The subject of vampirism does not appear to have attracted litterateurs greatly. True, there are the operas of Palma, Hart, Marschner, and von Lindpainter; and Philostratus and Phlegon of Tralles have discoursed upon the phenomena. There are not, however, many works of fiction based upon the topic, or many poems in which the subject is introduced. There is an Anglo-Saxon poem with the title A Vampyre of the Fens, and a long, wearisome novel, full of gruesome details, entitled Varney the Vampire. Among modern authors, Mr Bram Stoker has made the vampire the foundation of his exciting romance Dracula; but mention of these works almost exhausts the references to separate works upon the subject.

Nor are the references to vampires and vampirism in the ancient Greek authors more numerous. The phantom of Achilles is represented by Euripides (Hec., 109, 599) as appearing on his tomb clad in golden armour and appeased by the sacrifice of a young virgin, whose blood he drank. Œdipus also in Sophocles (Œd. Col., 621), when foretelling a defeat which the Thebans would sustain near his tomb, declares that his cold, dead body will drink their warm blood. Human victims were offered at the funeral pyre of Patroclus in the Iliad (vol. i.).

Though human beings are not sacrificed in the Odyssey, yet the blood of slaughtered sheep was eagerly lapped up by the ghosts consulted by Odysseus (xi. 45, 48, 95, 96, 153, etc.). A sheep was also to be sacrificed at the tombs of mortals, and its blood was supposed to be an offering acceptable to the departed spirit.

Pausanias, Strabo, Ælian, and Suidas relate the legend of Ulysses in his wanderings coming to the town of Temesa, in Italy, where one of his associates was stoned to death by the townsmen for having ravished a virgin. His ghost forthwith haunted the inhabitants, and caused them such annoyance that many were thinking seriously of leaving the town when they were told by Apollo’s oracle that to appease him they must build the hero a temple, and sacrifice to him yearly the most beautiful virgin they had among them. The temple was accordingly raised: access to the sacred enclosure was prohibited to all except the priests, on penalty of death. An engraving of the evil spirit that is alleged to have infested Temesa is given on page 18 of Beaumont’s Treatise on Spirits (ed. 1705).

Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana (iv. 25, p. 165), says that the long intercourse which took place between a female spectre and the Corinthian Menippus was but a prelude to the feast of flesh and blood in which she meant to revel after their marriage.

Some have described the Hebrew lilith as a vampire, but the Jewish EncyclopÆdia states that: “There is nothing in the Talmud to indicate that the lilith was a vampire.” She was regarded as a nocturnal demon, flying about in the form of a night-owl, and stealing children, and was held to have permission to kill all children sinfully begotten, even from a lawful wife. The lilith is held to have the same signification as the Greek strix and lamiÆ, who were sorceresses or magicians, seeking to put to death new-born children. The ancient Greeks believed that these lamiÆ devoured children, or sucked away all their blood until they died. Euripides and the scholiast of Aristophanes mention the lilith as a dangerous monster, the enemy of mortals; and Ovid describes the strigÆ as dangerous birds, which fly by night and seek for infants to devour them and nourish themselves with their blood. The aluka of Proverbs xxx. 15 is more akin to the vampire. It is a blood-sucking, insatiable monster; the word is synonymous with algul, the well-known demon of the Arabian popular stories, “the man-devouring demon of the waste,” known as the ghoul or goule in the translated edition of the Arabian Nights.

Goethe, in his ballad The Bride of Corinth, describes how a young Athenian visits a friend of his father, to whose daughter he had been betrothed, and is disturbed at midnight by the appearance of the vampire spectre of her whom death has prevented from becoming his bride, and who, when detected, says:—

There is one scant reference to the subject in Shelley’s poems. Byron, in his poem The Giaour, has the following passage:—

Dryden relates:—

Scott, in Rokeby, has the following lines:—

The following legend is related in vol. ii. of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and is referred to in a footnote to Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer (p. 108, ed. 1814):—

In the year 1058 a young man of noble birth had been married in Rome, and during the period of his nuptial feast, having gone with his companions to play at ball, he put his marriage ring on the finger of a broken statue of Venus in the area, to remain while he was engaged in recreation. Desisting from the exercise, he found the finger on which he had put his ring contracted firmly against the palm, and attempted in vain either to break or disengage the ring. He concealed the circumstances from his companions, and returned at night with a servant, when he found the finger extended and the ring gone. He dissembled the loss and returned to his wife; but when he attempted to embrace her he found himself prevented by something dark and dense, which was tangible if not visible, interposing between them; and he heard a voice saying: “Embrace me! for I am Venus, whom this day you wedded, and I will not restore your ring.” As this was constantly repeated, he consulted his relatives, who had recourse to Palumbus, the priest, skilled in necromancy. He directed the young man to go at a certain hour of the night to a spot among the ruins of ancient Rome where four roads meet, and wait silently till he saw a company pass by, and then, without uttering a word, to deliver a letter which he gave him to a majestic being who rode in a chariot after the rest of the company. The young man did as he was directed, and saw the company of all ages, classes and ranks, on horse and on foot, some joyful and others sad, pass along; among whom he distinguished a woman in a meretricious dress, who, from the tenuity of her garments, seemed almost naked. She rode on a mule; her long hair, which flowed over her shoulders, was bound with a golden fillet; and in her hand was a golden rod with which she directed her mule. In the close of the procession a tall, majestic figure appeared in a chariot adorned with emeralds and pearls, who fiercely asked the young man what he did there. He presented the letter in silence, which the demon dared not refuse. As soon as he had read, lifting up his hands to heaven, he exclaimed: “Almighty God! how long wilt Thou endure the iniquities of the sorcerer Palumbus!” and immediately despatched some of his attendants, who, with much difficulty, extorted the ring from Venus and restored it to its owner, whose infernal banns were thus dissolved. This legend was made the foundation of Liddell’s poem, The Vampire Bride.

Dion Boucicault wrote and produced a vampire play entitled The Phantom, the scene of which was laid in the ruins of Raby Castle. Anyone remaining in these ruins for one night met with certain death before the morning. The only sign of violence to be found was a wound on the right side of the throat, but no blood was to be seen. The face of the victim was white and the gaze fixed, as though the person had died from fright.

In April 1819 a story entitled “The Vampyre” appeared in Colburn’s New Monthly Magazine, which was attributed to Lord Byron, but which was really from the pen of Dr John William Polidori (uncle of William Michael Rossetti), who was for a time Lord Byron’s travelling physician. The work was also published separately, but the authorship was denied by Lord Byron. Polidori immediately claimed responsibility for the work, and the correspondence and statement of facts published in Rossetti’s Diary of Doctor John William Polydori show how the mistake occurred.

The following poem appears in the Life of James Clerk Maxwell, by Lewis Campbell and William Garnett, and was written by Maxwell in 1845, when he was fourteen years of age:—

Mr Reginald Hodder, in The Vampire (William Rider & Son, Ltd.), has developed a theory which is a novel one in the annals of vampirism. The principal character is a living woman, a member of a secret sisterhood, who is forced to exercise her powers as a vampire to prevent loss of vitality. This power, however, is exercised through the medium of a metallic talisman, and the main thread of the story turns on the struggle for the possession of this talisman. It is wrested ultimately from the hands of those who would use it for malignant purposes, but its recovery is only accomplished by means of a number of extraordinary—though who would dare say impossible?—occult phenomena.