# Serial Killers of Ancient Greece

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 30 Sep 2026, 1 h 03 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116753/serial_killers_of_ancient_greece_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey into the darker side of ancient Greek history and explore the stories of murderers, poisoners, tyrants, and violent criminals whose actions were recorded in the surviving sources of the ancient world. This episode examines what can—and cannot—be known about repeated murder in ancient Greece, separating documented crimes from later legends and dramatic storytelling. Discover how ancient Greek societies understood murder, violence, justice, and punishment. Explore the roles of magistrates, courts, witnesses, physicians, informants, family members, and political authorities in investigating crimes in a world without modern police forces or forensic science. The episode examines historical accounts of individuals accused of repeated or multiple killings, including cases involving poison, political violence, family conflict, revenge, and struggles for power. Rather than applying modern criminal classifications too casually, we investigate whether these figures can genuinely be described as serial killers and what the ancient evidence actually tells us about their motives and actions. Explore the darker side of Greek political life, where assassinations and executions could become instruments of power. Discover how rival factions, tyrants, wars, personal vendettas, and disputes between powerful families created environments in which violence could become systematic or politically motivated. This episode also examines the limitations of the historical record. Many accounts were written decades or centuries after the events, while some were shaped by political propaganda, moral storytelling, or literary conventions. Drawing on Greek histories, biographies, legal traditions, philosophical writings, inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and modern classical scholarship, we separate credible historical evidence from accusations, myths, and uncertain stories. Beyond the crimes themselves, explore what these cases reveal about ancient Greek society: attitudes toward justice, reputation, punishment, family loyalty, political authority, and the value placed on human life. These stories offer a darker perspective on a civilization often remembered primarily for philosophy, democracy, art, and mythology. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this immersive journey is perfect for history enthusiasts, ancient Greece lovers, true history fans, classical history listeners, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Explore the crimes, investigations, and darker human stories hidden within the ancient Greek world.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Think about the term serial killer. We often have images
[0:06] Speaker 1: of a modern menace lurking in those dark city alleys
[0:11] Speaker 1: waiting for a victim. But it might be surprising then
[0:15] Speaker 1: to learn that ancient Greek literature and history also contains
[0:19] Speaker 1: accounts of serial murder, even if the Greeks themselves did
[0:25] Speaker 1: not have that modern term for it. In fact, tales
[0:28] Speaker 1: from antiquity reveal figures who murdered repeatedly and ritualistically. It
[0:35] Speaker 1: terrorized communities just as grimly as any modern villain would.
[0:41] Speaker 1: Ancient Greeks were certainly well acquainted with violent crime. Their myths,
[0:47] Speaker 1: their legal records, their history, it all preserves a glimpse
[0:51] Speaker 1: of multiple murderers who stalked their world. And it's something
[0:57] Speaker 1: that We're going to talk about today a bit of
[1:00] Speaker 1: a guide to ancient Greek killers from start to finish.
[1:06] Speaker 1: It'll take us from the realms of legend into recorded history,
[1:10] Speaker 1: where those real-life murderers sometimes hid behind a little bit
[1:14] Speaker 1: of power or superstition. Now, before we begin, I'd like
[1:19] Speaker 1: to wish you a welcome to the channel. If you're
[1:22] Speaker 1: new here, it's good to have you with me, and
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[1:31] Speaker 1: along with all the videos on this channel, are proudly ad-free.
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[1:47] Speaker 1: you're interested in any of those avenues, well, you can
[1:49] Speaker 1: check out the pinned comment or the description of the video. Now,
[1:54] Speaker 1: without any further ado, Let's get nice and relaxed. But
[2:01] Speaker 1: of course, as with most ancient Greek history, there's a
[2:04] Speaker 1: bit of a caveat. Kind of walk that line in
[2:07] Speaker 1: the early days of myth and history. Especially when we're
[2:11] Speaker 1: just getting into things like Herodotus. Which, well, it's disputed
[2:16] Speaker 1: how accurate all of that is. But we also have
[2:20] Speaker 1: to understand Greek attitudes towards homicide and justice in general.
[2:26] Speaker 1: You see, classical Greece didn't have a police force, let
[2:30] Speaker 1: alone any forensic science. Yet murder was regarded as a
[2:35] Speaker 1: profoundly serious offence, invoking both legal and religious consequence. In
[2:42] Speaker 1: early Greek society, justice for murder began as a personal vengeance.
[2:48] Speaker 1: A slain person's kin were expected to avenge the deed themselves.
[2:53] Speaker 1: But by the 7th century BCE, however, Cities like Athens
[2:58] Speaker 1: began to formalize laws, and that included for homicide. The
[3:04] Speaker 1: Athenian lawgiver Draco, whose very name, by the way, gives
[3:08] Speaker 1: us the term draconian for harsh laws, a bit of
[3:11] Speaker 1: the trivia for you there, established the first written homicide
[3:16] Speaker 1: statutes around 621. Draco prescribed severe penalties. Even minor crimes
[3:24] Speaker 1: could be punishable by death. reflecting that belief that shedding
[3:28] Speaker 1: blood polluted the community and had to be expiated. Of course,
[3:33] Speaker 1: there were laws before this in other parts of the world,
[3:36] Speaker 1: but it was Greece's turn to put things in stone. Now,
[3:43] Speaker 1: under later reforms, Athens developed a sophisticated legal framework with
[3:47] Speaker 1: specialized courts to handle different types of homicide. By the
[3:53] Speaker 1: 5th century, There were five homicide courts in Athens, each
[3:58] Speaker 1: for specific circumstances of killing. Premeditated murder of a citizen
[4:03] Speaker 1: was tried at the Areopagus Council. Unintentional killings, or killings
[4:10] Speaker 1: of lower-status individuals, were in other courts. But then there
[4:14] Speaker 1: were justifiable homicides, believe it or not. Things like killing
[4:19] Speaker 1: an adult or a court in the act. They were
[4:22] Speaker 1: tried in another court. Even cases of unknown killers or
[4:28] Speaker 1: inanimate objects causing death were addressed in a ritual court.
[4:34] Speaker 1: It was a pretty complex system for the time. All
[4:37] Speaker 1: those different courts for all those different circumstances. But it
[4:41] Speaker 1: does show how important it was to Greece to address
[4:45] Speaker 1: murder through lore and ritual. Remove that spiritual pollution that
[4:52] Speaker 1: bloodshed brought. Now, within this legal framework, a person who
[4:59] Speaker 1: killed more than once would be seen as especially grievous.
[5:04] Speaker 1: Of course, if you look back in the ancient Greek texts,
[5:07] Speaker 1: in those law texts, they didn't use the phrase serial killer.
