostratus’ own usage of the term phasma unhelpfully spans a spectrum. In
this same text it is used to designate a number of manifestations that are super-
natural but not ghostly as such: Proteus;90 a satyr;91 an entity described as an emp-
ousa and a lamia;92 and another entity described as an empousa tout court (which
is, however, specifically compared to a ‘ghost’, eidōlon, in context).93 But it is also
used to designate the avenging ghost of the Indian Ganges.94 In the same author’s
Heroicus the term is similarly applied both to a manifestation of the goddess
Thetis95 and to the ghost of Protesilaus.96
But perhaps the strongest case for finding intimations of werewolfism and
ghostliness in this episode lies in a certain parallelism between Philostratus’ nar-
rative and Pausanias’ account of the Hero of Temesa, the vengeful ghost that is the
subject of our Chapter 5. In both cases:

· The troublesome entity is (a) presented as displaying lupine–canine charac-

teristics; (b) explicitly described as a ‘demon’; and (c) described as a ghost, if
indeed we may take phasma that way in the Philostratus passage.
· The entity is clothed in a rough fashion: the Ephesian beggar in rags, the
Hero of Temesa in a wolfskin.
· The presence of the entity in itself constitutes a curse to the community, in
this case manifesting itself in plague, while the Hero of Temesa must be pre-
vented from random attacks on his community with annual offerings.
· The deliverer is a man of shamanic powers (cf. Chapter 4). Apollonius was a
great soul-manipulator, as is made clear in the opening section of this

89 Beneventano della Corte 2017 passim. Fiery weapons and phalluses: e.g. Plutarch Romulus 2.4–7;
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4.2.1–2, 5.46.1–3. Beneventano della Corte also examines phasmata as
facilitators of communication between this realm and other realms. Their role in this regard is help-
fully crystallized in the distinction between phasma and deigma (the nomen rei actae derived from
deiknumi, also ‘show’): a phasma opens up a question or a possibility; a deigma determines or con-
firms the answer.
90 Philostratus Apollonius 1.4.   91 Philostratus Apollonius 6.27.
92 Philostratus Apollonius 4.25. 93 Philostratus Apollonius 2.4.
94 Philostratus Apollonius 3.20. 95 Philostratus Heroicus 45.2
96 Philostratus Heroicus 2.4.
78 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

passage, in which he teleports himself and his companions to Ephesus; the

shamanic associations of Euthymus, the deliverer of Temesa, will be dis-
cussed in Chapter 5.
· The theme of stoning is prominent: here the Ephesian beggar-dog is stoned

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

‘to death’; the vengeful ghost of the Temesa story is created when the locals
had stoned the miscreant Polites to death. Pelting with rocks is a striking
token of the technique of pharmakeia, scapegoating.97

The central motif of Philostratus’ tale is saluted (consciously or otherwise) in the

appendix to Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris. Here Bertrand, the were-
wolf, is seemingly buried, after his suicide, in humanoid form. When his coffin is
accidentally opened some years later, it is found to contain only the remains of a dog.
A Christian refraction of a tale of this sort is to be found in the (5th-c. ad?)
Passion of St Trypho. Gordiana, cherished daughter of the emperor Gordian III, is
possessed by a demon (daimōni, pneuma) that ever cries out the name of Trypho
the gooseherd with dread. Troops eventually track this Trypho down to an
obscure Phrygian village and bring him to Rome. Upon arrival he calls the demon
out in the name of Christ and it emerges in the form of a black dog with (NB)
fiery eyes. Trypho compels it to confess its identity—the son of Satan, it tran-
spires—and sends it off to the place of fiery punishment.98 While demons were
often portrayed as black in early Christian thought, the pagans before them had
characteristically conceived of ghosts as black too, as we have just seen in the case
of Lucian’s Philopseudes.99

Later Comparanda

Readers from the Balkans may find much of the preceding material in this chapter
quaint, the association between werewolves and the dead being self-evident, given
that for them the werewolf has effectively morphed into or merged into the vam-
pire. The terms generally in use for the demonic dead—‘vampires’—in the Balkans,
including the Serbo-Croat vukodlak and the Greek vrikolakas, the latter well
known from folklore, are thought to derive from the reconstructed Slavic term
*vьlk, ‘wolf ’, and the South Slavic term dlaka, ‘fleece’. The vrikolakas will still occa-
sionally turn into a wolf, though on the whole his lupine qualities have dissipated,
apart, of course, from his fundamental craving for human blood.100

97 For scapegoating, see Chapter 6.

98 Passio S. Tryphonis 1–2 (BHG no. 1856); for the text see Franchi de’ Cavalieri 1908:45–74
(at pp.45–54) and for the tradition of Trypho’s life see now Macchioro 2019.
99 For the blackness of pagan ghosts see further Chapter 5 n.78. For the early Christian assimila-
tion of demons with black-skinned peoples see, e.g., Boulhoul 1994:286–7 and Verkerk 2001.
100 Lawson 1910:376–412, 385 (cf. 239), Summers 1933:14–18, 146–7, Pasarić 2015:239–42.
For the vrikolakas more generally in modern Greek folklore, see Blum and Blum 1970 esp. 70–6.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 79

This relationship between the werewolf and the vampire is saluted in Bram
Stoker’s Dracula, for which our own Sabine Baring-Gould’s 1865 The Book of
Werewolves was an important source.101 Dracula escapes from the wreck of the
schooner Demeter at Whitby in a form initially identified as that of great dog;102

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

Van Helsing subsequently expresses the view that he had taken the form rather of
a wolf.103 More generally, Dracula’s peculiar affinity for wolves and his power over
them is well evidenced throughout the novel: while masquerading as his own
coachman, he dismisses an encircling pack that gathers to devour Jonathan
Harker;104 the howling of wolves prompts him to observe, ‘Listen to them – the
children of the night. What music they make!’;105 he summons another pack of
wolves to devour a peasant woman who has had the temerity to come to his castle
to complain that he has taken her baby;106 he summons them again as Jonathan
Harker threatens to walk out of his castle;107 he deploys a normally harmless and
genial wolf (‘Bersiker’, that is ‘Berserker’) from London Zoo to break Lucy
Westenra’s garlic-protected window for him, so that he may enter it in the form of
a bat;108 finally, he summons wolves through the snow to his aid as Van Helsing’s
team converges on the gypsy party escorting his coffin; they slink away again
once he is destroyed.109 Dracula’s most striking personal manifestation in wolf
form was lost from an early draft of the novel, only to be published posthumously
by Stoker’s widow in the form of the atmospheric short story ‘Dracula’s Guest’.110
In this Jonathan Harker, while en route to Dracula’s castle (probably situated in
Austrian Styria at this point), finds himself wandering in an abandoned cemetery
outside Munich on Walpurgis night. He is saved from its vampire occupants, who
rise from their graves en masse, and from a beautiful female vampire in particu-
lar, the Countess Dolingen of Gratz, by a great wolf that lies on his chest, a wolf
that sports the fiery eyes we associate with the Count in the novel.111 Soldiers
arrive to chase it off, and they subsequently report that it was ‘a wolf – and yet not

101 The notes Stoker took from Baring-Gould are reproduced in facsimile at Eighteen-Bisang and
Miller 2013:128–31; cf. 284.
102 Ch. 8, Cutting from The Dailygraph, 8 August. In Stoker’s notes for the novel, Dracula had been
projected to appear at Whitby first as a man, then as a wolf, and then as a flying creature of some sort:
Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 2013:142.
103 Ch. 18, Mina Harker’s Journal, 30 Sept.; ch. 26, MH’s Memorandum, 30.
104 Ch.1, Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 5 May; ch. 3, JH’s Journal, 8, 16 May.
105 Ch. 2, JH’s Journal, 5 May; the line is faithfully and famously reproduced by Bela Lugosi in the
1931 Universal Dracula.
106 Ch, 4, JH’s Journal, 24 June. 107 Ch. 4, JH’s Journal, 29 June.
108 Ch. 11, The Pall Mall Gazette, 18 Sept., Memorandum left by Lucy Westenra, 17 Sept. Stoker
evidently found the name ‘Berserker’ appropriate for a wolf after perusing Baring-Gould 1865:34–42;
cf. Eighteen-Bisang and Miller 2013:128–9.
109 Ch. 27, MH’s Journal, 6 Nov.; cf., further, ch. 15, Note left by Van Helsing, 27 Sept.; ch. 18, MH’s
Journal, 30 Sept.; ch. 19, JH’s Journal, 1 Oct.
110 Stoker 1914. The status of this literary fragment is no longer in doubt: Eighteen-Bisang and
Miller 2013:278–80.
111 Ch. 2, JH’s Journal, 8 May; ch. 3, JH’s Journal, 16 May; ch. 4, JH’s Journal, 28 May, 30 June.
80 The Werewolf in the Ancient World

