Thread by @armchairwolf

Spooky AM werewolf #folklore thoughts (as is my want): 🐺✨

The 2 most detailed werewolf stories in Roman mythology are 1) the grim king Lycaon (Ovid's Metamorphoses), and 2) the sorcerous soldier story at Trimalchio's dinner party (Petronius' Satyricon) 🧵 (1/9)

Now, in western antiquity, it is really, really easy to (often falsely) categorize the ancient world into binary spheres: male, female; good, evil; beautiful, ugly; man, wolf. (Of course, this binary is 99.9% artificial + over-simplified, but still. It's a tantalizing trap (2/9)

that the ancient poets love to tease.) What's fascinating about the portrayal of the 2 aforementioned Roman werewolves is that neither is ever portrayed as ever being a wolf tenuously kept from bursting out of its human skin to devour the flocks + family of his fellow man. (3/9)

In both instances, the werewolves have some degree of agency or consistency, regardless of their outward appearance. In both instances, the werewolves have some degree of agency or consistency, regardless of their outward appearance. (4/9)

When Jupiter causes his transformation into a wolf, Ovid says: "He was a wolf, but kept some vestige of his former shape. There were the same grey hairs, the same violent face, the same glittering eyes, the same savage image." (5/9)

The gruesome violence he inflicts on grazing sheep before his metamorphosis was his own, very intentional desire. Petronius' soldier, alternatively, becomes a wolf beneath the full moon—voluntarily. (6/9)

"Then when I looked round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth, but I stood like a dead man. He made a ring of water round his clothes and suddenly turned into a wolf." (7/9)

These are NOT the stories of a maddened wolf bursting at the seams of a human guise (compare to movies: Wolfman (1941, 2010); American Werewolf of London (1981); Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)). (8/9)

Instead, these stories are shocking and unnerving because both Lycaon and the soldier embrace their whole natures, actively participating in both binary spheres the whole time. Their monstrosity does not lie solely in their species, but in the expanse of their identities. (9/9)

@threadreaderapp unroll pls!