[5:13] Speaker 1: But they did have a word for it. Someone who
[5:16] Speaker 1: committed murder multiple times would simply be an androphonos, that is,
[5:22] Speaker 1: a murderer, repeatedly. compounding their guilt. So, you would have
[5:28] Speaker 1: just twice charged and reformed, or thrice charged, four times,
[5:35] Speaker 1: five times, whatever it is. And here's something notable. Athenian
[5:40] Speaker 1: law provided that if an exiled murderer, that is, banished
[5:44] Speaker 1: for a first offence, committed a second killing, a special
[5:48] Speaker 1: trial could be held at the coastal court of Freado,
[5:52] Speaker 1: The accused had to plead from a boat offshore, since,
[5:57] Speaker 1: as a twice-homicide-dainted person, was too polluted to set foot
[6:02] Speaker 1: on land. Pretty much an untouchable, in those words. And
[6:09] Speaker 1: this is interesting, because it suggests that Greeks did contemplate
[6:14] Speaker 1: recidivist killers. A twice-murderer was essentially beyond the pale, too
[6:21] Speaker 1: far gone, Likewise, Greek rhetoric and philosophy also grappled with
[6:26] Speaker 1: those questions of people who killed without any real motive
[6:30] Speaker 1: or restraint. Plato, in his work Laws, classifies some criminals as, quote, incurable,
[6:40] Speaker 1: those driven by an evil that was so deep-seated that
[6:44] Speaker 1: they must be permanently removed from society. While Plato was
[6:50] Speaker 1: speaking in pretty general terms, one can imagine that a
[6:53] Speaker 1: compulsive killer would fall under this category. And it wasn't
[6:58] Speaker 1: just Plato. Aristotle, too. In his work, Nicomachean Ethics, he
[7:05] Speaker 1: speaks of certain extremely vicious individuals as, quote, beastial, rather
[7:12] Speaker 1: than merely wicked. Human monsters, delighting in vicious cruelty, all
[7:19] Speaker 1: for its own sake. Beyond the ordinary bounds of human vice.
[7:26] Speaker 1: It's things like this that show that Greek thinkers recognized
[7:30] Speaker 1: that concept of a murderous psychopath, even if they explained
[7:35] Speaker 1: it in more moral or supernatural terms rather than our
[7:41] Speaker 1: modern psychological ones. But what about socially? Well, of course,
[7:48] Speaker 1: murder was feared and condemned. But ancient conditions could allow
[7:54] Speaker 1: a serial killer a little bit more opportunity than you
[7:58] Speaker 1: might expect. You see, there was no police around, no
[8:03] Speaker 1: investigation unit to track patterns of killings. Crimes were usually investigated,
[8:10] Speaker 1: if at all, by the victim's families or local magistrates.
[8:15] Speaker 1: If victims were from the lower classes, for example, foreigners, Slaves.
[8:22] Speaker 1: The poor. Their disappearances might not even be recorded. Let
[8:27] Speaker 1: alone investigated. And that's what makes things a little bit difficult.
[8:32] Speaker 1: When we're looking into things like this. Because sure. We
[8:36] Speaker 1: can imagine that there were plenty of killers around. But
[8:40] Speaker 1: the historically verifiable evidence of them. Court records. All that
[8:45] Speaker 1: sort of thing. That's a little bit harder to find. But. Additionally,
[8:52] Speaker 1: most much-travelling Greeks, rather, took place on lonely roads or
[8:57] Speaker 1: by sea, and that's usually not a very good place
[9:02] Speaker 1: to be by yourself. Brickans, pirates, they could kill repeatedly,
[9:08] Speaker 1: and without any identification. Now consider this, and it's pretty sobering.
[9:14] Speaker 1: Someone with a murderous bent in ancient Greece could potentially
[9:17] Speaker 1: just move from place to place, leaving a trail of bodies...
[9:22] Speaker 1: with little written evidence behind it. The Greek world did
[9:27] Speaker 1: experience notorious outbreaks of violent crime. Bandits were pretty common
[9:33] Speaker 1: in unsettled areas, and the proliferation of war and civil
[9:37] Speaker 1: strife meant that some individuals became desensitized to killing. A
[9:43] Speaker 1: clever murderer might hide his or her crimes amid the
[9:48] Speaker 1: background of violence. So basically, In short, while the people
[9:55] Speaker 1: of ancient Greece abhorred murder, and did their best to
[9:58] Speaker 1: develop laws to punish it, the practical realities of the
[10:01] Speaker 1: ancient world made it possible for serial killers to exist
[10:05] Speaker 1: in the shadows. Instead, as we will see, Greek literature
[10:12] Speaker 1: preserves eerie echoes of such predators and the terror they
[10:16] Speaker 1: inspired rather than them being captured and brought to justice
[10:20] Speaker 1: every time. But don't worry, a few of them get caught. Well,
[10:26] Speaker 1: let's get into that. Let's have a look at the
[10:30] Speaker 1: myth and legend, those folklorish stories, as you can't really
[10:35] Speaker 1: go past ancient Greece without having a look at the old,
[10:40] Speaker 1: old myth. Of course, long before any historical records were
[10:45] Speaker 1: noted down, you had myths and legends that in effect
[10:49] Speaker 1: depict serial killers in action. Tales that often feature heroes
[10:53] Speaker 1: confronting vicious human murderers who prey on unsuspecting travellers. We
[10:59] Speaker 1: might call this section Mythical Serial Killers, I suppose. No
[11:05] Speaker 1: real way to prove it. No real way to disprove it.
[11:10] Speaker 1: We're dealing in the realm of humans now, so... Let's
[11:13] Speaker 1: keep our minds open a little bit. Now, the Greeks there,
[11:18] Speaker 1: lacking that modern psychological terminology, cast many of these killers
[11:23] Speaker 1: as monsters or demigods. But the criminal patterns are very recognisable.
[11:30] Speaker 1: So let's begin with one of the clearest examples, as
[11:33] Speaker 1: the string of the murderous bandits defeated by the hero
[11:36] Speaker 1: Theseus on his legendary journey to Athens. As Theseus travelled
[11:41] Speaker 1: the road from Troezen to Athens, he encountered a series
[11:45] Speaker 1: of notorious murderers, each with their own unique modus operandi.
[11:53] Speaker 1: Every Greek schoolchild knew these villains by name. There was Periphetes,
[11:59] Speaker 1: called the Club Bearer. And guess what weapon he used? Yes,
[12:06] Speaker 1: he bludgeoned travellers to death with an iron club. Further along,
[12:13] Speaker 1: Theseus faced Sinis, nicknamed the Pine Bender. He was a
[12:19] Speaker 1: robber who would tie his victims to two bent pine
[12:22] Speaker 1: trees and then release the trunks, tearing his victims apart.
[12:29] Speaker 1: On the cliffs of the Saronic Coast lurked another by
[12:33] Speaker 1: the name of Siron, a bandit who invited travellers to
[12:37] Speaker 1: wash their feet at the cliff's edge. only to cruelly
[12:41] Speaker 1: kick them down into the sea. No, it wasn't. It
[12:46] Speaker 1: wasn't really to drown them, it was more to feed
[12:49] Speaker 1: the giant turtle below who would devour them. Perhaps the
[12:54] Speaker 1: most infamous, though, was Procrustes, a sadistic innkeeper in Attica.
[13:02] Speaker 1: Procrustes offered shelter to wayfarers, but there was a deadly twist.
[13:07] Speaker 1: He had an iron bed hidden in which he forced
[13:10] Speaker 1: each guest to lie upon. If a traveller was too tall,
[13:15] Speaker 1: Procrustes would cut their limbs to make them fit the bed.
[13:21] Speaker 1: If too short, he'd violently stretch their bodies out with
[13:25] Speaker 1: ropes and hammers, until they matched its length. That's pretty grisly,
[13:31] Speaker 1: isn't it? It earned him the epithet, the stretcher. Procrustes,
[13:38] Speaker 1: in particular, He shows the traits of a classic serial killer.
