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71-498: In the earliest stories, Lamia was a beautiful queen of ancient Libya who had an affair with Zeus . Upon learning this, Zeus's wife Hera robbed Lamia of her children, the offspring of her affair with Zeus, either by kidnapping or by killing them. The loss of her children drove Lamia insane, and in vengeance and despair, Lamia snatched up any children she could find and devoured them . Because of her cruel acts, her physical appearance changed to become ugly and monstrous. Zeus gave Lamia

142-485: A Proto-Indo-European stem * lem- , "nocturnal spirit", whence also comes lemures . In the myth , the Lamia was originally a beautiful woman beloved of Zeus , but Zeus's jealous wife Hera robbed her of her children, either by kidnapping and hiding them away, killing them, or causing Lamia herself to kill her own offspring. She became disfigured from the torment, transforming into a terrifying being who hunted and killed

213-539: A lamia . Or they may be simply unnamed or differently named. And those analogues that exhibit a serpentine form or nature have been especially noted. One such possible lamia is the avenging monster sent by Apollo against the city of Argos and killed by Coroebus . It is referred to as Poine or Ker in classical sources, but later in the Medieval period, one source does call it a lamia ( First Vatican Mythographer , c.  9th to 11th century). The story surrounds

284-563: A Lamia's belly". Lamia was in some versions thus seen as swallowing children alive, and there may have existed some nurse's tale that told of a boy extracted alive out of a Lamia. The Byzantine lexicon Suda (10th century) gave an entry for lamía , with definitions and sources much as already described. The lexicon also has an entry under mormo ( Μορμώ ), stating that Mormo and the equivalent μορμολυκεῖον mormolykeion are called lamía, and that all these refer to frightful beings. "Lamia" has as synonyms "Mormo" and " Gello " according to

355-484: A catastrophic change reduced the vast body of fresh water to a seasonal lake or marsh. Ibn Khaldun and Herodotus distinguish the Libyans on the basis of their lifestyles rather than ethnic background, those practicing agriculture, and the others nomadic pastoralism. Modern historians tend to follow Herodotus's classical distinctions. Examples include Oric Bates in his book The Eastern Libyans . Some other historians have used

426-706: A common pedestal that supports a huge transverse beam. In the Terrgurt valley, Cowper says: "There had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it". In ancient times, the Phoenicians / Carthaginians , the Neo-Assyrian Empire , the Persian Achaemenid Empire ( see Libya (satrapy) ), the Macedonian Empire of Alexander

497-563: A knife in the neck to tap the blood into a skin bag, eviscerate his heart, and stuff the hole back with sponge . Some commentators, despite the absence of actual blood-sucking, find these witches to share "vampiric" qualities of the lamiae ( lamiai ) in Philostratus's narrative, thus offering it up for comparison. Lamia's possible kindred kind appear in Classical works, but may be known by other names except for isolated instance which calls it

568-404: A lamia-seductress inspired the poem " Lamia " by John Keats . Lamia has been ascribed serpentine qualities, which some commentators believe can be firmly traced to mythology from antiquity; they have found analogues in ancient texts that could be designated as lamiai , which are part- snake beings. These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the "Libyan myth" told by Dio Chrysostom , and

639-513: A possible connection between Belus and one or another god who bore the common northwest Semitic title Ba'al . According to some sources, Belus was the son of Poseidon by Libya. Bel is associated with Babylon and Assyria, but Aegean Greeks had a distant relations with that area, in contrast they had trading relationships with north Canaanites of Syria, Ugarit and Levantine Sidon and Tyros, cities that are mentioned in Greek myths about Belos, and his name

710-507: A scholiast to Ovid, it had a serpent's body carrying a human face. In Pausanias 's version, the monster is called Poinē ( ποινή ), meaning "punishment" or "vengeance", but there is nothing about a snake on her forehead. One evidence this may be a double of the Lamia comes from Plutarch, who equates the word empousa with poinē . A second example is a colony of man-eating monsters in Libya, described by Dio Chrysostom . These monsters had

