Empusa

The road out of the city emptied after dark, and that was when she came. A traveler walking alone might first hear her before he saw her, an uneven gait on the stones behind him, one step ringing hard and bright, the next landing soft and wrong. Bronze, then something that was not bronze. By the time he turned, the figure had already chosen its face.

Her legs were what gave her away when nothing else would. One was cast in gleaming bronze, cold and metallic to the ankle and fitted into a brazen slipper. The other belonged to a donkey, or in the coarser tellings was shaped from dung, and it carried her in a lurching, lopsided hop. Above the legs the accounts grow unsteady. Her hair could blaze like a held torch, a crown of fire that lit her own changing face from below. That face rarely stayed still. It melted and re-set as she pleased, and the pleasure of it was the whole point.

Empusa was never her own mistress. She belonged to Hecate, goddess of crossroads and ghosts and the moon’s dark quarter, and she moved in that goddess’s restless company beside other half-formed terrors. A Byzantine lexicon, the Suda, put it without decoration: a demonic phantom sent by Hecate to appear before the unlucky. When she rose out of the underworld it was on Hecate’s errand, to unnerve people on the roads, and the Greeks counted her among the daimones, the crowd of spirits who occupied the uneasy ground between gods and mortals. She preferred the night. She was not bound to it, and a few stories set her in the flat white glare of noon.

Her real gift was transformation, and she spent it freely. In Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs a terrified slave watches an empousa cycle through her shapes in the space of a few lines, a bull, then a mule, then a beautiful woman, then a dog. The beautiful woman was the form that mattered. Lovely and apparently harmless, she could fall into step beside a man on the road without alarming him, smile, talk, and wait. Then she drank his blood and ate his flesh. The seduction was only the door she used to reach the meal.

The fullest account of how this worked survives in Philostratus’ life of the sage Apollonius of Tyana. A young philosophy student named Menippus, walking near Corinth, met a woman of striking beauty who told him she was rich and that she loved him. He believed all of it. He agreed to marry her, and the wedding feast was laid in a fine house heavy with gold and silver and quiet servants. Apollonius arrived uninvited, looked hard at the bride, and told Menippus what he was about to wed. The gold turned out to be air. The house, the silver, the servants, every glittering thing was phantom furniture, and the bride, cornered, admitted what she was. She had been fattening Menippus on comfort and pleasure because she fed on young and beautiful bodies, whose blood she liked fresh.

Apollonius crossed these creatures more than once. On a mountain road somewhere between Persia and India his party came upon an empousa in the dark, and the sage knew exactly what to do. He insulted it. He told his companions to do the same, to jeer and curse and heap abuse on it, and the more they mocked the smaller the thing grew, until it turned and fled with a high, thin shriek. That was the secret of her. A demon who could wear any face and empty a rich house into thin air could not bear to be laughed at, and mockery drove her off where a blade would not.

Her abilities held together with a grim logic. She was Hecate’s creature, made for the road and the doorway, and everything she did served the ambush. The shapeshifting let her pass for safe. The conjured wealth and the laden feast kept a victim relaxed and incurious while she fed on him by degrees. What she could not manage was to hide her nature from anyone who knew the signs. The legs never fully converted. Some watcher always caught the limp, the bronze foot ringing against the donkey’s soft tread, and the man who insulted her to her face held the one weapon that worked on her.

The Greeks were never tidy about her. Empusa, Lamia, Mormo and Mormolyce bleed into one another across the sources, all of them female, all of them hungry, all of them invoked to frighten children into obedience and travelers into caution. Some writers made Empusa one of many, a whole class of empusae walking in Hecate’s train. Others kept the name for a single being. The name itself resists explanation. It is probably older than Greek, carried in from somewhere its first users had already forgotten, and the old folk guess that it means “one-footed” looks like a story invented afterward to account for the limp.

What she was for is plainer than what she was. A mother could tell a restless child that an empousa was on the road outside, hopping closer on her bronze foot, hair smouldering in the dark, and the child would stay indoors. A traveler who had heard the stories kept to daylight and kept his wits about him. She was the shape Greek fear took when it wanted a face, and the face was never the same twice.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Empusa?

An Empusa is a shapeshifting demon from Greek mythology, one of the spectral attendants of the goddess Hecate. The Empusa rose from the underworld to stalk lonely roads, usually at night, where she preyed on travelers by drinking their blood and devouring their flesh. Ancient writers grouped her among the daimones, spirits ranked between gods and mortals.

What does an Empusa look like?

The Empusa’s defining feature is her mismatched legs: one is made of gleaming bronze and fitted with a brazen slipper, while the other is the leg of a donkey, giving her a lurching, one-sided hop. Her hair was often described as blazing like fire. Because she is a shapeshifter, she most often appears as a beautiful young woman to lure her victims, though Aristophanes also describes her taking the forms of a bull, a mule, and a dog.

How do you defeat or escape an Empusa?

The way to drive off an Empusa is to insult her. According to Philostratus, the sage Apollonius of Tyana repelled an empousa by hurling abuse at it and urging his companions to do the same, until the creature shrank and fled with a high-pitched shriek. For a demon who could conjure illusions and wear any face, open mockery was the one reliable weakness.

How is Empusa connected to Hecate?

Empusa served the goddess Hecate, the deity of crossroads, ghosts, and witchcraft, and was considered part of her retinue of frightening spirits. The Byzantine lexicon known as the Suda describes Empusa directly as a demonic phantom sent by Hecate to appear before unlucky people. She acted as Hecate’s emissary rather than as an independent power.

Are Empusa and Lamia the same?

Empusa and Lamia are not the same figure, but ancient sources frequently confused and blended them, along with the related demons Mormo and Mormolyce. All were female, predatory, and able to disguise themselves as alluring women to seduce and consume young men. The man-eating bride that Apollonius exposed at Corinth belongs to exactly this blended tradition.

Related Entries

Lamia, Mormo, Mormolykeia, Hecate, Gello, Onoskelis, Strix, Siren, Lamiak, Lilith, Lilitu, Succubus, Vampire