[13:42] Speaker 1: He targeted a specific class of victim, that is, travellers
[13:45] Speaker 1: needing lodging, employed a ritualised method of killing using his
[13:50] Speaker 1: own murder kit, that is, the iron bed and tools,
[13:55] Speaker 1: and killed repeatedly for his own perverse satisfaction, rather than
[13:59] Speaker 1: for material gain. And when we look at a story
[14:03] Speaker 1: like that, doesn't it just sound like a modern horror film?
[14:09] Speaker 1: Think about it. How many horror films do we have
[14:11] Speaker 1: about serial killers? Where it's some travelers in some backwater town.
[14:16] Speaker 1: They shop at a motel and lo and behold, the
[14:20] Speaker 1: owner of the motel is a horrible murderer. Or there's
[14:26] Speaker 1: just a murderer lurking around, something like this. It's a
[14:30] Speaker 1: pretty common motive. Well, in any case, according to the myth,
[14:35] Speaker 1: Theseus eventually turned the tables on And he slew Procrustes
[14:39] Speaker 1: by the very same method. Another fitting retribution that ended
[14:44] Speaker 1: the murderous reign of terror. And once again, how many
[14:48] Speaker 1: times in film about serial killers do we see the
[14:52] Speaker 1: weapons of the murderer turned back upon themselves in a
[14:56] Speaker 1: kind of ironic twist? But we have to remember that
[15:03] Speaker 1: Theseus and his foes are quite legendary. But legends come
[15:09] Speaker 1: from somewhere. Inspiration has to be sprouted from some kind
[15:15] Speaker 1: of medium, and Greek storytellers likely drew from real anxieties
[15:20] Speaker 1: in crafting these tales. Travel in ancient Greece was not
[15:24] Speaker 1: always safe. Highways and wilderness paths harbored bandits and highwaymen.
[15:32] Speaker 1: The prevalence of myths about wayfarers being brutally killed attest
[15:37] Speaker 1: to a genuine fear of serial highway murders. In fact,
[15:43] Speaker 1: Roman epithets centuries later commonly include the phrase Interfectus Allatrovibus,
[15:51] Speaker 1: that is, killed by robbers, and excuse me, that is Latronibus,
[15:57] Speaker 1: Interfectus Allatronibus, excuse me. Now, that indicates how frequent and
[16:03] Speaker 1: even expected, highway violence was. When you put a name
[16:09] Speaker 1: to it, well, obviously it's not the first time it's happened, right?
[16:13] Speaker 1: The mythic bandits defeated by Theseus symbolize this ever-present threat.
[16:20] Speaker 1: But moreover, the extreme cruelty shown by Procrustes and the others,
[16:24] Speaker 1: mutilating bodies beyond what mere robbery would require, it suggests
[16:29] Speaker 1: that Greeks understood that some killers even derived a sadistic
[16:35] Speaker 1: pleasure from the act. These pretty monstrous characters show an awareness,
[16:43] Speaker 1: at least on a folkloric level, that murder could be
[16:46] Speaker 1: driven by a gruesome compulsion, rather than need or revenge alone.
[16:56] Speaker 1: Greek mythology offers other portraits of serial killers, thinly disguised
[17:01] Speaker 1: as monsters, The Sphinx of Thebes, for example, is remembered
[17:07] Speaker 1: as a mythical creature, a winged lion, but essentially she
[17:14] Speaker 1: was a serial murderer. Stationed on the road to Thebes,
[17:19] Speaker 1: the Sphinx challenged each passerby with a riddle. Those who
[17:23] Speaker 1: failed to solve it, which was everyone, until Oedipus came along,
[17:28] Speaker 1: which is why we're talking about this in Egypt, because
[17:31] Speaker 1: it involves the Greeks. while everyone except Oedipus were killed
[17:35] Speaker 1: and devoured. Her predations claimed multiple victims one by one,
[17:40] Speaker 1: causing such terror that travel and commerce halted until the
[17:45] Speaker 1: riddle was finally solved. Now tellingly, and this is a
[17:49] Speaker 1: detail that not many people know, the name Sphinx in
[17:54] Speaker 1: Greek actually comes from an old verb which means to strangle. Well,
[18:01] Speaker 1: that shows the method of which the killers were dispatching
[18:05] Speaker 1: their victim, that's for sure. And while the Greeks framed
[18:09] Speaker 1: the Sphinx as a mythical beast sent by the gods,
[18:12] Speaker 1: we can also read her story as an acknowledgement that
[18:15] Speaker 1: sometimes a single malignant entity, human or otherwise, might repeatedly
[18:21] Speaker 1: prey on a community. Only a clever solution, in this
[18:27] Speaker 1: case the wit of Oedipus, could break that cycle of killings.
[18:33] Speaker 1: So well done to him. Credit where it is due,
[18:36] Speaker 1: that's for sure. But even Greek hero myths sometimes blur
[18:42] Speaker 1: that line between heroism and serial murderer. Interestingly, the hero Theseus,
[18:49] Speaker 1: after slaying all those evildoers, himself killed at least five
[18:54] Speaker 1: men on that journey. But had he not been performing
[18:59] Speaker 1: a heroic cleansing of Greece. Theseus might have appeared just
[19:06] Speaker 1: as another young psycho on a murder spree. It all
[19:12] Speaker 1: depends on the framing, of course. But the Athenians were
[19:17] Speaker 1: quite aware of this tension. Legends say that upon reaching Athens,
[19:23] Speaker 1: Theseus underwent trial for ritual purification for all that blood
[19:27] Speaker 1: that he spilled. thus preventing him from being seen as
[19:32] Speaker 1: polluted by multiple homicides. And without that purification, even a
[19:38] Speaker 1: hero could be considered as a murderer. A little bit unfair,
[19:43] Speaker 1: isn't it? You save the lives of all of Greece,
[19:48] Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of people. But you kill one guy.
[19:53] Speaker 1: You're not a lifesaver. You're a murderer. Funny how that works. Well,
[20:00] Speaker 1: it's an interesting little anecdote nonetheless, don't you think? It
[20:03] Speaker 1: shows that the Greeks recognized that there was a fine
[20:06] Speaker 1: line between And that fine line was drawn between context
[20:10] Speaker 1: and justification. Separating that hero from the villain. Even if
[20:16] Speaker 1: their kill counts were a little bit similar. You remember
[20:20] Speaker 1: the term from True Lies? When, oh, what was the actress?
[20:25] Speaker 1: I forgot the actress. I forgot the actress. But she
[20:29] Speaker 1: asks Arnold Schwarzenegger, Have you killed people? And he hesitates
[20:35] Speaker 1: for a second and he says, Yes, but they were
[20:38] Speaker 1: all bad. That's kind of it. Jamie Lee Curtis, that
[20:43] Speaker 1: was a... excuse me. Anyway, back to ancient Greece. Well,
[20:49] Speaker 1: let's look at it in mythic terms. Many Greek heroes.
