Witches, Werewolves & Wards
Roman Superstitions
Let's dive into some Roman superstitions, perfect for a certain October evening!
I'm going to go through some of my favourite spooky Roman stories, involving werewolves, ghosts, and witches, as well as have a look at some superstitions we get from the Romans.
Petronius’ Werewolf
Petronius wrote about a freedman, Niceros, who once convinced a soldier to walk with him to his girlfriend's house. Under a full moon - and this is one of the first times we see the full moon being used to create a sense of tension - as they're walking along, they decide to stop at a graveyard (of course!).
Niceros sits down on a tombstone, starts whistling, counting to himself, when he notices something odd. His friend the soldier has taken off all his clothes and urinated in a circle around them. Niceros thinks this is a bit weird, but he is for more terrified a minute later, when his friend transforms into a howling wolf and runs off.
Niceros rushes to his girlfriend's house, who tells him about a wolf attack that had just happened on her sheep. One of her slaves had thrown a spear at the wolf and wounded it in the neck, scaring the wolf off. Niceros is very concerned and runs all the way home. In the morning, he sees his friend the soldier who has a wound on his neck in the same place as his girlfriend mentioned the wolf had been injured! Niceros realises then (and somehow not before) that his friend the soldier had turned into a werewolf.
Haunted House
A fantastic Roman ghost story, comes from Pliny the Younger. It's set in Athens, in a house that people have been describing as haunted.
A philosopher, Athenodorus, buys the house. He's heard the stories, that you can hear chains rattling at night, but he doesn't really take any notice of them.
One evening, while sat writing, he suddenly hears the sound of chains getting closer and closer to the room he is working in. He looks up and sees the ghost of a man with chains around his hands. Athenodorus does not panic. In fact, he tells the ghost to wait a minute while he finishes what he is writing. The ghost comes closer and rattles the chains over his head, but Athenodorus just focuses on what he's doing.
Finally, he finishes, and follows the ghost outside, where it shows him a place in the garden. Athenodorus fetches the local guards and the magistrates who dig at the spot the ghost had indicated, and they find the skeleton of a man wrapped in chains. They give the bones a proper burial, and the sound of chains is never heard again.
Pliny the Younger recounts this to one of his friends which shows that he very clearly believes in this superstition.
Thessalian Witches
Apuleius describes the travels of one of his characters to Thessaly. Thessaly was seen by the Romans as very superstitious, very magical, and home to terrifying witches.
Thelyphron, our main character, arrives in Thessaly. He's used all his money travelling around, so he is desperate to earn some cash. He finds a job watching over a dead body overnight. (He's a bit concerned about this, but he does it anyway. It's good pay.)
The wife of the dead man shows him into the room where the corpse is lying, and she makes a big point of showing Thelyphron the corpse's face, pointing out the nose, the cheeks, and the ears. Thelyphron's confused by this, but then he remembers a warning from someone when he took the job, that witches in Thessaly take the flesh of a dead person's face to use in their magical arts. His task is to stay awake at night to watch over the dead body, so that no witches can come and take the flesh of the corpse's face.
Thelyphron settles in for the evening and already he's kind of creeped out by being in a room with a corpse on his own, but he sings some songs to try and lighten the mood. But what appears before him? Horror of all horrors - a weasel!
Not especially concerning, I grant you, but the poor bloke is in a room with a dead man so he’s bound to be a little jumpy.
Now he's really frightened by this weasel, he's absolutely terrified, because the weasel stares at him in a very unusual manner, not like an animal should. He manages to scare the animal away, but once he does so he falls into a deep sleep.
He only wakes up when the wife enters to tell him it's time for the funeral the next morning! He is quite concerned that he has failed at his job, however he takes his payment and happily skips on his way. When he gets to the local marketplace, he sees that the funeral is in full swing. However, during the funeral, the widow is accused of having poisoned her husband! The crowd can't make up their mind how to proceed with the investigation until a prophet from across the seas called Zatchlas (possibly Egyptian), comes along and reanimates the corpse with herbs and magic.
The corpse sits up, and Zatchlas asks him how he died. The corpse reveals that his wife did poison him. Everyone is so concerned and very upset, accusing Zatchlas of trickery. But the corpse says, “I can prove to you that I am alive, and I'll tell you something no one else knows”. The Romans believed that dead spirits knew more about the world than they did. “My guard, this amazing Thelyphron, he tried really hard to guard me from the witches, and he did really well, until they tried to trick him by sending a weasel their familiar into the room to distract him!” That solves that mystery.
“They still couldn't distract him, so they sent a really deep sleep down upon him. It's not his fault that he fell asleep. Next they called my name, trying to enchant my body to come to the door so that they could scratch out my cheeks and my nose and my ears.
“But unfortunately for my guard, as they said my name again and again, he sat up and went to the door because” - here comes the big twist - “I have the same name as my guard. I am also called Thelyphron! My poor, strong, heroic guard succumbed to the enchantment, and had his ears and nose cut off by the witches instead of me! They replaced them with fake wax versions on his face so he wouldn't notice!”
At this point, the crowd at the funeral goes silent, staring at our main character, and Thelyphron, in despair, grabs at his ears, which come away in his hands, and rubs his nose, which falls off! Thelyphron is left, as his punishment for failing to stay away, noseless and earless.
Poor Thelyphron. Moral of the tale: don't go to Thessaly and get mixed up with witches.
Superstition Tradition
We take a lot of our superstitions from the Romans.
Unlucky Lefties?
The Romans were convinced that the left hand side was a bad omen. If a sign from the gods appeared on the left hand side, it was very unlucky! They called the left hand side sinistra. From this, we get the word “sinister”, which to us means evil or spooky or worrying. In contrast, dextra is the right hand side, and we get the word “dextrous” from that. Until fairly recently, left handed children would be forced to write with their right hand, due to the superstition that left handedness was “evil” in some way.
Supportive Spouse
Another tradition we get from Rome: Roman grooms would carry their new bride over the threshold of their house after their wedding ceremony. This was because they believed if a bride tripped on her way in, it spelled disaster for the marriage. So this is why if you scoop up your new spouse, you're actually continuing a Roman superstition that you don't want them to trip as they step through the door. You want to ensure your marriage has good luck instead of bad!
Fickle Fortune
Broken mirrors are another thing the Romans hated. This may have originally been a Greek superstition, but the Romans took it and ran with it as they always did. Broken mirrors were thought to capture a piece of your soul, and the Romans added to this the idea of getting seven years' of bad luck. To counteract this, they would bury the broken pieces, supposedly negating the ill fortune this way.
Are you superstitious? Do you think you'd have done well in the Roman world? Let me know what you think in the comments!
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Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next time on bambasbat.