The Undead in Bed

Fascination with the undead in popular culture seems to have arisen with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968, then resurfaced in 1982 with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Fascination turned to near-obsession in 2010 with AMC’s The Walking Dead, which has attracted millions of viewers for nearly a decade. But why? James Poniewozik, speculating about the show’s popularity in Time, notes that “America loves dark” and “these are dark times.” With its host of relentless, inimical zombie antagonists and grim realism, The Walking Dead personifies the ugly and brutal nature of death like none of its predecessors. Also unlike its predecessors, The Walking Dead treats familiar characters as expendable casualties and offers no hopeful resolution to the onslaught of the zombie nation.

By participating in the The Walking Dead experience, we may unawares be following the advice of Sigmund Freud, who asked, “Were it not better to give death the place to which it is entitled both in reality and in our thoughts and to reveal a little more of our unconscious attitude towards death which up to now we have so carefully suppressed?” Perhaps, just as myth personified fears of the haunting and unknown in ancient culture, survivors of zombie attacks represent struggles to collectively strike back and kill death itself. Zombie stories, in fact, may be our version of myth.

Today, we create fictional characters to represent villains, be they bigots, bombers, or (in the case of The Walking Dead) the undead. The ancients likewise fabricated fiends to buttress cultural values. They had a particular interest in two non-conventional underworld tropes: the revenant and the disguised demon. On the surface, these netherworld creatures bore little resemblance to the ghoulish villains of The Walking Dead. Both blended in with the living: revenants came alive with full intelligence and memory — not to mention some sort of mission, like vengeance or love — while disguised demons were seductive and sexually obsessed.

This article looks at two early tales of women, from the underworld in particular, in order to see how they underscore cultural fears. One is the story of a resurrected bride named Philinnion, the other of a flesh-eating seductress who entices young men in the guise of a strikingly beautiful woman, whom the Greeks called Empousa. Much as we fear death, the male-dominated Greek culture feared women who broke the cultural norm of female passivity, so their zombie myths portray young, enticing women as dangerous and deadly. Philinnion and Empousa are presented as calculating and sexually aggressive — they both put young men in peril. Their victims are unsuspecting young men of marriageable age who readily give in to the initial advances of a passionate and attractive girl.

Furthermore, both stories focus on marriage and reinforce conventional male and female roles: Philinnion and her young lover exchange pledge tokens, while Empousa and her youthful love interest are on the threshold of their wedding day. It appears that these tales were ultimately designed to reinforce the need for caution and adherence to culturally normative behavior.

Think of Medea and Jason, Dido and Aeneas. In those stories, too, social models of marriage are circumvented by powerful and determined women — with tragic consequences. The folk tales of a revenant zombie bride and a flesh-eating female fiend that follow are close cousins to myths that characterize radically counter-cultural women as monsters — only this time, the women are literally monsters.

Let us take a closer look at the twin tales of Philinnion and Empousa. Philinnion’s story was crafted as an epistolary narrative in the second century AD by Publius Aelius Phlegon as part of his Book of Marvels, a collection of unusual events of a surreal, inexplicable, or extraordinary nature.

Phlegon writes of a daughter who died six months earlier but unexpectedly returns home one night. A family servant spots the girl having sex in the room of a young male guest. Although her parents are incredulous at first, the next morning they interrogate their young guest, Makhates, who tells them everything. The girl’s name is Philinnion, and she had come to him for several nights without her parents’ knowledge. The previous evening, she had left him tokens of her affection, which the parents recognized as a golden ring and breastband that had been buried with their daughter. The mother explodes in grief, and Makhates promises to show them the girl if she comes again.

Philinnion arrives at the usual hour that night. Makhates sends his servants to fetch her parents, who immediately recognize her as their child. Amidst weeping and embraces, Philinnion promptly reproves them for meddling. Then she falls dead on the bed. When they open the family crypt, the body of the girl is nowhere to be found — inside are only an iron ring and wine cup, which Makhates had given to Philinnion as gifts. At the close of the narrative, Phlegon tells us that the young man took his own life out of despair.

We know from an alternate account of the myth by Proclus that Philinnion was a new bride who possibly died before she had sexual intercourse with her betrothed. Left neither married nor unmarried, she is sent back from the underworld as a passionate and sexually aggressive virgin eager to consummate marriage. But there is a dark twist. She does not return to her husband, Craterus, but to another young man, Makhates. In his abbreviated version of the story, Proclus says Philinnion secretly had sex with Makhates on many consecutive nights because of her love for him. In effect, she is consummating the marriage she wished she had.

This liaison, however, makes for a serious breach of cultural norms; thus, the results are tragic. Philinnion was engaged to another man. Although she and Makhates exchanged gifts as vows, their relationship was still secret and never sanctioned by the girl’s family. In addition, Philinnion aggressively initiates the rendezvous and in no way plays the traditional role of a bride in an arranged marriage. She is no better than Dido, who takes advantage of the storm and privacy of a cave to seduce her man of choice. And so the story ends badly for Philinnion and her lover. The tale sends a clear message to young men: an illicit relationship could find you in bed with the undead.

