Ancient Rome and Modern Italy 39 



demoniac character. Imagination has also created as possible 

 dangers to infancy various beings who have more or less the 

 nature of spirits. Their human traits and their names vary with 

 the locality which cherishes lore about them. Let us review a 

 few of them. Some of them have a long lineage. 



When a Sicilian woman is nearing the time for the birth of her 

 baby, certain knowing ignoramuses of her community may advise 

 her to eat nine black beans, one at a time. After her child has 

 arrived, the eldest woman present at her delivery should form a 

 cone of nine of them on a table, and by reciting the proper con- 

 juration render certain spirits, le 'padrone di casa, impotent to do 

 her any harm. 200 But of greater interest to us, of course, are the 

 creations of fancy that have some background in the history of 

 ancient superstition. Some of these, like Mormo, Lamia, and 

 Orcus, and their modern representatives have already engaged 

 our attention in another connection, but there are others who are 

 equally dreadful. 



The vampirical striges or strigae (the vulgar spelling), of whom 

 we find grim tales told in our Latin authors, were, doubtless, born 

 to primitive fancy from knowledge of screech-owls, blood-sucking 

 bats, and other vermin of the air. 201 In early times the pallor of 

 an ailing child was not interpreted in terms of needed vitamins 

 and minerals, but in terms of visits which such creatures of the 

 night would make to it in order to feed on young blood. Witches 

 took the guise of these flying things as well as of spirits in order to 

 facilitate their undertakings. Cuts and scratches on the child, self- 

 inflicted or not, would be credited to beaks and talons. 202 The 

 belief was strengthened by the sight of screech-owls flying about 

 tombs in the hours of darkness. The strident note of the bird 

 would suggest to a superstitious Roman that the ghosts of persons 

 who had died before their time were wailing over their unhappy 

 fate and bent on vengeance. A few authors give us most of our 

 Latin lore on the subject. 



In a passage of his Fasti Ovid appears to have confused Cardea, 

 goddess of hinges, with Carna, whose function was to protect the 

 vitals of the human body. 203 He tells us how Janus, after ravishing 

 a nymph, constituted her the deity of hinges and assigned to her 

 the task of safeguarding infants from the vampirical striges. 

 These rapacious creatures with goggle-eyes and curved beaks fly 



