lamia

Lamia is a figure from Greek mythology who later appears in folklore as a nocturnal demon. In the oldest accounts, she is described as a Libyan queen who was said to be a lover of Zeus and to have borne him children. Hera’s jealousy punished Lamia, and in many traditions she is transformed into a night-dwelling monster who preys on children. Some depictions give her a serpentine or partially serpentine form, enhancing her monstrous profile.

From antiquity onward, lamiai (the plural) are described as creatures that haunt the night and target the vulnerable, especially children and sometimes young adults. They are said to lure victims with beauty or misused charm and to drain their life-force or blood, sometimes assuming attractive human disguises to approach them. The lamia is not universally depicted as undead, but the figure often shares traits with later vampire and succubus traditions.

Cultural influence of the Lamia extends into literature, art, and popular culture. The figure appears in poetry, prose, and fantasy as a shapeshifting or vampiric demon, and it has been used to symbolize dangerous female seduction, maternal fear, or punitive mythic forces. John Keats’s poem Lamia (1819) is one notable literary reworking of the myth, and the name continues to appear in modern horror and fantasy media as a archetype of a predatory female entity.

In scholarly terms, Lamia is treated as a mythic figure that embodies themes of jealousy, punishment, and the fear of child loss, while also functioning as a flexible symbol in the evolution of nocturnal demon lore across Greek and Roman-inspired traditions.