40 Conception, Birth and Infancy in 



by night and assail children if they are not sufficiently protected 

 by a nurse. Their strident voices give them the name of strix. 

 This is the Latin word for screech-owl. They seize an infant from 

 his cradle, suck his blood, and devour his vitals. Ovid leaves it 

 unsettled whether they are born birds or are not rather the result 

 of a metamorphosis of beldames into that form under the influence 

 of a spell imposed by some Marsian wizard. 204 Although Pliny 

 the Elder is credulous enough about many matters, he stamps as 

 a fabulous invention the statement that striges milk teats into the 

 lips of infants. 205 However these things may be, the king of Alba 

 Longa, Proca, was attacked by such creatures, as the story runs, 

 when he was five days old, but the nymph Crane made him whole 

 by touching the door posts three times in succession with arbutus 

 leaves and marking the threshold with them thrice. She used 

 water with some drug in it to sprinkle the entrance, and at the 

 cost of a sacrifice of a two-months-old pig saved the baby's life. 

 A sprig of white thorn, set in the chamber window, kept the birds 

 from ever violating the cradle again. 206 



The term strix was used, then, for old hags in the flesh who 

 practised the arts of sorcery and carried off the children. In other 

 words, a witch was believed to turn into a screech-owl when it 

 suited her purpose, as, in Italy of today, they change at pleasure 

 into cats. 207 



We are introduced to a fiendish and possibly cannibalistic sorcer- 

 ess in one of the tales of horror which Petronius likes to bring into 

 his novel here and there as spice to the narrative. A much beloved 

 boy has died. His mother is bewailing his death with several 

 mourners, when suddenly they hear the screeching of witches. At 

 this a giant Cappadocian slave, who is described as strong enough 

 to lift from the ground a mad bull, rushed boldly out of the house 

 to attack them with a sword. He ran one of them through the 

 middle. All heard the groan clearly enough, but they failed to 

 catch sight of the witches themselves. When the man returned, 

 he threw himself on the bed. His whole body was black and blue 

 from the touch of the hag's evil hands, as if he had been scourged. 

 When the mother went to embrace the body of her son, she found 

 that she had only a little bundle of straw to put her arms around. 

 There was no heart in it, no insides, nothing human at all. The 

 witches had, it was only too clear, swooped down to take the boy 



