Editing Empusa (section)

===Life of Apollonius===

By the [[Late Antiquity]] in Greece, this became a category of beings, designated as ''empusai'' (Lat. ''empusae'') in the plural. It came to be believed that the spectre preyed on young men for seduction and for food.<ref name=dict-grbm-empusa/>

According to the 1st-century ''Life of Apollonius of Tyana'', the empousa is a phantom (''phasma'') that took on the appearance of an attractive woman and seduced a young philosophy student in order eventually to devour him.<ref name=apoll-vit-IV-25>''Apoll. Vit.'' IV. 25: {{harvp|Phillimore (tr.)|Philostratus|1912}}, '''2''', pp. 24–26</ref> In a different passage of the same work, when Apollonius was journeying from Persia to India, he encountered an empousa, hurling insults at it, coaxing his fellow travellers to join him, whereby it ran and hid, uttering high-pitched screams.<ref>''Apoll. Vit.'' II. IV: {{harvp|Phillimore (tr.)|Philostratus|1912}}, '''1''', pp. 53</ref>

An ''empousa'' was also known to others as ''[[lamia]]'' or ''[[mormo|mormolyke]]''.<ref name=apoll-vit-IV-25/> This ''empousa'' confessed it was fattening up the student she targeted to feed on him, and that she especially craved young men for the freshness and purity of their blood,<ref name=apoll-vit-IV-25/> prompting an interpretation as blood-sucking [[vampire]] by [[William Smith (lexicographer)|Smith]]'s ''[[Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology]]'' (1849).<ref name=dict-grbm-empusa/>{{Refn|The "Apollonius of Tyana" article from the ''DGRBM''′s 1877 edition also wrote that it was a "vampire",<ref name=dict-grbm-1877-apollonius-p136/> but in the 1880 edition the article renamed "Apollonius Tyanaeus" has "purposely omitted wonders".<ref name=dict-grbm-1880-apollonius-p243/>}}