| Empusa | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Other Names |
Empusa, Empousa |
|
First Appearance |
Greek Myth |
|
Created by |
Greek Myth |
Origin[]
Empusa is a shape-shifting female being in Greek mythology, said to possess a single leg of copper, commanded by Hecate, whose precise nature is obscure. In Late Antiquity, the empousae have been described as a category of phantoms or spectres, equated with the lamia and mormolykeia, thought to seduce and feed on young men.
The Empusa has been defined in the Sudas and by Crates of Mallus as a "demonic phantom" with shape-shifting abilities. Thus in Aristophane's plays she is said to change appearance from various beasts to a woman.
The Empusa is also said to be one-legged, namely, having one brass leg, or a donkey's leg, thus being known by the epithets Onokole and Onoskelis which they mean "Donkey-footed". A folk etymology construes the name to mean "one-footed".
In Aristophanes's comedy The Frogs, an Empusa appears before Dionysus and his slave Xanthias on their way to the underworld, although this may be the slave's practical joke to frighten his master. Xanthius thus sees (or pretends to see) the empousa transform into a bull, a mule, a beautiful woman, and a dog. The slave also reassures that the being indeed had one brass (copper) leg, and another leg of cow dung besides.
The Empusa was a being sent by Hecate, or was Hecate herself, according to a fragment of Aristophanes's lost play Tagenistae ("Men of the Frying-pan"), as preserved in the Venetus.
By the Late Antiquity in Greece, this became a category of beings, designated as empusai (Lat. empusae) in the plural. It came to be believed that the spectre preyed on young men for seduction and for food.
According to the 1st-century Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the empousa is a phantom (phasma) that took on the appearance of an attractive woman and seduced a young philosophy student in order eventually to devour him. In a different passage of the same work, when Apollonius was journeying from Persia to India, he encountered an empousa, hurling insults at it, coaxing his fellow travelers to join him, whereby it ran and hid, uttering high-pitched screams.
An empousa was also known to others as lamia or mormolyke. This empousa confessed it was fattening up the student she targeted to feed on him, and that she especially craved young men for the freshness and purity of their blood, prompting an interpretation as blood-sucking vampire by Smith′s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849).
Empusa is a character in Faust, Part Two by Goethe. She appears during the Classical Walpurgis Night as Mephisto is being lured by the Lamiae. She refers to herself as cousin to Mephisto because she has a donkey's foot and he has a horse's.
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
All published appearances of Empusa from before January 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.
Some notable works are listed below:
- The Frogs
- Ecclesiazusae
- Life of Apollonius of Tyana
- Tagenista
- Smith′s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1849)
- Tomlinson
- Faust, Part Two by Goethe
Notes[]
- Empusa is the name of the ship used by Count Orlok to travel to Wisborg in F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu (1922).
- There is a genus of praying mantis in the family Empusidae named after the Empusa. They are plant-mimicking mantises and are ambush predators, with mouth-parts adapted to feeding on other insects and small animals.