781-606: A speculative territory west of Egypt. Modern Arabic uses Libya . The Lwatae, the tribe of Ibn Battuta , as the Arabs called it, was a Berber tribe that mainly was situated in Cyrenaica. This tribe may have ranged from the Atlantic Ocean to modern Libya , however, and was referred to by Corippius as Laguatan ; he linked them with the Maures . Ibn Khaldun 's Muqaddimah states Luwa

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852-436: A sumptuous mansion, with all the accoutrements and even servants. But once Apollonius reveals her false identity at the wedding, the illusion fails her and vanishes. A longstanding joke makes a word play between Lamia the monster and Lamia of Athens , the notorious hetaira courtesan who captivated Demetrius Poliorcetes (d. 283 BC). The double-entendre sarcasm was uttered by Demetrius's father, among others. The same joke

923-745: A woman's torso and beastly hands, and "all the lower part was snake, ending in the snake's baleful head". The idea that these creatures were lamiai seems to originate with Alex Scobie (1977), and to be accepted by other commentators. By the Early Middle Ages , lamia (pl. lamiai or lamiae ) was being glossed as a general term referring to a class of beings. Hesychius of Alexandria 's lexicon ( c.  500 A.D. ) glossed lamiai as apparations, or even fish. Isidore of Seville defined them as beings that snatched babies and ripped them apart. The Vulgate used "lamia" in Isaiah 34:14 to translate "Lilith" of

994-438: Is Philostratus 's novelistic biography Life of Apollonius of Tyana . It purports to give a full account of the capture of "Lamia of Corinth " by Apollonius, as the general populace referred to the legend. An apparition ( phasma φάσμα ) which in the assumed guise of a woman seduced one of Apollonius's young pupils. Here, Lamia is the common vulgar term and empousa the proper term. For Apollonius in speech declares that

1065-509: Is Medusa identified with Libya, she also had dealings with the three Graeae who had the removable eye shared between them. In some versions, the removable eye belonged to the three Gorgons , Medusa and her sisters. Some commentators have also equated Lamia with Hecate . The basis of this identification is the variant maternities of Scylla , sometimes ascribed to Lamia (as already mentioned), and sometimes to Hecate. The identification has also been built (using transitive logic) since each name

1136-530: Is a tradition that Lamia the daughter of Poseidon was the mother of a Sibyl. Either one could be Lamia the mother of Scylla mentioned in the Stesichorus (d. 555 BC) fragment, and other sources. Scylla is a creature depicted variously as anguipedal or serpent-bodied. Diodorus Siculus ( fl.  1st century BC ), for instance, describes Lamia of Libya as having nothing more than a beastly appearance. Diodorus, Duris of Samos and other sources which comprise

1207-566: Is based on the ethnonym Libu ( Ancient Greek : Λίβυες Líbyes , Latin : Libyes ). The name Libya (in use since 1934 for the modern country formerly known as Tripolitania and Barca ) was the Latin designation for the region of the Maghreb, from the Ancient Greek ( Attic Greek : Λιβύη Libúē , Doric Greek : Λιβύᾱ Libúā ). In Classical Greece , the term had a broader meaning, encompassing

1278-407: Is considered native to the land, in this version of the story she is the daughter of Poseidon and Tritonis a Libyan lake nymph. .in another version of the story in the same source, they say that she was daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and that, being for some reason angry at her father, she gave herself to Zeus , who made her his own daughter, on the other hand some say that she sprang from

1349-544: Is identified with empousa in different sources. A foul odor has been pointed out as a possible common motif or attribute of the lamiai. The examples are Aristophanes's reference to the "lamia's testicles", the scent of the monsters in the Libyan myth which allowed the humans to track down their lair, and the terrible stench of their urine that lingered in the clothing of Aristomenes, which they showered upon him after carving out his friend Sophocles's heart. Lamia may originate from

1420-415: Is made clear she bears the guise of a snake, which she wants to relinquish in return for human appearance. Modern commentators have also tried to establish that she may have originally been a dragoness, by inference. Daniel Ogden argues that one of her possible reincarnations, the monster of Argos killed by Coroebus had a "scaly gait", indicating she must have had an anguipedal form in an early version of

