The Werewolf in the Ancient World by Daniel Ogden

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Werewolf in the Ancient World by Daniel Ogden Giulia Freni Daniel Ogden. The Werewolf in the Ancient World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 280. £25.00. ISBN 978-0-19-885431-9. The best-known werewolf story from Graeco-Roman antiquity is the one of Petronius' Satyricon 61–62, but there is other evidence about a man becoming a wolf. The volume The Werewolf in the Ancient World, by D. Ogden, intends to provide an overview on werewolfism in the ancient world, considering also the medieval and early modern traditions about the phenomenon. A significative role in this analysis is the folkloric approach, which permits tracing connections between the ancient material and the later evidence. The first two chapters discuss the connection of werewolves with magic and witchcraft on one hand, and with ghosts on the other. On the former, Ogden explores the transformation of men into animals beginning with Circe's wolves in the Odyssey. The focus is the strix -witch and her ability to transform herself and other people into animal creatures, especially screech owls and wolves who stole and mutilated children. Multiple examples from Greek and Latin literature as well as Near Eastern and medieval texts illuminate other uses of magic ghosts. Ogden notes the link between werewolves, ghosts and death in the Faliscan and Etruscan worlds within a folkloric context; other comparanda are made with the vampire, whose relationship with werewolfism results from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The third chapter is dedicated to the articulation of the werewolf, studied both from an inside and outside perspective. The werewolf sports clothing, which signifies belonging to the human world, but also possesses a hairy heart, related instead to the lupine world. Ogden subsequently examines the transformation from human to wolf and vice versa, obtained by the ingestion of a certain substance, but also associated with the motifs of the wolf in the woods or across the water. The result is a perception of the werewolf as a wolf contained within a human body, juxtaposing the inner-outer selves. The following chapter resumes this dichotomy with the opposition of soul-projection and soul-flying, which means that the soul is sent off on adventures while preserving the human body in order to reanimate it. Ogden hypothesizes that Greek shamans and the Pythagorean tradition ascribed the soul-projection to werewolfism. In the fifth chapter Ogden takes up the connection between werewolves and ghosts again, focusing on the Hero of Temesa, who, according to Pausanias, was defeated by the boxer Euthymus. Ogden identifies other literary and iconographic similarities with Pausanias' two accounts of the Hero, conceptualized as a ghost. The last chapter focuses on the myths and the rites linked to the Lykaian festival, celebrated in Arcadia. Ogden begins with the aetiological myths about Lykaon and explores two separate traditions related to the festival: the historical Anthid rite and the tale of Damarchus transformed into a wolf. Ogden argues that the story of Damarchus predates the Anthid rite, which thus derived metaphorically from an ancient folkloric tradition. This chapter is particularly [End Page 481] effective in elucidating the varying traditions of werewolfism. Ogden concludes by trying to answer the question, "How did the people of the Ancient World know what a werewolf was?" The book contains three appendices which cover Circe's role as a witch, Cynocephali, and two cases of false werewolves. In conclusion, Ogden offers a thorough discussion of werewolfism in antiquity, covering as well sources since the Middle Ages. He integrates literary sources with folkloric material to illustrate the influence of the latter, and in so doing provides a rich study of werewolves, both their perception and presentation. Giulia Freni University of Siena Copyright © 2021 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc.