The Werewolves of Arcadia

This chapter separates the ancient data on the werewolves of Mt Lykaion into three categories: (1) that bearing on the elaborate complex of aetiological myths about Lykaon himself and his human sacrifice, the bulk of which is surprisingly late; (2) that bearing upon the historical Anthid rite associated with the Lykaia festival, a rite of maturation with affinities to such rites known from other Greek cities; and (3) that bearing upon a traditional tale in which Damarchus was transformed into a wolf at the Lykaia festival. The data in the latter two categories is heavily and confusingly concatenated and must be disentangled. When the two data-sets are appropriately disaggregated, both the rite and the traditional tale become easier to make sense of. We can now see that those performing the Anthid rite are (supposedly) transformed into wolves not by eating human flesh, but simply by virtue of being chosen by lot or, more immediately, by the act of doffing their clothes and swimming across a pool. After a period doubtless equivalent to one or two years patrolling the wilderness (under light arms?), they return across the pool and recover their clothes, and with them their humanity. And we can now see that the Damarchus tale described not one performer of the Anthid rite amongst others, but an avowedly exceptional set of events, events explicitly presented as another ‘myth.’ This story found its home amongst a distinctive suite of supernatural stories attaching to the outstanding athletes of archaic Greece.

The Demon in a Wolfskin

This chapter has investigates the case of the wolfskin-wearing Hero of Temesa, the vengeful ghost-demon of Odysseus’ crewman Polites. It is argued that the figure should be viewed as a werewolf amongst other ancient werewolves. It is important to disaggregate the various accounts of the Hero and to differentiate between them, including the two offered side-by-side by Pausanias, the first a narrative, the second an exposition of an image. Both of these accounts align in an informative way with a productive story-type in which champions deliver victims from a usually serpentine monster. Careful analysis of Pausanias’ description of the picture in the light of the story-type exposes the fact that it plays with a rather different cast-list from that of Pausanias’ narrative, one in which the role of the athlete-champion Euthymus is actually taken by the river Kalabros and the role of the victim is taken not by a girl, but by the youth Sybaris. As to the comparative examples of the story-type, the picture-description aligns particularly well with Antoninus Liberalis’ tale of the delivery of the youth Alcyoneus from the Lamia-Sybaris monster of Delphi by Eurybatus, descendant of the river Axius. In both cases the monster is seemingly transformed into a spring after its demise.

The Werewolf, Inside and Out

Ancient werewolf thinking was strongly articulated in accordance with an axis between an inside and an outside, in three ways. First, the werewolf was often understood as a combination of an outer carapace and an inner core: more often the human element formed the carapace, and the lupine element the core, but the opposite arrangement could also obtain. Usually the humanoid carapace was identified, awkwardly, with the werewolf’s human clothing, and the wolf was revealed once this was shed; but sometimes, perhaps, the wolf could be more deeply buried within, as in the cases of those, like Aristomenes, that boasted a hairy heart. The inner and outer form could be pinned together, as it were, by an identifying wound; it is also possible that the belief that a wound could force a werewolf back into human form existed already in the ancient world. Secondly, a werewolf transformation, in either direction, could be effected by the taking of a foodstuff within the body: a man could be transformed into a werewolf by eating an (enchanted?) piece of bread, or the food most appropriate to a wolf, human flesh; he could be transformed back into a man either by abstinence from human flesh or by the equal-and-opposite process of eating a wolf’s heart. And, thirdly, it was the impulse of the werewolf, when transformed from man to wolf, to make a bolt from the inner places of humanity and civilisation for the outer places of the wilderness and the forest.

The Curse of the Werewolf

This chapter traces the persistent association between werewolves on the one hand and witches and sorcerers on the other in the ancient world (and does same, in a brief way, for the earliest medieval werewolf tales). The Homeric Circe’s wolves should be understood as men transformed by the witch. Despite some modern claims, this was the position of the Odyssey itself, as well as the subsequent ancient tradition. Herodotus’ treatment of the Neuri not only asserts that they are sorcerers that turn themselves into wolves, but also implies that transformation into a wolf is a thing more generally characteristic of sorcerers. Like the Neuri, Virgil’s (Egyptian?) Moeris is projected as a sorcerer that specialises in turning himself into a wolf. Imperial Latin literature provides us with examples of individual witch-figures transforming into wolves, notably Tibullus’ bawd-witch and Propertius’ Acanthis, but, beyond this, there seems to have been a set of thematic associations between werewolfism and the terrible strix-witches. It may have been thought, in particular, that they had a propensity to transform themselves not only into child-stealing and child-maiming screech-owls or screech-owl-like creatures, but also into wolves. The notion that werewolfism could sometimes be effected by a divine curse, as in the Arcadian traditions and as in Aesop’s fable, was perhaps a variation or extension of the more typical and established idea that it could proceed from the cursing of a witch or a sorcerer.

Introduction

After laying out, by way of example, the fullest and richest of the ancient world’s werewolf stories, that at Petronius Satyricon 61-2, the Introduction lays out the book’s principal arguments: that in antiquity werewolves participated in a common story-world with witches, ghosts, demons and soul-flyers; that the comparison of medieval werewolf tales can be used to fill gaps in our knowledge of that story-world; and that it was such story-telling – as opposed to rites of passage – that took primacy in the ancient world’s general conceptualisation of the werewolf. Also provided here are definitions of terms and brief reviews of scholarship, and a discussion of why the wolf should be selected as the animal of transformation.

Conclusion

The Conclusion lists, on the basis of the foregoing chapters, the werewolf stories that are or may be recoverable from the ancient world before going on to discuss the sorts of context in which such stories may have been told: at dinners or symposia, on the road, in inns, in sanctuaries?

Werewolves and Projected Souls

This chapter argues that the ideas of soul-projection so strongly associated with werewolfism in the medieval and early modern periods were already associated with it in the ancient world. This notion is more or less explicitly articulated by Augustine, but long before him there obtained a striking parallel between werewolf narratives (in which the werewolf off on his adventures leaves behind the human shell constituted by his clothes and must keep them secure, so that he can don them again to retrieve his human form), and the ‘Greek shaman’ narratives (in which the soul-projector must keep his catatonic human body secure as he sends his soul off on his adventures, so that the soul can reanimate it again and he can continue his physical life in the world). Petronius’ intriguingly complex werewolf narrative, when taken with other evidence, presupposes the existence already in antiquity of other werewolf narratives broadly along the lines of Marie de France’s Bisclavret in which a werewolf, perhaps an innkeeper, is stranded in lupine form when his clothes are stolen by his unfaithful wife.

Werewolves, Ghosts, and the Dead

This chapter traces the persistent association between werewolves, ghosts and the dead in the ancient world. As to werewolves proper, Herodotus’ application of the word goētes to his werewolf Neuri, in addition to saluting their ability 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’ werewolf story is richly decked out with the imagery of ghosts and the underworld. Marcellus of Side’s medical ‘lycanthropes’ 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, whilst Philostratus’ pestilential beggar of Ephesus, revealed to be a terrible dog in his true form, is also projected as some sort of ghost or revenant.