Lamia

Dictionary Definition and Picture of Lamia

• also Lamia Greek Mythology. A monster represented as a serpent with the head and breasts of a woman that ate children and sucked the blood from men.
• A female vampire.
• On the fringes of Greek mythology Lamia was one of the monstrous bogeys that terrified children and the naive, like her daughter Scylla, or Empousa. The Lamia had the head and torso of a woman, but the lower half of her body was serpentine. Laimos is the gullet, and she had a cannibal appetite for children that could be interpreted as a dangerous erotic appetite for men.