The Curse of the Werewolf

Abstract

This chapter traces the persistent association between werewolves on the one hand and witches and sorcerers on the other in the ancient world (and does same, in a brief way, for the earliest medieval werewolf tales). The Homeric Circe’s wolves should be understood as men transformed by the witch. Despite some modern claims, this was the position of the Odyssey itself, as well as the subsequent ancient tradition. Herodotus’ treatment of the Neuri not only asserts that they are sorcerers that turn themselves into wolves, but also implies that transformation into a wolf is a thing more generally characteristic of sorcerers. Like the Neuri, Virgil’s (Egyptian?) Moeris is projected as a sorcerer that specialises in turning himself into a wolf. Imperial Latin literature provides us with examples of individual witch-figures transforming into wolves, notably Tibullus’ bawd-witch and Propertius’ Acanthis, but, beyond this, there seems to have been a set of thematic associations between werewolfism and the terrible strix-witches. It may have been thought, in particular, that they had a propensity to transform themselves not only into child-stealing and child-maiming screech-owls or screech-owl-like creatures, but also into wolves. The notion that werewolfism could sometimes be effected by a divine curse, as in the Arcadian traditions and as in Aesop’s fable, was perhaps a variation or extension of the more typical and established idea that it could proceed from the cursing of a witch or a sorcerer.