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Strix (mythology)
The strix (plural striges or strixes), in the mythology of classical antiquity, was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood. It also referred to witches and related malevolent folkloric beings.
The strix is described as a large-headed bird with transfixed eyes, rapacious beak, greyish white wings, and hooked claws in Ovid's Fasti. This is the only thorough description of the strix in Classical literature. Elsewhere, it is described as being dark-colored.
The strīx (στρίξ, στριγός) was a nocturnally crying creature which positioned its feet upwards and head below, according to a pre-300 BC Greek origin myth. It is probably meant to be (and translated as) an owl, but is highly suggestive of a bat which hangs upside-down.
The strix in later folklore was a bird which squirted milk upon the lips of (human) infants. Pliny in his Natural History dismissed this as nonsense and remarked it was impossible to establish what bird was meant by this. The same habit, in which the strix lactates foul-smelling milk onto an infant's lips is mentioned by Titinius, who noted the placement of garlic on the infant was the prescribed amulet to ward against it.
In the case of Ovid's striges, they threatened to do more harm than that. They were said to disembowel an infant and feed on its blood. Ovid allows the possibilities of the striges being birds of nature, or products of magic, or transformations by witches using magical incantations.
According to Antoninus Liberalis's Metamorphoses, the strīx (στρίξ) was a metamorphosis of Polyphonte; she and her bear-like sons Agrios and Oreios were transformed into birds as punishment for their cannibalism. Here the strix is described as (a bird) "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 tale only survives in the form as recorded by Antonius who flourished 100–300 AD, but it preserved an older tale from the lost Ornithologia by Boios, dated to before the end of 4th century BC.
In this Greek myth, the ill-omened strīx herself did not perpetrate harm on humans. But one paper suggests guilt by association with her sons, and seeks to reconstruct an ancient Greek belief in the man-eating strīx dating back to this age (4th century BC). In an opposing view, one study failed to find the ancient Greeks subscribing to the strīx as a "terror" to mankind, but noted a widespread belief in Italy that it was a "bloodthirsty monster in bird form." This study surmises that the Greeks later borrowed the concept of strix as witches, a concept articulated in Ovid, and one scholar estimates the Greeks adopted the strix as "child-murdering horrors" by the "last centuries BC". The modern Greek form στρίγλα may betray an influence of a Latin diminutive strigula.
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Strix (mythology)
The strix (plural striges or strixes), in the mythology of classical antiquity, was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood. It also referred to witches and related malevolent folkloric beings.
The strix is described as a large-headed bird with transfixed eyes, rapacious beak, greyish white wings, and hooked claws in Ovid's Fasti. This is the only thorough description of the strix in Classical literature. Elsewhere, it is described as being dark-colored.
The strīx (στρίξ, στριγός) was a nocturnally crying creature which positioned its feet upwards and head below, according to a pre-300 BC Greek origin myth. It is probably meant to be (and translated as) an owl, but is highly suggestive of a bat which hangs upside-down.
The strix in later folklore was a bird which squirted milk upon the lips of (human) infants. Pliny in his Natural History dismissed this as nonsense and remarked it was impossible to establish what bird was meant by this. The same habit, in which the strix lactates foul-smelling milk onto an infant's lips is mentioned by Titinius, who noted the placement of garlic on the infant was the prescribed amulet to ward against it.
In the case of Ovid's striges, they threatened to do more harm than that. They were said to disembowel an infant and feed on its blood. Ovid allows the possibilities of the striges being birds of nature, or products of magic, or transformations by witches using magical incantations.
According to Antoninus Liberalis's Metamorphoses, the strīx (στρίξ) was a metamorphosis of Polyphonte; she and her bear-like sons Agrios and Oreios were transformed into birds as punishment for their cannibalism. Here the strix is described as (a bird) "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 tale only survives in the form as recorded by Antonius who flourished 100–300 AD, but it preserved an older tale from the lost Ornithologia by Boios, dated to before the end of 4th century BC.
In this Greek myth, the ill-omened strīx herself did not perpetrate harm on humans. But one paper suggests guilt by association with her sons, and seeks to reconstruct an ancient Greek belief in the man-eating strīx dating back to this age (4th century BC). In an opposing view, one study failed to find the ancient Greeks subscribing to the strīx as a "terror" to mankind, but noted a widespread belief in Italy that it was a "bloodthirsty monster in bird form." This study surmises that the Greeks later borrowed the concept of strix as witches, a concept articulated in Ovid, and one scholar estimates the Greeks adopted the strix as "child-murdering horrors" by the "last centuries BC". The modern Greek form στρίγλα may betray an influence of a Latin diminutive strigula.