The creation of the Gothic Novel is accredited to Horace Walpole in 1764 with the writing of The Castle of Otranto. This book inspired an entire genre of spooky novels (most brain-numbing dull by today’s standards), which would not change until Edgar Allan Poe re-defined horror in the 1830’s. But what of the writings before Otranto? Did horror stories exist before the decadent master of Strawberry Hill pen his “Italian Romance”?
Certainly. Horrific tales exist with the very first writings ever recorded. From Gilgamesh and the Scorpion Men and the Bible with its Witch of Endor, religious stories and visions of horrors are part and parcel of the ancients beliefs, but it is with the Greeks that the stories begin to take on an enjoyment of the horror in itself, in no way uncommon with our modern love of horror novels and movies. Homer’s The Odyssey features the Cyclops, Polythemus, who is a cannibal, as well as the shapeshifting witch, Circe. The Roman scholars centuries later shared this same love of scary pieces, tidbits for the horror buff, rise up out of the indefinable mass that is ancient literature. From the tractates on agriculture comes a ghost story, from a witty contest a werewolf tale.
At times this distinction is easily made when all that surrounds the nugget of horror is quite another type, but in many cases the horrific is harder to find when it is encased in mythology. When all things are wondrous and magical it is much harder to find those parts that are both wonderful and terrific. Also in this mix are the plays of writers like Sophocles and Euripides, and later with the Romans, Cicero, that use the fantastic and horrific but in a subtle way. It is not this body of literature I want to look at. I want that point at which you can say: here is a ghost story. Or here is a tale of terror. Not mythology or allusion or sorta-maybe.
A GHOST STORY
Pliny the Younger (circa 61-113 AD) provides literature’s first haunted house story in his “Letter to Lucinius Sura”. The letter begins by an idle wondering on ghosts. Like many moderns, Pliny wonders: “…so I should very much like to know whether you think that ghosts exist, and have a form of their own and some sort of supernatural power, or whether they lack substance and reality and take shape only from our fears…” Pliny then goes on to say he does believe in their existence and cites three examples of supposed ghost stories. The first is his version of Tacitus’ tale of Curtius Rufus. The second concerns what must be the very first tale of haunted house, with rattling chains and all. Athenodorus, literature’s first ghost-breaker, rents the haunted manse with the intention of discovering the truth about the ghost. He writes quietly to keep from imagining things but when the sceptre arises: “…He looked round, saw and recognized the ghost described to him. It stood rattling its chains over his head as he wrote. He looked round again and saw it beckoning as before, so without further delay he picked up his lamp and followed.” The ghost leads Athenodorus into the courtyard where it disappears. The next day the man advises the magistrates to dig up the spot and finds a skeleton which is buried publicly, putting the specter to rest.
The last of Pliny’s tales is reportedly one which happened in his household. A freed slave has dreams of a boy cutting his hair and upon waking finds his hair has been cut. The same happens to his brother. Later Pliny finds a damaging lie by another has been derailed and concludes the hair-cutting is an omen that the ill deed against him had failed.
Of the three only the tale of the haunted house is accomplished with any detail and of special note to horror fans. Eighteen centuries have made this plot a familiar one but it still is of interest, being the great-great-etc-grand daddy of all ghost stories.
A WEREWOLF STORY
Gaius Petronius Arbiter (circa 66 AD) known as Petronius includes a classic werewolf segment in his Satyricon, called sometimes “Niceros’ Story”. Niceros tells how while still a slave his master was away and he had gone for a night walk with a guest, a soldier.
“…About cock-crow we shag off, and the moon was shining like noontime. We get to where the tombs are and my chap starts making for the grave-stones, while I, singing away, keep going and start counting the stars. Then just as I looked back at my mate, he stripped off and laid all his clothes by the side of the road. My heart was in my mouth, I stood there like a corpse. Anyway, he pissed a ring around his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf…”
The werewolf disappears. Niceros examines the man’s clothes which have turned to stone. He runs to Melissa’s villa, a comely widow, and sees her sheep attacked by a wolf. The animal is driven off, taking a stab wound to the throat. The next morning, Niceros finds the soldier in bed nursing a throat wound. After that he shuns the guest.
As with Pliny, Petronius sets a tradition which would last for centuries, being the first recorded werewolf tale in the form of a narrative and not couched in mythological events. Here the horror reader can see how little stories of this sort have changed in almost twenty centuries.
Lucius Apulieus (circa 125-185 AD) has his turn at the theme of Metamorphosis in The Golden Asse, a wonderful collection of tales, many of them horrific. There are several stories of thieves and murderous suitors but only three of the tales involve supernatural agencies. The first, Book I, also called “Aristomenes’ Tale”, tells of a destitute friend of Aristomenes’ named Socrates who recounts the horrible things that happened to him causing him to live in the street like a beggar. After being robbed, Socrates becomes the sex-slave to a witch named Meroe whose terrible acts include: turning people into beavers and having them hunted down, turning them into frogs and drowning them in wine barrels, causing a pregnant woman to seal up for eight years and growing larger than an elephant, locking an entire village inside their homes until they agreed to be her servants.