1491-612: The Atlas ranges of North Africa as that was the well-known dwelling place of Atlas as he was enduring punishment by Zeus, he was visited by Herakles as well as Perseus in North Africa . This coincides exactly with North Africans being well known for their worship of their sun god 'Tafukt' or commonly identified by the Greeks as Apollo they were believed to inhabit a sunny, temperate, and divinely-blessed land. The oldest myths portray them as

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1562-661: The Berbers (El-Barbar or El-Barabera(h)). There were many tribes in ancient Libya, including the now extinct Psylli , with the Libu being the most prominent. The ancient Libyans were mainly pastoral nomads, living off their goats, sheep and other livestock. For subsistence, milk, meat, hides and wool were gathered from their livestock for food, pitching tents and as clothing. Ancient Egyptian sources describe Libyan men with long hair, braided and bearded, neatly parted from different sides and decorated with feathers attached to leather bands around

1633-658: The Egyptians . The nation of Egypt contains the Siwa Oasis , which is bordering Libya at the Western Desert . The Siwi language , a Berber language , is still spoken in the area by around 21,000 people. Their Ancient Egyptian neighbors referred to the various Libyan tribes as the Temehu, Tehenu, Rebu and Meshwesh . Homer names Libya, in the Odyssey (IX.95; XXIII.311). Homer used

1704-557: The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women , Belus was also the father of a daughter named Thronia on whom Hermaon, i.e. Hermes , fathered Arabus , presumably the eponym of Arabia . According to Pherecydes of Athens , Belus also had a daughter named Damno who married Agenor (Belus' brother, her uncle) and bore to him Phoenix and two daughters named Isaie , and Melia , these becoming wives respectively to sons of Belus (their cousins) Aegyptus and Danaus. Yet another source says that

1775-614: The Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt , during the 13th century BC. LBW appears as an ethnic name on the Merneptah Stele to designate Libyans. Menelaus had travelled there on his way home from Troy ; it was a land of wonderful richness, where the lambs have horns as soon as they are born, where ewes lamb three times a year and no shepherd ever goes short of milk, meat or cheese. When the Ancient Greeks actually settled in Libya,

1846-697: The Pentapolis of the Roman era on the current west Italian coast. The exact boundaries of the whole of ancient Libya are unknown, but it likely constituted the western regions of Ancient Egypt , and was known as "Tjehenu" to the Egyptians. Ibn Khaldun, who dedicated the main part of his book Kitab el'ibar , which is known as "The history of the Berbers", did not use the names Libya and Libyans , but instead used Arabic names: The Old Maghreb , ( El-Maghrib el-Qadim ), and

1917-477: The desertification of the area is provided by megalithic remains, which occur in great variety of form and in vast numbers in presently arid and uninhabitable wastelands: dolmens and circles akin to Stonehenge , cairns, underground cells excavated in rock, barrows topped with huge slabs, and step-pyramid-like mounds. Most remarkable are the trilithons , some still standing, some fallen, which occur isolated or in rows, and consist of two squared uprights standing on

1988-476: The history of Egypt , historians know little about the history of Libya, as there are few surviving written records. Information on ancient Libya comes from archaeological evidence and historic sources written by Egyptian scribes, as well as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines , and later from Arabs of Medieval times. Since the Neolithic, the climate of North Africa has become drier over time. A reminder of

2059-449: The scholia to Theocritus. Other bogeys have been listed in conjunction with "Lamia", for instance, the Gorgo ( ἡ Γοργώ ), the eyeless giant Ephialtes, a Mormolyce ( μορμολύκη named by Strabo . In later classical periods, around the 1st century A. D., the conception of this Lamia shifted to that of a sultry seductress who enticed young men and devoured them. A representative example

2130-447: The "Lamia's testicles", thus making Lamia's gender ambiguous. This was later incorporated into Edward Topsell 's 17th-century envisioning of the lamia. It is somewhat uncertain if this refers to the one Lamia or to "a Lamia" among many, as given in some translations of the two plays; a generic lamia is also supported by the definition as some sort of a "wild beast" in the Suda . The "Lamia"

2201-524: The "new voice of Zeus Asbystes", meaning the oracle of Zeus Ammon at Asbystes. Diodorus Siculus claims that Belus founded a colony on the river Euphrates , and appointed the priests- astrologers whom the Babylonians call Chaldeans who like the priests of Egypt are exempt from taxation and other service to the state. According to Pausanias , Belus founded a temple of Heracles in Babylon . Meanwhile, it