[20:53] Speaker 1: Let's talk about Heracles, that's another example. Well, he killed
[20:57] Speaker 1: numerous people, didn't he? Whether in fits of madness, or
[21:02] Speaker 1: perhaps vengeance. But these acts were usually explained as divinely
[21:07] Speaker 1: driven or even redemptive tasks. When an ancient Greek killed
[21:12] Speaker 1: repeatedly for ignoble reasons, that's when the stories would cast
[21:18] Speaker 1: them out as monsters to be exterminated. Like Arnold said,
[21:24] Speaker 1: they were all bad. But that's not all the mythic
[21:29] Speaker 1: serial killers we have. We have another one, in the
[21:33] Speaker 1: tale of Antaeus, a giant in Libya, whom the hero
[21:38] Speaker 1: Heracles had to overcome. Antaeus was said to be the
[21:42] Speaker 1: son of Earth, that is, Gaia, and drew strength from
[21:46] Speaker 1: the ground itself. He forced every stranger who passed through
[21:51] Speaker 1: his realm to wrestle with him, and having never been defeated,
[21:55] Speaker 1: he would slay his opponents and collect their skulls to
[21:58] Speaker 1: roof a temple to his father Poseidon. Here again, is
[22:03] Speaker 1: a figure who kills systematically. Every traveller is a victim.
[22:08] Speaker 1: And of course, he revels in the growing tally of murders,
[22:15] Speaker 1: even using their bodies in a gruesome trophy display. It's
[22:20] Speaker 1: only Heracles, by lifting Antaeus off the earth, breaking his
[22:24] Speaker 1: source of power, and crushing him in a bear hug,
[22:28] Speaker 1: putting an end to his lethal sport. Well, Antaeus, while
[22:34] Speaker 1: clearly a mythical giant, is certainly the archetype of the
[22:38] Speaker 1: serial thrill killer. You cannot be stopped by ordinary people.
[22:44] Speaker 1: You need a superhuman hero to come and sort him out.
[22:50] Speaker 1: Of course, these legends, from Procrustes to Antaeus, served a
[22:54] Speaker 1: dual purpose in the old Greek culture. And on one level,
[22:59] Speaker 1: they were exciting legends. Adventure stories, but not another they
[23:03] Speaker 1: conveyed real warnings. Travel was dangerous. Trust could be betrayed
[23:09] Speaker 1: by a seemingly hospitable stranger. Some predators delighted in cruel
[23:15] Speaker 1: violence for its own sake. It's all a story as
[23:19] Speaker 1: old as time. And like I said, stories have to
[23:24] Speaker 1: be inspired from something. Even if blown out of proportion
[23:28] Speaker 1: quite a lot. And all these fantastical elements, giants, monsters,
[23:35] Speaker 1: superhuman strength, there may have been a way for the
[23:39] Speaker 1: Greeks to personify a frightening reality that was quite hard
[23:43] Speaker 1: to comprehend. That a human being could repeatedly kill other
[23:49] Speaker 1: humans without an ounce of remorse. Something hard to understand,
[23:56] Speaker 1: but certainly something that they have to deal with. in
[23:59] Speaker 1: whatever way they can. And so by casting killers as
[24:04] Speaker 1: literal monsters or even demigods, the Greeks would externalize the
[24:09] Speaker 1: evil as something non-human. Nevertheless, the consistent patterns in these myths,
[24:17] Speaker 1: they suggest that ancient people were indeed grappling with the
[24:19] Speaker 1: concept of serial murder. And they're all familiar concepts, even
[24:24] Speaker 1: if someone was carving these stories into a stone tablet.
[24:29] Speaker 1: thousands of years ago, it's pretty much the same story
[24:32] Speaker 1: that we would put pen to paper on now. Or rather,
[24:36] Speaker 1: write it up on your laptop, whatever you do. They
[24:41] Speaker 1: essentially mythologized serial killers, beasts to be slain by cultural heroes.
[24:49] Speaker 1: And this was one cultural strategy for understanding something that
[24:52] Speaker 1: is on its face to, well, 99% of people who
[24:57] Speaker 1: are not psychopaths, Pretty much incomprehensible. Someone who just kills
[25:04] Speaker 1: people again and again for their own sick amusement. Most
[25:10] Speaker 1: people don't really understand the logic. Well, let's move on
[25:16] Speaker 1: a little bit to something a little bit more supernatural.
[25:19] Speaker 1: In ancient Greek imagination, when unexplained deaths struck repeatedly... The
[25:27] Speaker 1: culprit was not always thought to be an ordinary flesh-and-blood murderer.
[25:31] Speaker 1: Quite often, Greeks attributed serial killings to more supernatural elements,
[25:37] Speaker 1: demonic creatures, witches and vengeful spirits, that kind of thing.
[25:42] Speaker 1: Especially if the victims were vulnerable individuals like infants or
[25:46] Speaker 1: lone travelers. These supernatural explanations served both to personify the
[25:52] Speaker 1: unknown killer and offer a way to combat it. when
[25:56] Speaker 1: all human efforts failed. Well, let's have a look at
[26:00] Speaker 1: these tales of witches and ghosts. We can discern a
[26:04] Speaker 1: shadow of real serial crimes interpreted through the lens of
[26:08] Speaker 1: fear and folklore. First, let's talk about the child-killing witches.
[26:17] Speaker 1: They were a persistent boogeyman in the ancient world. The Greeks,
[26:21] Speaker 1: and later the Romans, believed in beings like the Lamia
[26:26] Speaker 1: and the Strix, female monsters or witches that preyed on
[26:30] Speaker 1: infants and young children. A Lamia, in Greek lore, was
[26:35] Speaker 1: originally a woman cursed by the gods to become a
[26:38] Speaker 1: ravenous night demon who steals and devours babies. Mothers in
[26:46] Speaker 1: ancient Greece would invoke Lamia as a kind of nursery warning.
[26:51] Speaker 1: Behave yourself, or Lamia will come and get you. That
[26:54] Speaker 1: kind of thing. Now, while on the surface it seems
[26:58] Speaker 1: like superstition, historians have pondered whether such beliefs sometimes arose
[27:02] Speaker 1: to explain the tragic phenomenon of infants dying mysteriously. Think
[27:07] Speaker 1: about diseases like SIDS, this kind of thing. Other illnesses.
[27:13] Speaker 1: Or perhaps to even mask instances of infanticide or child
[27:18] Speaker 1: murder by disturbed... individuals. In a society without modern medicine,
[27:26] Speaker 1: a series of crib deaths might be rationalized as the
[27:29] Speaker 1: work of a demonic sorceress. Conversely, if a person was
[27:34] Speaker 1: secretly murdering children, the community might accuse a witch as
[27:39] Speaker 1: the cause. At least one real Athenian case bears this out.
[27:46] Speaker 1: A woman named Theodos of Lemnos was tried and executed
[27:51] Speaker 1: in Athens in the 4th century BCE, accused of practicing
[27:55] Speaker 1: harmful witchcraft. According to later commentary on the case, Theoros
[28:01] Speaker 1: is said to have provided potions and incantations, and a
[28:05] Speaker 1: maidservant testified against her, implying that children or others had
[28:09] Speaker 1: been victimized by her sorcery. Demosthenes, the Athenian orator, even
[28:16] Speaker 1: referred to Theoros as, quote, That filthy sorceress whom you executed,
[28:21] Speaker 1: and all her family with her. Tell us what you
[28:25] Speaker 1: really think, Demosthenes. Well, it was a pretty drastic punishment,
[28:31] Speaker 1: executing her entire household. But it does suggest that authorities
[28:35] Speaker 1: believe that she was responsible for especially heinous and repeated crimes.
[28:42] Speaker 1: And since we have mentions of these poisonings of children, well,
[28:47] Speaker 1: possibly child killings. certainly merited wiping out her entire lineage.