During the night, after telling Aristomenes of this evil woman, two strange figures appear inside the house, one Meroe, the other called Panthia. They cut open Socrates’ neck and extract his heart. Aristomenes is left to bury the dead man. He soon realizes that he will be convicted of killing his friend and hung. He tries to escape but the ostler who watches his horse is suspicious. Aristomenes goes back to the room to hang himself. Only Socrates’ waking up saves him. The wound is gone and Aristomenes believes it all a dream.
The two friends escape shortly after into the forest, where they eat a breakfast of bread and cheese. Wanting a drink of water, Socrates drinks from a stream. The water opens the magical wound and he drops dead. Aristomenes buries him by the stream.
Book II, sometimes called “Thelyphron’s Tale” concerns a young man who is hired to watch a dead body lest the witches, shapeshifters, should come in the night and eat away the deceased’s face. The watcher is as much at risk for whatever happens to the corpse will happen to the guard. The fellow is doing his duty when he spies a weasel which puts him fast to sleep. But when he wakes the body has not been harmed, and the corpse is made ready for burial.
The funeral is interrupted by the dead man’s uncle showing up and accusing the wife of poisoning him. To prove her guilt, a wizard is hired to animate the dead body. The dead man rises, tells how his wife murdered him for his money and to hide her adultery. As proof of its veracity, the corpse tells how the witches stole onto the body in the night and removed the ears and noses, replacing them with waxen ones.
‘Which when he had said I was greatly astonished, and (minding to feel my face) put up my hand to my nose, and my nose fell off, and put my hand to my ears, and my ears fell off. Whereat all the people pointed at me, and laughed at me to scorn: but I (being stricken in a cold sweat) crept between their legs for shame and escaped away, So I, disfigured and ridiculous, could never return home again, but covered the loss of mine ears with my hair and glued this clout to my face to hide the shame of my nose.’
In Book IX, we come to the main body of The Golden Ass in which Lucius is changed into an ass then sold from owner to owner, a device that delivers him into the home of a wicked and adulterous woman. Once discovered and divorced, she plans to regain or kill her husband by sorcery. When the love magic fails, death magic is used. The husband, a baker, is visited at his mill by an aged old woman. They go into a private room. Later, when the hirelings need more work, they find the baker hanging from the rafters and no sign of the crone. The evil wife appears to have achieved her wicked plan when the daughter of the baker arrives, claiming to have seen her dead father’s ghost. From her it is learned how the spouse killed her husband.
Lucian of Samosata (circa 125-190 AD) tells the now famous tale of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. In the original the sorcerer is Pancrates, an Egyptian magician. The apprentice, Eucrates, insinuates himself with the magician just to learn his secrets, including the transforming of a broom to carry water. As is well known the student does not learn his magic well enough to stop the water-carrier and tries to stop it by cutting it with an ax, thus creating two servants. When the wizard returns he sees what has happened and dispells the servant’s poor spell. He vanishes secretly shortly after.
Lucian’s little tale proves the inspiration for various artists including such diverse individuals as Goethe, a translation by Sir Thomas More, Paul Dukas’ Tone poem L’Apprenti Sorcier and of course, probably most famous, Walt Disney, with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.
Proclus (circa 410-485 AD) offers “Philinnion and Machates”, the tale of an undead bride. The story is given in the form of a letter, just like Pliny, written by Hipparchus, a civil servant from Amphipolis. Here we have the technique that Lovecraft would use in the 20th Century, of assigning the tale to a sober and stable authority. Hipparchis tells that:
During the reign of Philip II of Macedon, the maiden Philinnion is married to Craterus, a general in Alexander’s army. She dies six months after the wedding but returns to the home of her parents, a solid form of ghost. For three nights, she secretly beds a man named Machates who is staying at the house. She gives him small gifts as well.
When she is discovered, Philinnion cries that it is the will of the gods that she is there and dies for a second time. The family think the woman an imposter, but upon opening her tomb they find her body gone. Also gone are the small items buried with her body. These are the gifts that Machates was given.
Phlegon retold the same story in “On Wonderful Events” and Goethe would use the theme again in his poem “The Bride of Corinth” sixteen centuries later. Philinnion’s tale is more closely related to vampire fiction that ghost stories. The dead lover who returns to drain her family and friends is another tradition of European legends. Philostratus (170-245 AD) wrote Life of Apollonius of Tynana in he tells the story of “Mennipus and Apollonius”, another version of this tale. Philostratus names the woman a lamia, not a ghost.
For more Lacy Collison-Morley’s Greek and Roman Ghost Stories (1912)
