Lamia (/ˈleɪmiə/; Greek: Λάμια), in ancient Greek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting daemon. In the earliest stories, Lamia was a beautiful queen of Libya who had an affair with Zeus. Upon learning this, Zeus's wife Hera, forced Lamia to eat her own children, the offspring of her affair with Zeus, and afflicted her with permanent insomnia. Zeus, taking pity on her, endowed Lamia with the gift of prophecy and the ability to temporarily remove her eyes to relieve her sleeplessness.
The lamiai also became a type of phantom, synonymous with the empusai who seduced young men to satisfy their sexual appetite and fed on their flesh afterward. An account of Apollonius of Tyana's defeat of a lamia seductress inspired the poem Lamia by Keats.
Lamia has been ascribed serpentine qualities, which some commentators believe can be firmly traced to mythology from antiquity, and they have found analogues in ancient texts that could be designated as lamiai (or lamiae) which are part-serpent beings. These include the half-woman, half-snake beasts of the "Libyan myth" told by Dio Chrysostom, and the monster sent to Argos by Apollo to avenge Psamathe (Crotopus).
Today, Lamia is used in Greece as a bogeyman to frighten children into obedience, similar to the way parents in Spain, Portugal and Latin America use the Coco.
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