Philinnion’s strategy may have secured her a husband for the underworld, but the flip side is that it cost Makhates his life. Phlegon tells us that the suicide of Makhates occurred out of despondency — feelings of utter despair, experienced by those who believe their situations are hopeless and beyond recovery. At first glance, one may think that Makhates dies by suicide because he discovers he was having sex with a corpse. However, the emotion described is not disgust at pollution or guilt about necrophilia. Rather, in this case despondency indicates the emotional state of a young man who realizes that death has separated him forever from the girl with whom he has just exchanged pledge gifts and enjoyed the thrills of sexual passion. So he takes his own life to join his lover. Philinnion’s story emphasizes that marriage is not the product of passion; it is a relationship of convention, not emotion. Failure to recognize this could result in death all around.

Our other ancient stalker was also a seductive young woman. Although she is nameless, we shall refer to her as the ancients did: Empousa. She is not a literary creation but the product of folklore and urban legend, although she makes cameo appearances in works such as Aristophanes’ Frogs. In Frogs, Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias, meet Empousa in their descent to the underworld. When told that this ferocious daemon has taken the form of a pretty girl, Dionysus is eager to meet her. The party god narrowly escapes the vicious predator, but soils himself from fright in the process.

The sophist Philostratus tells us that Corinth was once haunted by Empousa. In Life of Apollonius, he relates the story of Menippus, an intelligent, handsome, and athletic twenty-five-year-old who was loved by a foreign woman who is herself attractive, seductive, and wealthy. She makes a bold advance on him one day by taking his hand and confessing that she has been in love with him for some time. She invites him to her home in the suburbs and promises to sing for him and give him wine like he has never tasted. She says that he will enjoy unrivaled love, and the two of them shall live together.

Menippus is readily seduced by the woman and continues to visit her often as her sex toy. He has no idea that she is fattening him for the kill. She was, after all, Empousa, a monster that could assume any appearance and then consume its victims when the moment was right. Being quite handsome, Menippus was used to being chased by women. But his mentor Apollonius warns him that he has never been pursued like this before, that he is now a prey in peril.

On the morning set for the wedding, Apollonius confronts Empousa and reveals that the supposed wealth of her house is actually an immaterial mirage. All of her expensive furnishings disappear at his rebuke. When Apollonius unmasks her for what she really is, she subsequently confesses that she was fattening Menippus’ handsome young body in order to kill him.

Empousa’s story, like that of Philinnion, reinforces cultural traditions concerning marriage. Both are addressed to young men — specifically, handsome young men. Like Philinnion, Empousa is bold in her advances; she is the one who confesses her love and invites Menippus to her home. The sexually aggressive woman is once again portrayed as dangerous.

But the Empousa myth has some additional elements. Empousa is a foreigner, so her story reflects xenophobia. There is also her independence: she appears to be autonomous and wealthy — not the typical bride who depends on her parents’ dowry to attract a man. Furthermore, a traditional good wife is characterized by her ability to execute household tasks such as weaving, cooking, and management of the servants. In contrast, Empousa attracts her lover with song, sex, and wine. In her mind, it is their mutual beauty that makes them a perfect match, rather than the more traditional blending of complementary indoor and outdoor skills.

Nothing about Empousa and Menippus’ relationship complies with tradition. Thus, Menippus is marked as prey at serious risk. In the end, he is rescued only by the conventional counsel of his mentor.

Ancient Greece sought to check the behavior of women who strayed beyond traditional gender roles and thus jeopardized the rules of marriage. Their zombie myths served as a warning to young men of marriageable age about the dangers inherent in stepping outside the boundaries of arranged marriage and allowing emotional and sexual attraction to drive conjugal relations. They also expressed societal fears concerning aggressive, independent young women. Associating female antagonists with the underworld not only made for captivating narrative, but also underscored the grim and gloomy perdition awaiting those who stray into the arms of these temptresses.

Our own society expresses fears not through myth, but through media. Could it be that the stigma of aging and ugliness of death have nurtured a genre of the undead? Is that suppressed fear brought to the surface by a show like The Walking Dead, which personifies death as a vicious and relentless enemy that needs to be defeated? When a culture invents an inimical creature, it is worthwhile to explore who or what it represents. In the case of ancient Greek myth, Philinnion and Empousa personify literal femmes fatales. Like Charon, the boatman at the River Styx, our modern undead may personify death itself.

Ken Tully is currently a graduate student in Classical Studies at Villanova University. This past summer Ken traveled to the UK and participated in the Oxford International Summer School of Greek Paleography. After completing his M.A. at Villanova Ken plans to pursue doctoral studies in Patristics.