Strix (mythology)

:"Stryx" redirects here. This is also an incorrect spelling of the true owl genus "Strix. A strix (pl. striges or strixes), occasionally corrupted to stirge, was an Ancient Roman legendary creature, usually described as a nocturnal bird of ill omen that fed on human flesh and blood, like a vampire. Unlike later vampires, it was not a revenant—a risen corpse—but the product of metamorphosis. The name is Greek in origin and means "owl", with which bird it is usually identified (the name of the genus "Strix" follows this meaning).

Classical stories

The earliest recorded tale of the strix is from the lost "Ornithologia" of the Greek author Boios, which is partially preserved in Antoninus Liberalis's "Metamorphoses". This tells the story of Polyphonte 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". [Translation by Oliphant, pp. 133–134.] The first Latin allusion is in Plautus's "Pseudolus", [ [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Pl.+Ps.+790 Pseudolus 819] ] dated to 191 BC, in which a cook, describing the cuisine of his inferiors, compares its action to that of the "striges"—i.e., disemboweling a hapless victim. Horace, in his "Epodes", makes the strix's magical properties clear: its feathers are an ingredient in a love potion. Seneca the Younger, in his "Hercules Furens", shows the "striges" dwelling on the outskirts of Tartarus. Ovid tells the story of "striges" attacking the legendary king Procas in his cradle, and how they were warded off with arbutus and placated with the meat of pigs, as an explanation for the custom of eating beans and bacon on the Kalends of June. ["Fasti", vi.101 ff.]

Though descriptions abound , the concept of the strix was nonetheless vague. The scientific Pliny, in his "Natural History", [ [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Pliny_the_Elder/11*.html#232 Natural History xi.232] ] 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 bat [In the ancient world the bat was commonly classified as a bird; only Aristotle differed, considering it halfway between bird and land animal. See Oliphant, p. 134 n. 4.] suckled its children.

Medieval and modern

The legend of the strix survived into the Middle Ages, as recorded in Isidore's "Etymologiae", [ [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Isidore/12*.html#7.42 Etymologiae book 12] , ch. 7.42.] and gave both name and attributes to the "strigă"—the name of a Romanian imaginary evil feminine being [ [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?lexemId=54830 DEX Online] ] (also the name of the Common Barn Owl and of the Death's-head Hawkmoth), "strigoaică"—the name of the Romanian witch [ [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=strigoaica DEX Online] ] , "strigoi"—the Romanian vampire [ [http://dexonline.ro/search.php?cuv=strigoi DEX Online] ] , and to the "strega", the Italian witch. The Romanian "striga" was further borrowed into Albanian (shtriga) (via Macedo-Romanians) and Polish Strzyga (via Gorals).

In more recent times the "Stirge" was presented as a popular monster in Dungeons and Dragons. In the game it took the form of a many-legged flying creature which sucked the blood from its victims through a sharp, tubular beak.

A version of the striga makes an appearance in "The Witcher (video game)" based on the works of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. As a demonic undead creature, which transforms from the corpse of a dead child conceived via incest, striga in the Witcher's universe doesn't look like insects or vampires but looks similar to a ghoul with a muscular quadrapedal body, big claws, and a fang-filled mouth.

ee also

*Lamia
*Lilith
*Strigoi

References

*cite journal |last=Oliphant |first= Samuel Grant|year=1913|title= The Story of the Strix: Ancient|journal= Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association|volume=44 |issue= |pages=133–49|doi= 10.2307/282549
*"Carna, Proca and the Strix on the Kalends of June", by Christopher Michael McDonough, in "Transactions of the American Philological Association" (1974–), Vol. 127. (1997), pp. 315–344.