[28:53] Speaker 1: They didn't do that very often. Unfortunately, we don't have
[28:59] Speaker 1: too much detail on Theorus' case. I mean, we're talking
[29:02] Speaker 1: a couple thousand years ago here, so we do what
[29:06] Speaker 1: we can. But it does provide a glimpse into how
[29:10] Speaker 1: an actual person could be branded a witch and a
[29:14] Speaker 1: mass murderer in classical Athens. It's a historical example. of
[29:19] Speaker 1: a suspected serial killing, cloaked in accusations of magic. The
[29:25] Speaker 1: people of the time just making sense of things in
[29:27] Speaker 1: any way they could. But they also had spine-chilling ghost
[29:32] Speaker 1: stories that sound remarkably like serial killer legends. And a
[29:36] Speaker 1: prime example comes from the second century C.E. travel writer Pausanias,
[29:42] Speaker 1: who relates the legend of the Daemon of Temessa, essentially
[29:47] Speaker 1: a ghost who became a serial killer. The tale goes
[29:50] Speaker 1: back to the 5th century BCE, in the town of
[29:54] Speaker 1: Temessa in southern Italy. which was at the time Magna Graecia,
[29:58] Speaker 1: a Greek colony region, so yes, we are within our
[30:02] Speaker 1: geographic limit. According to Pausanias, a sailor in Odysseus' crew
[30:09] Speaker 1: assaulted a local girl at Temesa. The outraged villagers stoned
[30:16] Speaker 1: the sailor to death in punishment, and quite rightly. But
[30:22] Speaker 1: the death did not end his evil. Oh no, the
[30:27] Speaker 1: ghost of the sailor, or Daemon, returned to haunt Demesa,
[30:33] Speaker 1: and commenced killing the townspeople indiscriminately, regardless of anyone's age
[30:39] Speaker 1: or gender. He was coming after anyone. The spectrum murdered
[30:44] Speaker 1: numerous citizens one by one, and the terrified survivors could
[30:48] Speaker 1: not predict who would be next. In essence, a supernatural
[30:52] Speaker 1: serial killer was on the loose. The community sought guidance
[30:56] Speaker 1: from the Delphic Oracle, who decreed that they must placate
[31:00] Speaker 1: the angry spirit. How to do that? Well, she told
[31:05] Speaker 1: them to build him a shrine, believe it or not,
[31:08] Speaker 1: and offer him the annual sacrifice of a virgin bride.
[31:13] Speaker 1: In other words, to stop the random murders, Demesad to
[31:17] Speaker 1: institutionalize them. Each year the ghost would claim only one victim,
[31:22] Speaker 1: a young maiden given to him, and the rest of
[31:26] Speaker 1: the populace would be left alone. Now that's a rock
[31:31] Speaker 1: and a hard place, isn't it? A pretty grim bargain.
[31:35] Speaker 1: And it continued until the travelling hero, the Olympic boxer, Euthymos,
[31:41] Speaker 1: arrived in Temesa. Euthymos fell in love with a maiden,
[31:46] Speaker 1: who was about to become the next victim of the ghost.
[31:50] Speaker 1: And in the dramatic climax of the story, the boxer
[31:52] Speaker 1: confronted the murderous spirit and fought him, Ultimately, driving the
[31:57] Speaker 1: ghost away forever and saving the girl. And I love this.
[32:03] Speaker 1: Just a boxer showing up, challenging a ghost to a
[32:06] Speaker 1: fist fight. I think that's brilliant. It's... Anyway, it sounds
[32:15] Speaker 1: like an oblivion quest. Something like that. In any case,
[32:20] Speaker 1: free at last from that cursed kill-o. The people of
[32:24] Speaker 1: Demesa were understandably rejoiced. Pausanias even mentions that in a
[32:29] Speaker 1: painting of the scene the ghost was depicted as a
[32:31] Speaker 1: dark vicar clad in wolf skin and was given the
[32:34] Speaker 1: name Lycas, meaning wolf. Well, it's a pretty extraordinary legend,
[32:41] Speaker 1: don't you think? It shows many features of serial killer cases,
[32:46] Speaker 1: thinly veiled as ghost tales. We have a series of
[32:51] Speaker 1: murders occurring over time, victims across different demographics, even a
[32:56] Speaker 1: sexual element. I mentioned the assault, words that I cannot
[33:01] Speaker 1: say on YouTube, and a pattern that evolves to, at first,
[33:06] Speaker 1: the spirit slays randomly, but then he ritualizes his killings
[33:10] Speaker 1: by targeting only young virgin girls each year. There is
[33:15] Speaker 1: that cooling-off period between murders. It's literally institutionalized as a
[33:21] Speaker 1: one-year interval, mandated by the Oracle of Delphi, and the
[33:26] Speaker 1: use of a wolf motive, the ghost named Wolf, wearing
[33:31] Speaker 1: wolf skin to hints that the Greeks associated these repeated
[33:34] Speaker 1: killings with ferocity and inhumane brutality, essentially labelling the killer
[33:40] Speaker 1: a wild beast, even a werewolf, perhaps. And indeed, later
[33:46] Speaker 1: interpretations have suggested this tale might originally have been a
[33:49] Speaker 1: werewolf story, given the parallels to other legends of men
[33:54] Speaker 1: turning into wolves and attacking people. Well, whether it's ghost
[33:59] Speaker 1: or werewolf, the Temesa killer was clearly not human in
[34:03] Speaker 1: the popular imagination. Yet one can't help wondering if behind
[34:08] Speaker 1: this supernatural narrative lay some memory of a very human murderer.
[34:14] Speaker 1: Some scholars have speculated that this kind of story, a
[34:18] Speaker 1: restless killer spirit requiring appeasement, could encode an ancient case
[34:23] Speaker 1: of flesh and blood murder. And perhaps the real community
[34:29] Speaker 1: of Temesa suffered an unexplained series of murders of maidens
[34:33] Speaker 1: and concocted a ghost explanation as a way to make
[34:36] Speaker 1: sense of all the terror. In the absence of an
[34:39] Speaker 1: identified human culprit blaming a vengeful spirit or monster was
[34:44] Speaker 1: a way to both explain the events but also to
[34:47] Speaker 1: find a solution. even if that solution was horrific in itself.
[34:54] Speaker 1: While the eventual intervention of that hero, Euthymos, is quite telling,
[34:59] Speaker 1: it takes a singular champion to break the cycle, much
[35:04] Speaker 1: as a particular clever investigator or lucky break in the
[35:08] Speaker 1: clues is needed to stop a killer in the modern sense.
[35:14] Speaker 1: And then there's other supernatural killers in Greek lore, like...
[35:18] Speaker 1: Emposai and Marmolicaea, species of female demons who you allude
[35:24] Speaker 1: to young men by appearing as beautiful women and then
[35:28] Speaker 1: consume them, a closer parallel to later vampire legends. A
[35:34] Speaker 1: striking narrative of this type is found in the life
[35:36] Speaker 1: of the philosopher Apollonius of Tiana, a first century CE sage.
[35:44] Speaker 1: Apollonius' biographer Philostratus recounts an incident in Corinth when a
[35:49] Speaker 1: handsome young man named Menippos was seduced by a wealthy,
[35:54] Speaker 1: lovely woman who promised him marriage and probably quite a
[35:59] Speaker 1: bit of money too. Always helps to grease the wheels,
[36:02] Speaker 1: I suppose. Well, Apollonius, gifted with spiritual insight, intervened on
[36:09] Speaker 1: the wedding day and exposed the bride as a supernatural predator.
