A
strix (pl.
striges or
strixes), occasionally corrupted to
stirgeIn the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the stirge is a mosquito-like magical beast and a classic D&D monster.-Publication history:...
, was an
Ancient RomanAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
legendary creatureA legendary creature is a mythological or folkloric creature .-Description:Some creatures, such as the dragon and griffin, have their origin in traditional mythology and have been believed to be real creatures...
, usually described as a nocturnal bird of ill omen that fed on human flesh and blood, like a
vampireVampires are legendary creatures said to subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, generally by drinking their blood. Although typically described as undead, some minor traditions believed in vampires that were living people....
. Unlike later vampires, it was not a revenant—a risen corpse—but the product of
metamorphosisShapeshifting is a common theme in mythology and folklore, as well as in science fiction and fantasy. In its broadest sense, it is when a being undergoes a transformation. Commonly the transformation is purposeful, and not a curse or spell...
. The name is Greek in origin and means "
owlThe Owls are the order Strigiformes, comprising 200 birds of prey, species. Most are solitary, and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, though a few species specialize in hunting fish. They are found in all regions of the Earth except...
", with which bird it is usually identified (the name of the genus
StrixStrix is a genus of owls. They belong to the typical owl family Strigidae, one of the two generally accepted living families of owls, with the other being the barn-owls . Common names are earless owls or wood-owls though they are not the only owls without ear tufts, and "wood owl" is also used as a...
follows this meaning).
The earliest recorded tale of the strix is from the lost
Ornithologia of the Greek author
BoiosThe obscure Boeus was a Greek grammarian and mythographer, remembered chiefly as the author of a lost work on the transformations of mythic figures into birds, his Ornithogonia, which was translated into Latin by Aemilius Macer, a friend of Ovid, who was the author of the most familiar such...
, which is partially preserved in
Antoninus LiberalisAntoninus Liberalis was an Ancient Greek grammarian who probably flourished between AD 100 and 300.His only surviving work is the Metamorphoses, , a collection of forty-one very briefly summarised tales about mythical metamorphoses effected by offended deities, unique in that they are...
's
Metamorphoses.
A
strix (pl.
striges or
strixes), occasionally corrupted to
stirgeIn the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the stirge is a mosquito-like magical beast and a classic D&D monster.-Publication history:...
, was an
Ancient RomanAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
legendary creatureA legendary creature is a mythological or folkloric creature .-Description:Some creatures, such as the dragon and griffin, have their origin in traditional mythology and have been believed to be real creatures...
, usually described as a nocturnal bird of ill omen that fed on human flesh and blood, like a
vampireVampires are legendary creatures said to subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, generally by drinking their blood. Although typically described as undead, some minor traditions believed in vampires that were living people....
. Unlike later vampires, it was not a revenant—a risen corpse—but the product of
metamorphosisShapeshifting is a common theme in mythology and folklore, as well as in science fiction and fantasy. In its broadest sense, it is when a being undergoes a transformation. Commonly the transformation is purposeful, and not a curse or spell...
. The name is Greek in origin and means "
owlThe Owls are the order Strigiformes, comprising 200 birds of prey, species. Most are solitary, and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, though a few species specialize in hunting fish. They are found in all regions of the Earth except...
", with which bird it is usually identified (the name of the genus
StrixStrix is a genus of owls. They belong to the typical owl family Strigidae, one of the two generally accepted living families of owls, with the other being the barn-owls . Common names are earless owls or wood-owls though they are not the only owls without ear tufts, and "wood owl" is also used as a...
follows this meaning).
Classical stories
The earliest recorded tale of the strix is from the lost
Ornithologia of the Greek author
BoiosThe obscure Boeus was a Greek grammarian and mythographer, remembered chiefly as the author of a lost work on the transformations of mythic figures into birds, his Ornithogonia, which was translated into Latin by Aemilius Macer, a friend of Ovid, who was the author of the most familiar such...
, which is partially preserved in
Antoninus LiberalisAntoninus Liberalis was an Ancient Greek grammarian who probably flourished between AD 100 and 300.His only surviving work is the Metamorphoses, , a collection of forty-one very briefly summarised tales about mythical metamorphoses effected by offended deities, unique in that they are...
