Lamia, in Classical mythology, a female daemon who devoured children. The ancient commentaries on Aristophanes’ Peace say she was a queen of Libya who was beloved by Zeus. When Hera robbed her of her children from this union, Lamia killed every child she could get into her power. Athenian mothers used her as a threat to frighten naughty children. Flavius Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana described her as a fiend who, in the form of a beautiful woman, seduced young men in order to devour them. John Keats’s Lamia (1819) was inspired by reading Philostratus’s story in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