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2272-467: The Berbers for themselves, such as Imazighen . Late period sources give more detailed descriptions of Libya and its inhabitants. The ancient historian Herodotus describes Libya and the Libyans in his fourth book, known as The Libyan Book . Writers such as Pliny the Elder , Diodorus Siculus , and Procopius also contributed to what is now primary source material on ancient Libya and the Libyans. The name

2343-522: The Egyptian ones, but probably, some tribes were named in the Egyptian sources and the later ones as well. The Meshwesh -tribe documented by the Ancient Egyptians represents this assumption. Moreover, scholars believe it would be the same tribe called Mazyes by Hektaios and Maxyes by Herodotus, while it was called "Mazaces" and "Mazax" in Latin sources. All those names are similar to the name used by

2414-702: The Great and his Ptolemaic successors from Egypt ruled variously parts of Libya. With the Roman conquest, the entire region of present-day Libya became part of the Roman Empire . Following the fall of the Empire, Vandals , and local representatives of the Byzantine Empire also ruled all or parts of Libya. The territory of modern Libya had separate histories until Roman times, as Tripoli and Cyrenaica . Cyrenaica , by contrast,

2485-665: The Hebrew Bible. Pope Gregory I (d. 604)'s exegesis on the Book of Job explains that the lamia represented either heresy or hypocrisy . Christian writers also warned against the seductive potential of lamiae . In his 9th-century treatise on divorce , Hincmar , archbishop of Reims , listed lamiae among the supernatural dangers that threatened marriages, and identified them with geniciales feminae , female reproductive spirits. This Lamia of Libya has her double in Lamia- Sybaris of

2556-666: The Mesopotamian demoness Lamashtu . Ancient Libya During the Iron Age and Classical antiquity , Libya (from Greek Λιβύη : Libyē , which came from Berber : Libu ) referred to modern-day Africa west of the Nile river . Greek and Roman geographers placed the dividing line between Libya/Africa and Asia at the Nile. In contrast, the areas of Sub-Saharan Africa were known as Aethiopia . More narrowly, Libya could also refer to

2627-625: The Mzata, were from the Qibt s (Egyptians). According to Ibn Khaldun, this claim is incorrect because Ibn Hazam had not read the books of the Berber scholars. Oric Bates , a historian, considers that the name Libu or LBW would be derived from the name Luwatah whilst the name Luwatah is a derivation of the name Libu. Furthermore, Bates considered all the Libyan tribes to be a single civilization united under central Libu and Meshwesh control. Compared with

2698-507: The ability to sleep, making her constantly grieve over the loss of her children, and Zeus provided relief by endowing her with removable eyes. He also gifted her with a shapeshifting ability in the process. Diodorus Siculus ( fl.  1st century BC ) gave a de-mythologized account of Lamia as a queen of Libya who ordered her soldiers to snatch children from their mothers and kill them, and whose beauty gave way to bestial appearance due to her savageness. The queen, as related by Diodorus,

2769-519: The children of others. Aristotle 's Nicomachean Ethics (vii.5) refers to the lore of some beastly lifeform in the shape of a woman, which tears the bellies of pregnant mothers and devours their fetuses. An anonymous commentator on the passage states this is a reference to the Lamia, but muddlingly combines this with Aristotle's subsequent comments and describes her as a Scythian of the Pontus (Black Sea) area. According to one myth, Hera deprived Lamia of

2840-522: The continent that later (second century BC) became known as Africa , which, in antiquity, was assumed to constitute one third of the world's land mass, Europe and Asia combined making up the other two thirds. The Libu are attested since the Late Bronze Age as inhabiting the region ( Egyptian R'bw , Punic : 𐤋𐤁𐤉 ‎ lby ). The oldest known documented references to the Libu date to Ramesses II and his successor Merneptah , pharaohs of

2911-593: The country immediately west of Egypt, viz Marmarica ( Libya Inferior ) and Cyrenaica ( Libya Superior ). The Libyan Sea or Mare Libycum was the part of the Mediterranean Sea south of Crete , between Cyrene and Alexandria . In Greek mythology , Athena was believed to have been of Libyan origins and was therefore nicknamed Athene Tritogeneia ("born of Trito"), from her birth in Lake Tritonis in North Africa (Modern day Algeria and Tunisia) where she