's
Metamorphoses. This tells the story of
PolyphontePolyphonte was a woman in Greek Mythology who worshipped Aphrodite until she was ordered by the goddess to fall in love. Afraid, Polyphonte became a chaste follower of Artemis. Aphrodite angrily made the woman fall in love with a bear, resulting in Artemis' hatred, and the birth of two half-bear,...
and her two sons Agrios and Oreios
(their father being a wild bear), who were punished for their cannibalism, like Lycaon, by being transformed into wild animals. Polyphonte became a strix "that cries by night, without food or drink, with head below and tips of feet above, a harbinger of war and civil strife to men". The first Latin allusion is in
PlautusTitus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...
's
PseudolusPseudolus is a play by the ancient Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. It is one of the earliest examples of Roman literature. The play begins with the shortest prologue of any of the known plays of Plautus, though it is not known whether Plautus wrote this prologue himself or if it was added...
, dated to
191 BC-Roman Republic:* The Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio and Cato the Elder cut the Seleucid king Antiochus III off from his reinforcements in Thrace and outflank his position at the pass of Thermopylae in the Battle of Thermopylae...
, in which a cook, describing the cuisine of his inferiors, compares its action to that of the
striges—i.e., disemboweling a hapless victim.
HoraceThis article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:Born in the small town of Venusia in the border region between Apulia and Lucania...
, in his
Epodes, makes the strix's magical properties clear: its feathers are an ingredient in a love potion.
Seneca the YoungerLucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
, in his
Hercules Furens, shows the
striges dwelling on the outskirts of
TartarusIn classic mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received...
.
OvidPublius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who wrote about love, seduction, and mythological transformation....
tells the story of
striges attacking the legendary king
ProcasIn Roman mythology, King Procas of Alba Longa was the father of Amulius and Numitor....
in his cradle, and how they were warded off with
arbutusArbutus is a genus of at least 14 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Mediterranean, western Europe, and North America....
and placated with the meat of pigs, as an explanation for the custom of eating beans and bacon on the
KalendsThe Calends , correspond to the first days of each month of the Roman calendar. The Romans assigned these calends to the first day of the month, signifying the start of the new moon cycle...
of June.
Though descriptions abound, the concept of the strix was nonetheless vague.
PlinyGaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an author, naturalist, and natural philosopher as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, in his
Natural History, confesses little knowledge of them; he knows that their name was once used as a curse, but beyond that he can only aver that the tales of them nursing their young must be false, since no bird except the
batBats are flying mammals in the order Chiroptera . The forelimbs of bats are webbed and developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums and colugos, glide rather than...
suckled its children.
Medieval
The legend of the strix survived into the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
, as recorded in
IsidoreSaint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
's
EtymologiaeEtymologiae is an encyclopedia compiled byIsidore of Seville towards the end of his life, at the urging of his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa, to whom Isidore, at the end of his life, sent his codex inemendatus , which seems to have begun circulating before Braulio was able to revise it,...
, and gave both name and attributes to the
strigă—the name of a Romanian imaginary evil feminine being (also the name of the Common Barn Owl and of the
Death's-head HawkmothThe name Death's-head Hawkmoth refers to any one of the three species of moth in the genus Acherontia. The former species is primarily found in Europe, the latter two are Asian, and most uses of the common name refer to the European species...
),
strigoaică—the name of the Romanian witch,
strigoiIn Romanian mythology, strigoi are the troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave. Though some strigoi can be living people with certain magical properties, the strigoi vii...
—the Romanian vampire, and to the
stregaStregheria is the term used to describe Italian witchcraft, and is also used to refer to a neopagan witchcraft-based religion originating from Italy. Stregheria is sometimes referred to as La Vecchia Religione or the Strega tradition...
, the Italian witch. The Romanian
striga was further borrowed into Albanian (
shtrigaThe Shtriga , in Albanian folklore, was a vampiric witch that would suck the blood of infants at night while they slept, and would then turn into a flying insect...
) (via Macedo-Romanians) and Polish
StrzygaA strzyga is a kind of vampire in Slavic folklore. While still alive, the strzyga has two hearts and two souls, as well as two sets of teeth . When such a person dies, only one soul gets passed on, and the other soul causes the deceased strzyga to come alive and prey upon other living beings...
(via
GoralsThe Gorale are a group of indigenous people found along southern Poland, northern Slovakia, and in the region of Cieszyn Silesia in the Czech Republic...
).
See also
- Lamia
In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon. While the word lamia literally means large shark in Greek, Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet , referring to her habit of devouring children.Some accounts say she...
- Lilith
Lilith is a female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 4000 BC...
- Strigoi
In Romanian mythology, strigoi are the troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave. Though some strigoi can be living people with certain magical properties, the strigoi vii...
- Vampires in popular culture#Strix