Lamia

Lamia was a child-eating monster of ancient Greek mythology who, in later tradition, came to be regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit, or daimon. According to the myth, Lamia was originally a beautiful queen of ancient Libya who had an affair with Zeus; after Hera took vengeance on her children, Lamia was transformed into a horrific, child-devouring creature. In later Greek and Roman accounts she took on a serpentine form and was sometimes described in the plural, as lamiai, seductive beings who preyed on young men. The figure was long used across Greek culture as a cautionary bogeyman to frighten children into obedience, and later inspired literary works such as John Keats's 1820 poem Lamia.