LAMIA

(Gr. Aa^ta.) An imaginary being, concerning which many superstitious notions were prevalent among the Greeks and Romans; sometimes represented as a species of monstrous animal, sometimes as a spectre or vampire. The Lamia: of Pliny are animals, with the lace and head of a woman and tail of a serpent, inhabiting the deserts of Africa. According to mythologists, the first Lamia was daughter of Neptune, a malevolent godde , who seizes and devours new-born infants in their cradles: whence Horace's caution to tragic writers against indulging in the description of unnatural horrors: Nee pransae Lamise vivum puerum extra hat alvo. In the well-known story of Machates and Philemon, (from which Goethe has borrowed his magnificent ballad of the Bride of Corinth), a young man is represented as marrying a Lamia, or Empusa, who sucks his blood at night. A similar tale occurs in the Life of Jlpollonius of Tyana, by Phi lost rut us. The Christian superstition of incubi, and the Oriental belief in vampires, seem to bear marks of the same origin. LAMID/E. (Lat. lamia, the name of an imaginary animal in Pliny.) The subdivision or family of Lamina, in which the sides of the thorax are either smooth and rounded, or tuberculate, rugous, or spiny, but not furnished with tubercles or spines. LAM i'M^E. (Lat. lamia.) A tribe of Longicorn beetles, distinguished, according to Latreille, by their vertical head; filiform palpi, whose terminal joint is more or le ovoid, and tapers to a point; maxillae with the outer lobe slightly narrowed;itHie end; antenna: frequently setaceous and simple; and thorax, exclusive of the lateral spines or tubercles, nearly equal throughout. Some species are apterous, a modification which occurs in no other tribe of Longicorn beetles. [s. 652]