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2982-531: The crown of the head while wearing thin robes of antelope hide , dyed and printed, crossing the shoulder and coming down until mid calf length to make a robe. Older men kept long braided beards, while women wore the same robes as men, plaited, decorated hair and both sexes wore heavy jewelry. Depictions of Libyans in Egyptian reliefs show prominent and numerous tattoos, very similar to traditional Berber tattoos still seen today. Their weapons included bows and arrows, hatchets, spears and daggers. The Libyan script that

3053-543: The daughter of Belus who married Agenor was named Antiope . Some sources make Belus the father of Lamia while Antoninus mentions him as the father of Thias (father of Smyrna ) by the nymph Orithyia . Nonnus makes Belus the father of five sons, namely Phineus, Phoenix, Agenor (identified as the father of Cadmus ), Aegyptus, and Danaus, though Nonnus elsewhere makes Phineus to be Cadmus' brother. Nonnus has Cadmus identify Belus as "the Libyan Zeus" and refer to

3124-521: The eyes out of the beautiful Lamia. Lamia was the daughter born between King Belus of Egypt and Lybie , according to one source. According to the same source, Lamia was taken by Zeus to Italy, and that Lamos, the city of the man-eating Laestrygonians , was named after her. A different authority remarks that Lamia was once queen of the Laestrygonians. Aristophanes wrote in two plays an identically worded list of foul-smelling objects which included

3195-481: The favorites of Apollo , and some ancient Greek writers regarded them as the mythical founders of Apollo's shrines at Delos and Delphi . Masinissa received a golden crown from the inhabitants of Delos as he had offered them several shiploads of grain to the temple of Apollo in Delos the famous birthplace of the sun god and his twin sister Artemis . Berbers have occupied North Africa for thousands of years alongside

3266-542: The forehead of her father Zeus in the same location in North Africa. According to Herodotus , it is the Libyans who taught Greeks how to ride chariots , this is further shown when Mastanbal the prince of Numidia who is well versed in Greek literature. A sportsman in his youth, the prince took part in chariot races and the Panathenaic Games which only populations whom the greeks considered equal to them culturally and religiously were allowed to participate. Mastanbal

3337-513: The legend around Delphi , both indirectly associated with serpents. Strong parallel with the Medusa has also been noted. These, and other considerations have prompted modern commentators to suggest she is a dragoness. Another double of the Libyan Lamia may be Lamia, daughter of Poseidon . Lamia by Zeus gave birth to a Sibyl according to Pausanias, and this would have to be the Libyan Lamia, yet there

3408-538: The modern name of the Berbers in their works, such as the French historian Gabriel Camps . The Libyan tribes mentioned in these sources were: " Adyrmachidae ", " Giligamae ", " Asbystae ", " Marmaridae ", " Auschisae ", " Nasamones ", " Macae ", " Lotus-eaters (or Lotophagi)", " Garamantes ", " Gaetulians ", " Mauri ", and " Luwatae ", as well as many others. Belus (Egyptian) In Greek mythology , Belus ( Ancient Greek : Βῆλος , romanized :  Bêlos )

3479-631: The monster sent to Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe, daughter of King Crotopos . In previous centuries, Lamia was used in Greece as a bogeyman to frighten children into obedience, similar to the way parents in Spain, Portugal and Latin America used the Coco . A scholiast to Aristophanes claimed that Lamia's name derived from her having a large throat or gullet ( λαιμός ; laimós ). Modern scholarship reconstructs

3550-641: The name from Greek and the Punic languages. The Romans would have known them before their colonization of North Africa because of the Libyan role in the Punic Wars against the Romans. The Romans used the name Líbues , but only when referring to Barca and the Libyan Desert of Egypt. The other Libyan territories were called " Africa ", which were Roman provinces. Classical Arabic literature called Libya Lubya , indicating

3621-544: The name in a geographic sense, while he called its inhabitants " Lotus-eaters ". After Homer, Aeschylus , Pindar , and other ancient Greek writers used the name. Herodotus (1.46) used Λιβύη Libúē to indicate the African continent; the Líbues proper were the light-skinned North Africans, while those south of Egypt (and Elephantine on the Nile) were known to him as " Aethiopians "; this

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3692-575: The old name taken from the Egyptians was applied by the Greeks of Cyrenaica , who may have coexisted with the Libu. Later, the name appeared in the Hebrew language , written in the Bible as Lehabim and Lubim , indicating the ethnic population and the geographic territory as well. In the neo-Punic inscriptions, it was written as Lby for the masculine noun, and Lbt for the feminine noun of Libyan . Latin absorbed

3763-519: The power of prophecy and the ability to take out and reinsert her eyes, possibly because she was cursed by Hera with insomnia or because she could no longer close her eyes, so that she was forced to always obsess over her lost children. The lamiai ( Ancient Greek : λάμιαι , romanized :  lámiai ) also became a type of phantom, synonymous with the empusai who seduced young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. An account of Apollonius of Tyana 's defeat of

3834-400: The seductress is "one of the empousai , which most other people would call lamiai and mormolykeia ". The use of the term lamia in this sense is however considered atypical by one commentator. Regarding the seductress, Apollonius further warned, "you are warming a snake ( ophis ) on your bosom, and it is a snake that warms you". It has been suggested from this discourse that the creature

3905-444: The son of Libya, Ammon from the shepherd-founder. Thus the exiled Messenians reached the end of their wanderings." This supposed connection between Belus of Egypt and Zeus Belus (the god Marduk ) is likely to be more learned speculation than genuine tradition. Pausanias seems to know nothing of supposed connection between Belus son of Libya and Zeus Ammon that Nonnus will later put forth as presented just above. Modern writers suppose

3976-445: The sources for building an "archetypal" picture of Lamia do not designate her as a dragoness, or give her explicit serpentine descriptions. In the 1st-century Life of Apollonius of Tyana the female empousa-lamia is also called "a snake", which may seem to the modern reader to be just a metaphorical expression, but which Daniel Ogden insists is a literal snake. Philostratus's tale was reworked by Keats in his poem Lamia , where it

4047-462: The story, although the Latin text in Statius merely reads inlabi (declension of labor ) meaning "slides". One of the doubles of Lamia of Libya is the Lamia- Sybaris , which is described only as a giant beast by Antoninus Liberalis (2nd century). It is noted that this character terrorized Delphi , just as the dragon Python had. Close comparison is also made with the serpentine Medusa . Not only

4118-438: The tragedy of the daughter of King Crotopus of Argos named Psamathe , whose child by Apollo dies and she is executed for suspected promiscuity. Apollo as punishment then sends the child-devouring monster to Argos. In Statius ' version, the monster had a woman's face and breasts, and a hissing snake protruding from the cleft of her rusty-colored forehead, and it would slide into children's bedrooms to snatch them. According to

4189-526: Was Belus' twin brother. Belus ruled in Egypt , and Agenor ruled over Sidon and Tyre in Phoenicia . The wife of Belus has been named as Achiroe , daughter of the river-god Nilus . Her sons Aegyptus and Danaus were twins. Later Aegyptus ruled over Egypt and Arabia , and Danaus ruled over Libya . Pseudo- Apollodorus says that it was Euripides who added Cepheus and Phineus as additional sons of Belus. In

4260-538: Was Greek before it was Roman. It was also known as Pentapolis , the "five cities" being Cyrene (near the village of Shahat) with its port of Apollonia (Marsa Susa), Arsinoe (Tocra), Berenice (Benghazi) and Barca (Merj). From the oldest and most famous of the Greek colonies , the fertile coastal plain took the name of Cyrenaica. These five cities were also known as the Western Pentapolis ; not to be confused with

4331-455: Was a bogeyman or bugbear term, invoked by a mother or a nanny to frighten children into good behavior. Such practices are recorded by the 1st century Diodorus, and other sources in antiquity. Numerous sources attest to the Lamia being a "child-devourer", one of them being Horace . Horace in Ars Poetica cautions against the overly fantastical: "[nor should a story] draw a live boy out of