a wolf ’, and that it has disappeared amongst the tombs; their bullets have no effect
on the creature, since they are not ‘sacred’ ones. We are left to infer that the wolf
was none other than Dracula himself in lupine form, protecting his important
guest from his lesser rivals.112

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

Finally, I indulge myself with another modern British tale. In his 1912 book
Werwolves [sic] Elliott O’Donnell gives us a tale of werewolfism set in Cumberland,
supposedly reported to him the previous year. The telling of the story is clearly
O’Donnell’s own; one suspects the formulation of it to be equally so. According to
this, the Andersons’ newly built house in the country was long beset by nocturnal
lupine howlings, causing the servants to depart. Eventually on Christmas night
the family encountered in the children’s bedroom a huge, terrifying, nude grey
form with a wolf ’s head, which disappeared when the mother brought a candle
into the room. Bones were subsequently discovered in a cave in the hills behind
the house: a human skeleton without a head, together with a wolf ’s skull. These
were burned, and the hauntings duly ceased.113 Many will recognize the bones of
the ancient world’s favourite haunted-house story here.114

Conclusion

This chapter has traced the persistent association between werewolves, ghosts,
and the dead in the ancient world. There is a weak basis for thinking that a gen-
eral association obtained between wolves tout court and the dead in the Greek
world, but a stronger one for thinking that such an association did indeed obtain
in the Italian world, given that the Etruscan reflex of Hades, Aita/Calu, could
sport a wolfskin, and that wolves come to serve as the emissaries of Dis in the
aetiological myth of the Hirpi Sorani. As to werewolves proper, Herodotus’ appli-
cation of the word goētes to his werewolf Neuri, in addition to saluting their abil-
ity to transmute their form, probably also implies that they engaged in ghost or
soul manipulation. Virgil’s werewolf Moeris is a raiser of ghosts. Petronius’ were-
wolf story is richly decked out with the imagery of ghosts and the underworld.
Marcellus of Side’s medical ‘lycanthropes’, sufferers from the disease of ‘lycan-
thropy’, roll around in graveyards, and indeed it would appear to be on the basis
of this symptom in particular that the victims of the disease are considered to be
werewolves: their projection as such is essentially metaphorical, and they should
not be seen as the origin point or the key to ancient werewolfism. Pausanias’ Hero
of Temesa is a ghost or a revenant dressed in a wolfskin, while Philostratus’

112 The episode in a sense duplicates those of the novel in which Dracula warns his three brides to
stay away from Harker: ch. 3, JH’s Journal, May 16; ch. 4, JH’s Journal, 29 June.
113 O’Donnell 1912:97–103; Summers 1933:189–91, Frost 1973:31; Rini 1929:83 notes the Italian
superstition that those born on Christmas night become werewolves.
114 Discussed, with references, in Chapter 4.
 Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead 81

pestilential beggar of Ephesus, revealed to be a terrible dog in his true form, is

also projected as some sort of ghost or revenant. As with the thematic association
between werewolves and witches discussed in the previous chapter, I shall have
more to say about the significance of the thematic association between were-

Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/book/33458/chapter/287731079 by University of Wyoming Libraries user on 05 May 2023

wolves and ghosts too in the general Conclusion. In the meantime, the establish-
ment of the association between werewolves and ghosts importantly paves the
way for Chapter 4’s investigation into the association between werewolves and the
world of the soul-projecting shaman figures.