mother of devils, spirits, and lilin, which is the same word as the Assyrian Lilu. From Jewish lore she passed to mediæval demonology, and Johann Weyer says that she was the princess who presided over the Succubi. It is true that the LXX translates in this passage of the prophet Isaias the Hebrew Lilith by Lamia, but it has been suggested that the nearest Latin equivalent might be strix, for although strix may be properly a screech owl, yet the Latins believed that these drained the blood of young children, and Ovid, Fasti, VI, 131–140 has:
Sunt auidæ uolucres; non quæ Phineia mensis
Guttura fraudabant: sed genus inde trahunt.
Grande caput: stantes oculi: rostra apta rapinæ:
Canities pennis, unguibus hamus inest.
Nocte uolant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes;
Et uitiant cunis corpora rapta suis.
Carpere dicuntur lactentia uiscera rostris;
Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent
Est illis strigibus nomen: sed nominis huius
Causa; quod horrenda stridere nocte solent.
But it is clear that the Strix was not always a bird, for in the Lombard Code we find the expression “Strix uel masca.” Thiel has: “masca (mascha), sorcière, ML. De ld le français: masque.” In fact masca has the same meaning as Larua which signifies a ghost, or as in the well-known line of Horace, a mask: Nil illi larua et tragicis opus esse cothurnis.[18]
In the Breuiarium Romanum, pars aestiua, die 30 Augusti, ad Matutinum, in 11 Nocturno, lectio V, it is said of S. Rose of Lima, “laruas daemonum, frequenti certamine uictrix, impauide protriuit ac superauit.”
Moreover, the Strix was a vampire, and it may not be superfluous again to quote the well-known Saxon Capitulary of Charlemagne, 781, Liber I, 6: “Siquis a diabolo deceptus crediderit secundum morem Paganorum, uirum aliquem aut feminam Strigem esse, et homines comedere, et propter hoc ipsum incenderit, uel carnem eius ad comedendum dederit, uel ipsam comederit, capitis sententia puniatur.”
As has been remarked the earliest known representation of a vampire shows her in the act of copulation with a man and we have just observed that Weyer regards the Hebrew Lilith