[36:14] Speaker 1: In some versions, a lamia, in others a phasma that
[36:19] Speaker 1: is a ghostly apparition. Of course, once unmasked, the jig
[36:25] Speaker 1: was up. Delamia wailed that she had fattened Menapus up
[36:29] Speaker 1: with rich foods to devour him, and she admitted she
[36:32] Speaker 1: had feasted on many young men before. But then she
[36:37] Speaker 1: just vanished, leaving behind nothing but a wrecked illusion. Even
[36:43] Speaker 1: the gold and wine she had provided were revealed as fake,
[36:47] Speaker 1: Bad luck, Menapus. Well, here we have a tale of
[36:51] Speaker 1: a seductive serial killer demon, methodically preying on men by
[36:56] Speaker 1: charm and deceit. And while it's clearly folkloric, the story
[36:59] Speaker 1: might echo warnings about dangerous courtesans or lethal temptresses. That
[37:05] Speaker 1: ancient equivalent of a black widow killer lures victims into
[37:10] Speaker 1: their trap with promises of a better life and other things. Well,
[37:20] Speaker 1: that popular imagination cast it as a vampire-like monster. How
[37:24] Speaker 1: else are you going to explain young men disappearing after
[37:27] Speaker 1: courting the same enchanting woman? And once more, a supernatural
[37:32] Speaker 1: explanation fills that gap of knowledge. But the behavioural pattern,
[37:38] Speaker 1: using deception and seduction to kill repeatedly, is recognised not
[37:43] Speaker 1: just as magical, but as quite human. But what these
[37:49] Speaker 1: supernatural stories show is an unwillingness in antiquity to believe
[37:54] Speaker 1: that an ordinary person would commit such inhuman crimes. Instead,
[38:00] Speaker 1: the blame was shifted to the realm of spirits, witchers
[38:03] Speaker 1: and monsters. After all, don't we call such people in
[38:08] Speaker 1: our modern day monstrous? A werewolf or ghost could kill
[38:13] Speaker 1: again and again. because it was a beast or a
[38:16] Speaker 1: cursed soul which could poison multiple people because she was
[38:19] Speaker 1: in league with dark powers. In a sense, calling the
[38:23] Speaker 1: perpetrator non-human made the reality of the serial murder easier
[38:28] Speaker 1: to digest. It also provided a clear remedy. Religious ritual
[38:34] Speaker 1: or heroic action, whichever comes first, rather than the painstaking
[38:39] Speaker 1: investigation and trial of a human criminal, better just to
[38:44] Speaker 1: find the horrible witch or the horrible monster and, well,
[38:49] Speaker 1: remove their head. Typically, they're powerless without their heads. Well,
[38:56] Speaker 1: in converting real or feared serial killings into myth, the
[39:00] Speaker 1: ancient Greeks preserved the core detail that, to us, betrayed
[39:03] Speaker 1: the truth of what they were really describing. A modern
[39:08] Speaker 1: reader can quite easily identify Procruste's peculiar sadism. The Demesa
[39:13] Speaker 1: Ghost's patent killings or the Lamia's predatory method and say, Yep,
[39:19] Speaker 1: they're definitely serial killers. In all but name. The Supernatural Veneer.
[39:26] Speaker 1: That was just the ancient way of articulating a problem
[39:28] Speaker 1: of repeat murder. in an age before science provided a
[39:33] Speaker 1: more sensible answer but let's move on from myth and
[39:39] Speaker 1: folklore and get to the realm of recorded history do
[39:45] Speaker 1: we find any genuine serial killers The answer appears to
[39:50] Speaker 1: be yes. Though, the evidence is often a bit fragmentary.
[39:57] Speaker 1: Ancient writers sometimes couch the accounts based in biased terms,
[40:02] Speaker 1: I suppose. Actual incidents of serial homicide are documented, or
[40:06] Speaker 1: at least strongly suggested in Greek history and biography. They
[40:11] Speaker 1: range from anonymous highway murderers to powerful tyrants. whose cruelty
[40:17] Speaker 1: earned them a reputation akin to later serial killers. So
[40:21] Speaker 1: in this section we will have a look at a
[40:23] Speaker 1: few such historical cases. Let's consider how contemporaries reacted to
[40:28] Speaker 1: them too. One context that produced repeat serial killers was
[40:34] Speaker 1: banditry and piracy. Real life analogues to the mythical highwaymen
[40:40] Speaker 1: vanquished by Theseus, I suppose. Like I said, it all
[40:45] Speaker 1: comes from somewhere Throughout antiquity, travellers faced the risk of
[40:50] Speaker 1: robbery and violence, and some Britons undoubtedly killed multiple victims
[40:55] Speaker 1: over the years. There's no stretch of the imagination for that. However,
[41:01] Speaker 1: ancient historians rarely give us the personal stories of these criminals,
[41:07] Speaker 1: unless they intersected dramatically with famous events. A rare and
[41:11] Speaker 1: insightful description comes not from a historian, but from a rhetorician. Libanius,
[41:19] Speaker 1: a Greek teacher of the 4th century CE, composed an
[41:24] Speaker 1: illustrative exercise in which he describes the depredations of an
[41:30] Speaker 1: unnamed murderer plaguing the countryside. Ooh, this ought to be interesting.
[41:38] Speaker 1: In his account, a, quote, murderer-thief had been waylaying travellers
[41:43] Speaker 1: and townsfolk repeatedly, causing such dread that people stopped going
[41:49] Speaker 1: outside the city walls, though it had been a pretty
[41:52] Speaker 1: big problem for that. Libanius notes that the worst part
[41:57] Speaker 1: was how many victims never received proper burials because their
[42:00] Speaker 1: bodies were hidden by the killer, and no one dared
[42:03] Speaker 1: go and search for them lest they become the next casualties.
[42:08] Speaker 1: This depiction, though part of a fictional scenario for training orators,
[42:12] Speaker 1: is clearly grounded in real fears and real patterns of crime.
[42:17] Speaker 1: It shows that by late Roman era, educated Greeks like
[42:21] Speaker 1: Libanius could plainly envision a serial killer lurking in the wilderness,
[42:26] Speaker 1: instilling terror and evading capture as the body count piled up.
[42:34] Speaker 1: The community's paralysis, too, frightened so much that they couldn't
[42:38] Speaker 1: recover their dead or even venture out. It's precisely the
[42:42] Speaker 1: climate of fear that her more modern serial killer-like, oh,
[42:46] Speaker 1: I don't know, Jack the Ripper, were instilled in London
[42:49] Speaker 1: many centuries later. Libanius' scenario might have inspired, might have
[42:55] Speaker 1: been inspired, rather, by actual bandit cases in his native Syria,
[43:00] Speaker 1: or elsewhere in the Empire, transposing it into more of
[43:03] Speaker 1: a moral anecdote. But it does confirm that ancient people
[43:09] Speaker 1: were not only aware of such things happening, but they
[43:13] Speaker 1: also understood the social trauma that serial killers inflicted, atmosphere
[43:17] Speaker 1: of paranoia, grief without closure, and the breakdown of normal
[43:21] Speaker 1: routines due to fear. And the interesting thing about this
[43:26] Speaker 1: is that none of it is really couched in supernatural terms.
