page_title: Lamia
section_title: Fine arts
hierarchical_section_title: Lamia / Modern age / Fine arts
context_page_description: Lamia, in ancient Greek mythology, was a woman who became a child-eating monster after her children were destroyed by Hera, who learned of her husband Zeus's trysts with her. Hera also afflicted Lamia with sleeplessness so she would anguish constantly, but Zeus gave her the ability to remove her own eyes.
  "Lamia" was also used as a bogey word to frighten and discipline children.
  In later traditions and storytelling, the lamiai became a type of phantom, synonymous with the empusai which seduced youths to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. A fabulous biography of Apollonius of Tyana defeating a lamia seductress has inspired the poem Lamia by Keats.
  The lamia has been ascribed serpentine qualities, which some commentators believe can be firmly traced to mythology from antiquity, and they have found analogues in ancient texts that could be designated as lamiai which are part-serpent beings. These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the "Libyan myth" told by Dio Chrysostom, and the monster sent to Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe.
context_section_description: In a 1909 painting by Herbert James Draper, the Lamia who moodily watches the serpent on her forearm appears to represent a hetaera. Although the lower body of Draper's Lamia is human, he alludes to her serpentine history by draping a shed snakeskin about her waist. In Renaissance emblems, Lamia has the body of a serpent and the breasts and head of a woman, like the image of hypocrisy.
caption: The Lamia (1909),[r] a painting by Herbert James Draper
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