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4402-555: Was a king of Egypt and father of Aegyptus and Danaus and (usually) brother to Agenor . The wife of Belus has been named as Achiroe or Side (eponym of the Phoenician city of Sidon). Belus was the son of Poseidon and Libya . He may also be Busiris , son of Libya, ruler of Egypt, killed by Heracles , although Heracles was born many generations after Belus since he was a great-grandchild of Perseus ; see Argive genealogy below. The Bibliotheca also claims that Agenor

4473-587: Was a sportsman who was passionate about horseback riding. He owned a stud farm of purebred horses. Around 168 BC or 164 BC, he won a gold medal for his people in Numidia at the Athens Hippodrome at the Panathenaic Games in the prestigious horse-drawn chariot racing event. In Pseudo-Apollodorus , the Greeks proceeded to write of Hyperborea as a place that existed in ancient Libya somewhere within or between

4544-1026: Was also the understanding of later Greek geographers such as Diodorus Siculus , Strabo ...etc, amongst other writers. In the Hellenistic period , the native Berbers were known collectively as Libyans to the Greco-Roman world, a Greek term for the inhabitants of the Maghreb, they Identified the Massylii , the Masaessyli , the Gaetuli , The Phareusiens and the Mauri . The Libyans were believers of an ancestral religion known as Numitheism . The Libyans were known far and wide as glorious warriors with extra-ordinary physical strength, they were efficient in battle and were an effective force when combined with an army, they were either employed as mercenaries or were made part of an army as

4615-402: Was an ancestor of this tribe. He writes that the Berbers add an "a" and "t" to the name for the plural forms. Subsequently, it became rendered as Lwat . Conversely, the Arabs adopted the name as a singular form, adding an "h" for the plural form in Arabic. Ibn Khaldun disagrees with Ibn Hazam , who claimed, mostly on the basis of Berber sources, that the Lwatah, in addition to the Sadrata and

4686-421: Was born in a cave. Heraclitus Paradoxographus (2nd century) also gave a rationalizing account. Diodorus's rationalization was that the Libyan queen in her drunken state was as if she could not see, allowing her citizens free rein for any conduct without supervision, giving rise to the folk myth that she places her eyes in a vessel. Heraclitus 's euhemerized account explains that Hera, consort of Zeus, gouged

4757-431: Was said that Egyptians initially fought with clubs but later on Belus invented the use of sword in fighting. The word bellum, "war," is named from this. Pausanias wrote: "<Ruler> Manticlus founded the temple of Heracles for the Messenians ; the temple of the god is outside the walls and he is called Heracles Manticlus, just as Ammon in Libya and Belus in Babylon are named, the latter from an Egyptian, Belus

4828-454: Was the case with Numidian Cavalry in the ranks of both Roman Empire and Ancient Carthage , they completely overturned the tide of battle in Cannae for Hannibal and Battle of Zama for Scipio Africanus , Virgil speaks of the Libyans in this way: "The surrounding lands are Libyan , a race unbeatable in war" After the Egyptians, the Greeks; Romans; and Byzantines mentioned various other tribes in Libya. Later tribal names differ from

4899-421: Was therefore "literally a snake". The empousa admits in the end to fattening up her victim (Menippus of Lycia) to be consumed, as she was in the habit of targeting young men for food "because their blood was fresh and pure". The last statement has led to the surmise that this lamia/empusa was a sort of blood-sucking vampiress. Another aspect of her powers is that this empusa/lamia is able to create an illusion of

4970-421: Was used in Libya was mostly a funerary script . It is difficult to understand, and there are a number of variations. Ibn Khaldun divided the Berbers into the Batr and the Baranis . Herodotus divided them into Eastern Libyans and Western Libyans . Eastern Libyans were nomadic shepherds east of Lake Tritonis . Western Libyans were sedentary farmers who lived west of Lake Tritonis. At one point,

5041-415: Was used in theatrical Greek comedy , and generally. The word play is also seen as being employed in Horace's Odes , to banter Lucius Aelius Lamia the praetor. In Apuleius 's The Golden Ass appear two Thessalian "witches", Meroe and her sister Panthia, who are called lamiae in one instance. Meroe has seduced a man named Socrates, but when he plots to escape, the two witches raid his bed, thrust

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