[43:31] Speaker 1: It's just some psycho out in the woods. It doesn't
[43:36] Speaker 1: need to be a monster. It doesn't need to be
[43:38] Speaker 1: a minotaur or a witch or a ghost. It's just
[43:43] Speaker 1: a terrible person. Maybe that's even more frightening. Who knows? Well,
[43:51] Speaker 1: turning to Greek political history, certain tyrants, now when we
[43:56] Speaker 1: use the word tyrant, we use it in a more
[43:59] Speaker 1: Greek sense as an autocratic ruler, were the exhibited behaviours
[44:03] Speaker 1: comparable to serial killers, albeit under the cover of state power.
[44:08] Speaker 1: But don't let being a politician let you get away
[44:11] Speaker 1: with crimes. Do you imagine that? Politicians getting away with crimes? Well,
[44:19] Speaker 1: Greek historians and later Roman writers transmit lurid stories about
[44:22] Speaker 1: tyrants who derived a perverse gratification from killing people in
[44:27] Speaker 1: gruesome ways. But one might ask, how can a ruler
[44:33] Speaker 1: be a serial killer? Are they merely just a mass
[44:37] Speaker 1: murderer or despot? Yeah, it's a good question, I'll admit. and, well,
[44:44] Speaker 1: the distinction is blurry. But some tyrants killed not for
[44:48] Speaker 1: political expediency alone, but for personal sadistic pleasure, essentially treating
[44:55] Speaker 1: their subjects as victims in a long series of violent acts.
[45:00] Speaker 1: We have one quite notorious example. Phalaris, the 6th century
[45:06] Speaker 1: BCE tyrant of Acragas, that is, Agrigentum in Sicily. Ancient anecdotes,
[45:14] Speaker 1: preserved in sources like Diodorus Siculus and later writers, claim
[45:18] Speaker 1: that Valaris commissioned an ingenious torture-execution device, known as the
[45:25] Speaker 1: brazen bull. It's quite horrible. It was a life-size bronze bull.
[45:35] Speaker 1: Hollowed out, victims were locked inside, and a fire was
[45:39] Speaker 1: lit beneath, roasting them alive. But here's the interesting part.
[45:45] Speaker 1: The design included pipes that converted the victim's screams into
[45:50] Speaker 1: the bellowing sounds of an angry bull. Pretty horrible. Not
[45:57] Speaker 1: on the list of the most pleasant inventions. Well, according
[46:02] Speaker 1: to legend, Valaris used this horrific contraption on multiple people.
[46:07] Speaker 1: One account even suggests that his first victim was the
[46:10] Speaker 1: bull's inventor as a demonstration Whether or not the details
[46:15] Speaker 1: are true, Phalaris' name became synonymous with wanton cruelty. Later
[46:21] Speaker 1: Greeks and Romans cited him as the archetypal tyrant who
[46:25] Speaker 1: enjoyed killing. And not just normal, run-of-the-mill, chop-off-the-head. No, he
[46:34] Speaker 1: was quite creative. If he indeed repeatedly burned people alive
[46:39] Speaker 1: to instill fear and satisfy his cruelty— Well, Flaurs can
[46:43] Speaker 1: certainly be seen as a serial killer in power. There's
[46:46] Speaker 1: no other nice way of putting it. Of course, the
[46:50] Speaker 1: difference is, he was protected by his throne from punishment.
[46:56] Speaker 1: But his streak was only broken when he was overthrown,
[47:00] Speaker 1: and supposedly he met a taste of his own medicine,
[47:04] Speaker 1: thrown in the brazen bull himself. I think we can
[47:08] Speaker 1: cross our fingers and hope that this horrible despot did
[47:13] Speaker 1: indeed suffer that fate. Serves him right. The story of Phalaris,
[47:19] Speaker 1: much repeated in literature, it reinforced the idea that some
[47:22] Speaker 1: individuals kill with compulsion. When such a person held power,
[47:28] Speaker 1: the death toll can rack up pretty quickly. But let's
[47:33] Speaker 1: go back to mainland Greece. They had rulers of frightening
[47:37] Speaker 1: brutality too. In the 4th century BCE, Alexander of Ferre
[47:42] Speaker 1: ruled as a tyrant in Thessaly, and he was remembered
[47:46] Speaker 1: for his sadistic behavior. Contemporary historians like Xenophon, and later
[47:52] Speaker 1: biographers like Plutarch, describe Alexander of Ferre as a man
[47:56] Speaker 1: who delighted in cruelty. He is said to have murdered
[48:00] Speaker 1: several of his own family members to secure power, and
[48:03] Speaker 1: once on the throne, he engaged in acts of terror
[48:07] Speaker 1: against subjects and enemies alike. He reportedly had a habit
[48:11] Speaker 1: of tying up people and tormenting them. One anecdote relates,
[48:17] Speaker 1: Alexander had his sister-in-law's youngest brother as a catamite, and,
[48:22] Speaker 1: in a fit of jealous rage, bound the youth. When
[48:27] Speaker 1: his wife pleaded for her brother's life, Alexander responded by
[48:31] Speaker 1: murdering the boy outright. This personal cold-blooded killing was not
[48:37] Speaker 1: an isolated incident. Alexander's reign was marked by numerous executions
[48:43] Speaker 1: and arbitrary slayings. At one point, he slaughtered a whole
[48:48] Speaker 1: group of town leaders from the Thessalonian city of Skotusa,
[48:54] Speaker 1: after they had surrendered to him, an event certainly described
[48:58] Speaker 1: in no uncertain terms as a massacre. While that was
[49:02] Speaker 1: a single large incident, more mass murder than serial, The
[49:08] Speaker 1: pattern of Alexander's life was one of habitual bloodshed, beyond
[49:13] Speaker 1: the necessities of governance. Plutarch even notes that the tyrant
[49:18] Speaker 1: so alarmed his own wife Thebes, with his brutality that
[49:22] Speaker 1: she eventually conspired with her brothers to assassinate him while
[49:26] Speaker 1: he slept. In effect, Alexander's career was a prolonged series
[49:31] Speaker 1: of murders enabled by absolute power. He killed because he
[49:37] Speaker 1: could and by all accounts, because he relished intimidation and blood.
[49:44] Speaker 1: Greek writers, who hated tyrants on principle, portrayed him as
[49:48] Speaker 1: a kind of human monster. And here's something interesting, too.
[49:53] Speaker 1: Plutarch records a detail that humanizes, however, Sor Alexander. He
[49:58] Speaker 1: allegedly worshipped the spear, with which he had first killed
[50:02] Speaker 1: an uncle to usurp authority, treating a weapon as a
[50:05] Speaker 1: kind of godlike figure. This almost ritualistic reverence for a
[50:12] Speaker 1: murder weapon could be seen as akin to fetishism, sometimes
[50:17] Speaker 1: noted in modern serial killers. It shows how a human
[50:22] Speaker 1: could turn killing into a fanatical practice. Alexandra Ferre's downfall
[50:28] Speaker 1: at the hands of Phoebe and her brothers was greeted
[50:31] Speaker 1: by relief by his subjects, much as a community might
[50:35] Speaker 1: breathe easier once a serial murderer is finally brought to justice.
