What is Lycanthropy? The change of manor woman into the form of a
wolf, either through magical means, so as to enable him or her to
gratify the taste for human flesh, or through judgment of the gods in
punishment for some great offence.
This is the popular definition. Truly it consists in a form of
madness, such as may be found in most asylums.
Among the ancients this kind of insanity went by the names of
Lycanthropy, Kuanthropy, or Boanthropy, because those afflicted with
it believed themselves to be turned into wolves, dogs, or cows. But in
the North of Europe, as we shall see, the shape of a bear, and in
Africa that of a hyæna, were often selected in preference. A mere
matter of taste! According to Marcellus Sidetes, of whose poem {Greek
_perì lukanðrw'pou_} a fragment exists, men are attacked with this
madness chiefly in the beginning of the year, and become most furious
in February; retiring for the night to lone cemeteries, and living
precisely in the manner of dogs and wolves.
Virgil writes in his eighth Eclogue: --
Has herbas, atque hæc Ponto mihi lecta venena
Ipse dedit Mris; nascuntur plurima Ponto.
His ego sæpe lupum fieri et se conducere sylvis
Mrim, sæpe animas imis excire sepulchris,
Atque satas alio, vidi traducere messes.
And Herodotus: --"It seems that the Neuri are sorcerers, if one is to
believe the Scythians and the Greeks established in Scythia; for each
Neurian changes himself, once in the year, into the form of a wolf,
and he continues in that form for several days, after which he resumes
his former shape."--(Lib. iv. c. 105.)
See also Pomponius Mela (lib. ii. c. 1) "There is a fixed time for
each Neurian, at which they change, if they like, into wolves, and
back again into their former condition."
