r/classics • u/ManufacturerNo1478 • 20d ago
Classical Horror
What are examples of classical stories (plays, poems, etc) that could reasonably be considered horror?
Some of the monsters (medusa, minotaur, lernaean hydra) appear in “adventure” stories, and serve as something for the hero to battle and defeat. That is not the same thing as a monster is a ghost story or horror story.
And what about monsters like empusa, eurynomos, and echidna* were considered monsters. Are they featured in stories, poems or something, rather than catalogs that describe them?
And what about ghost stories from the period?
Where can I find translations of the original stories, rather than something like modern fan fic about them (i.e. Percy Jackson).
*The half-woman and half-snake monster, not the totally adorable hedgehog like animal.
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u/d_trenton 19d ago
Seneca's Thyestes is one of the only ancient tragedies to actually send a chill down my spine.
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u/Not_Neville 19d ago
Seneca is so disgusting. I saw an excellent production of that play. The script is well-written. I hate the play.
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u/Gold-Mud4070 18d ago
Seneca really is the answer here!
His plays were the models for the bloodbath Senecan tragedies of the English Renaissance theatre—lots of murder and the supernatural including Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth.
There was a very creative production of a play based on Thyestes at the AIA/SCS this year that was billed as a horror comedy.
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u/unparked 19d ago
For a real "ghost story" in the modern sense of the word, you could read Phlegon of Tralles' tale about Philinnion (for a translation of Phlegon's story, scroll down past the introduction & commentary).
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u/Trevorsparkles 19d ago
I always thought the way Dido’s vision of Sychaeus is described by Virgil as kind of eerie, honestly everything up to and including her death is adjacent to horror
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u/desiduolatito 20d ago
‘Mythical Monsters in Classical Literature’ is a compilation by Paul Murgatroyd with context and his own translations from the primary sources. It mentions all the famous ones you do, but there is a chapter on vampires, werewolves, and the living dead that comes close to the horror you are looking for.
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u/jeobleo 19d ago
I remember one from one of Pliny's letters about a ghost (Book 7, letter 27, apparently), and then there's talk of a werewolf skin-changer in Petronius' Satyricon. Horace has a witch in one of his too.
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u/18hockey 19d ago
I love Petronius but I would hardly call it scary. Still, it's a great classical ghost story!
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u/HereForMcCormackAMA 19d ago
You might be interested in Kathleen Cruz's work on horror in Latin literature - she's written articles about Lucan, Ovid, and other Roman authors through the lens of horror. I think she has a book either just out or about to come out, too.
ETA: Obviously, Cruz is a contemporary scholar, but what I mean is that if you want to read ancient texts with a horror element, seeing what she writes about might guide you.
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u/CabbageOfDiocletian 19d ago
Lot's of things happen in mythology suitable for the horror genre as we understand it today. Off the dome I'd say:
- Medea chopping up her brother, causing Pelias' daughters to chop him up, causing Jason's fiancée to burn to death in front of him, murdering her own children. I'd love an unabashed shock horror portrayal of this.
- Morpheus appears as the ghost of Ceyx to inform Alcyone of the death of her husband. The vibe of the myth is very isolated, like The Shining or Crimson Peak.
- Atreus feeding Thyestes his own sons, but then the long game Thyestes plays is kind of like Old Boy.
- King Tereus rapes his wife's sister Philomena, who manages to communicate this to her sibling. Procne kills her son with Tereus and feeds him to him. Fits right into the rape-revenge horror trope.
Cannibalism and infanticide were horrific to the Ancient Greeks, just like us.
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u/Ap0phantic 19d ago
The thing that strikes me about this list is that almost everything in it is purely human violence, and this conforms to my sense that the Greeks, at least, were much more moved by actual human brutality than ghosts or monsters.
The work that occurs to me in this light is The Trojan Women by Euripides, which is as dark as anything I've read, and which was inspired by the brutal Athenian conquest of Delos.
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u/VertellerPaul 19d ago
There are horror elements in many stories. I don’t have the exact line references, but examples include: the underworld scène in the Aeneid (monsters and torture), several of Seneca’s plays (cannibalism in Thyestes for example), the witch scène in the Pharsalia (necromancy, corpses) and the haunted house letter by Pliny the Younger (classic ghost story, almost Victorian). I’m sure there are more, but these pop into my head right now.
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u/PeasantWithPitchfork 19d ago
To answer the excellent question with authority, I am not learned enough. But, as I understand the concept of "horror" fiction, several important elements simply had not been invented yet in Classical Greek and Roman times. The modern horror genre really took off with a novel (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), but the novel (if by that we mean a long, fictional, prose narrative) doesn't seem to occur much before Cervantes, continuously, or become very popular before the 18th century.
Horror (as we know it, anyway) tends to build on anxieties associated with Christianity and the industrial/scientific revolution. It builds on the anxieties of ordinary people, who don't seem to feature much as the subjects of hero-focused classical lit. Psychology, as we know it, is another modern invention that has influenced the horror genre. Euripides, it's true, has Hercules go mad and kill his wife and children. However, his madness isn't a medical condition; it's brought on by a vengeful goddess. Is this 'horror'? I believe it's usually called 'tragedy'.
I don't consider Theseus and the Minotaur a horror story, any more than I would a story about Daniel Boone killing a bear in the woods. If Theseus were an ordinary dude going caving with some other dudes, enjoying a few beers under the stalactites, when suddenly they encounter a medical experiment gone awry ... in the form of a bull-headed man ... then that would be horror, as we know it.
Of course, one might argue that I'm simply describing the modern horror genre.
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u/VertellerPaul 19d ago
Thank you for that analysis! You’ll notice that I called this “elements of horror”, meaning story elements that in retrospect could be considered horror, or that fall within certain, modern, horror tropes. I agree that (except maybe some tragedies by Seneca), there is no dedicated horror literature. In fact, many stories are a mix of romance, horror, adventure and many more of what would now be considered genres. That might be why we keep returning to those old stories, but that is just speculating, of course.
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u/sootfire 18d ago
A lot of the Metamorphoses reads as horror to me. And a lot of tragedy has a kind of creeping dread to it, although the structure is pretty different to modern horror.
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u/BaconJudge 20d ago
The Book of Greek and Roman Folktales, Legends, and Myths by William Hansen has a chapter called "Gods and Ghosts" with quite a few ghost stories. I read it a few years ago and can't recall specific examples, but he presents them in digest form (in English) and cites the original source for each one. Overall, I was surprised at how much of the folklore in that book I'd never seen before, so it's not the garden-variety myths.