[50:42] Speaker 1: But not all killers were so high profile. Many lurked
[50:45] Speaker 1: in the shadows of history. We occasionally hear tantalizing hints
[50:49] Speaker 1: of unsolved or mysterious murder sprees. For instance, several later
[50:57] Speaker 1: Greek inscriptions imply that when children died under suspicious circumstance,
[51:02] Speaker 1: their families suspected human malice. One grave epitaph, laments the
[51:08] Speaker 1: death of a child, and implies a pharmakis, a witch
[51:13] Speaker 1: or poisoner was responsible, essentially accusing an unknown person of
[51:19] Speaker 1: the infanticide. In small communities, if multiple infants died unexpectedly,
[51:26] Speaker 1: gossip might coalesce around a scapegoat figure, usually an elderly woman,
[51:32] Speaker 1: rumoured to be a witch. That's pretty common, isn't it?
[51:37] Speaker 1: Or this could lead to community-sanctioned violence against the suspect
[51:43] Speaker 1: or a trial if authorities took a dump. And while
[51:47] Speaker 1: we lack detailed chronicles of, say, a Greek baby farmer
[51:51] Speaker 1: or child killer, the fear clearly existed. It's likely that
[51:57] Speaker 1: such murderers did operate undetected or perhaps unrecorded. But we
[52:04] Speaker 1: should also consider the Hellenistic and Roman periods in Greek lines,
[52:10] Speaker 1: where records were a little bit richer. Under the Roman Empire,
[52:14] Speaker 1: Greek writers indicate that serial murder was not entirely unknown.
[52:19] Speaker 1: In fact, the idea of a serial killer was sometimes
[52:21] Speaker 1: used to smear political enemies. Roman biographers like Suetonius and Tacitus,
[52:27] Speaker 1: for example, accused the Emperor Nero of youthful perversity. claiming
[52:32] Speaker 1: that before he became emperor, Nero would walk around in
[52:36] Speaker 1: the streets at night, randomly stabbing passers-by or torturing bound
[52:42] Speaker 1: victims while dressed in wild animal skins. It sounds a
[52:48] Speaker 1: bit fanciful, don't you think? They're likely exaggerated, or even fabricated,
[52:54] Speaker 1: to paint Nero as monstrous. But they are revealing. They
[52:59] Speaker 1: showed that by the 1st and 2nd century CE, people
[53:02] Speaker 1: could imagine a scenario in which a person, even a
[53:06] Speaker 1: highborn youth at that, secretly committed serial murder for pleasure. Now,
[53:12] Speaker 1: if anything, and even if most, well, in an interpretation
[53:19] Speaker 1: that we're going to just say, well, perhaps people just
[53:22] Speaker 1: had the imagination within literature and this culture of the
[53:27] Speaker 1: literary serial killer coming up, that is something But, once again,
[53:33] Speaker 1: it all comes from somewhere. Well, continuing on now, the
[53:41] Speaker 1: fact that such accusations were considered to be potent character
[53:46] Speaker 1: assassinations also implies that society found the idea plausible enough
[53:50] Speaker 1: to be scandalous. And in one case from the Greek East,
[53:54] Speaker 1: an orator named Dio Chrysostom writes about a contemporary tyrant
[53:59] Speaker 1: in the city of Prusa who allegedly like to bury
[54:03] Speaker 1: people alive as a form of punishment, or even sport
[54:08] Speaker 1: on boring days. Again, it's hard to disentangle propaganda from truth,
[54:14] Speaker 1: yet the recurring motive is a powerful individual behaving in
[54:18] Speaker 1: what we term as a serial killer. Well, by the
[54:22] Speaker 1: late Antique period, that is, 3rd to 4th century, when
[54:27] Speaker 1: the Roman Empire was Christianizing, Church sources occasionally mentioned individuals
[54:32] Speaker 1: who could be likened to serial killers, although they often
[54:35] Speaker 1: were framed as martyrs, persecutors, or diabolically influenced persons. One
[54:43] Speaker 1: might cite the case of St. Nestor's legend. Nestor was
[54:47] Speaker 1: said to have slain a series of infants in a
[54:49] Speaker 1: demonic frenzy before converting to Christianity. Though a religious legend,
[54:54] Speaker 1: it does reflect the persistent notion of an evildoer killing sequentially,
[54:59] Speaker 1: without any rational motive, but this time stopped by divine intervention.
[55:04] Speaker 1: So overall, hard evidence of true, quote, serial killers in
[55:12] Speaker 1: antiquity is pretty rare, and that is as one might
[55:17] Speaker 1: expect in an era without modern crime reporting. But there
[55:23] Speaker 1: certainly are hints, and we can piece them together from
[55:26] Speaker 1: historical anecdotes, legal cases, and biographical smears concluding that serial
[55:33] Speaker 1: killers did exist in ancient Greece some hid behind the
[55:38] Speaker 1: respectability of status like tyrants or poisoned relatives quietly others
[55:45] Speaker 1: were lower class predators who might never be chronicled unless
[55:49] Speaker 1: they intersected with famous figures but where the record is
[55:54] Speaker 1: silent logic and archaeology and also Demography suggests a sobering possibility.
[56:04] Speaker 1: Many serial murderers simply went undetected or unpunished. In a
[56:09] Speaker 1: society where victims might be travellers with no family nearby, slaves, peasants, well,
[56:18] Speaker 1: their deaths would simply go unnoticed. Ancient commentators even acknowledge this.
[56:27] Speaker 1: One modern historian has noted, an ancient remark that in
[56:30] Speaker 1: times and places of lax oversight, there could have been
[56:33] Speaker 1: hundreds of serial killers, and killings which were never investigated
[56:37] Speaker 1: very far, especially if the victims were of that aforementioned
[56:42] Speaker 1: low status. For all of its advances, in law, and
[56:48] Speaker 1: everything else, ancient Greek society, they simply lacked the centralized
[56:53] Speaker 1: mechanisms that today help connect clues and catch serial offenders
[57:01] Speaker 1: so it is a bit of a video of speculation
[57:05] Speaker 1: a little bit of imagination and it's alright within the
[57:10] Speaker 1: historical realm to speculate and use a bit of imagination
[57:14] Speaker 1: as long as you're not coming to concrete conclusions this
[57:18] Speaker 1: is a YouTube channel not a peer-reviewed journal I don't
[57:22] Speaker 1: think they'll be putting me in the archaeological review any
[57:25] Speaker 1: time soon but That's all right. We're here to have fun.
[57:30] Speaker 1: And I hope you had fun. Despite the, uh... Well,
[57:36] Speaker 1: the macabre topic. But, hey. You enjoyed it. Because you're here. Anyway.
[57:44] Speaker 1: I'm going to thank my top dear patrons and supporters. Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Emma, Susan, Carrie, Charlene,
[57:53] Speaker 1: Linda Reese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[58:04] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Brian, Thor, Cameron, Stephan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Tavri, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon, Gugu, Bubonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, Gokhan, Dorsey, Vinita, Claire, Cortesie, Carol, Robert, Mary, Bridgette, Nefertari, Yvette,
[58:24] Speaker 1: Miss Mochi, Eleven, Allison, Free, American, Jennifer, Brittany, David, Cody,
[58:31] Speaker 1: and Brian. All right. And that's it from me. Like
[58:37] Speaker 1: I said, I hope you've had fun. If you have
[58:40] Speaker 1: anything to add, well, tell me in the comments what
[58:42] Speaker 1: you think about all this. But as for me, I
[58:46] Speaker 1: am done for the evening. Good night, everyone. As always,
[58:52] Speaker 1: lots of love to you all, and watch your back.
[58:58] Speaker 1: Farewell for now.

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