The Night Witch: The Demonic and the Roman Witch

The Night Witch is a concept found throughout human culture, a category of the female magical practitioner who can only be found in literature and the nightmares of those who imagine her. As the name suggests, she typically operates at night, using violence and magic to ensnare and kill her victims. These victims are often children or young men, who may be eaten or killed so that their bodies may be used as magical ingredients for her practice. Within Roman literature, the concept of the Night Witch rears its head and examples of these figures can be found in both prose and verse literature. It is my contention that the concept comes to influence and becomes embedded in Roman literature’s conceptualizations of the witch. At the time Horace creates Canidia, who features as a major antagonist within the Satires and Epodes, something has begun to occur that continues to grow and comes to color witch narratives. Witches of Latin elegy, such as Dipsas in Ovid’s Amores and Acanthis in Propertius’ Elegies, as well as epic figures such as Lucan’s Erictho in the Pharsalia, are informed by the Night Witch paradigm. Through close textual analysis of these various sources, I will illustrate how the concept of Night Witch permeated the Roman mind and literature, as well as investigate the origin and collection of motifs that go to make up the Roman expression of the Night Witch and how these concepts altered over time. In doing so, I will also examine to what extent witches in Roman literature are able to fall outside the Night Witch paradigm and express novelty.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Laura Glover (21040661)

• Apuleius
• Augustan poetry
• Canidia
• Demonic femininity
• Erictho
• Female monstrosity
• Folkloric monsters
• Greco-Roman demonology
• Horace
• Hybridism
• Intertextuality
• Lamia
• Latin elegy
• Latin literature
• Liminality
• Lucian
• Metamorphoses
• Necromancy
• Night Witch
• Night Witch syndrome
• Ovid
• Pharsalia
• Propertius
• Roman Imperial literature
• Roman religion
• Roman witchcraft
• Strix
• Superstitio
• Thessalian witches

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

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10779/exe.32578836.v1

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