Daughter of Belus, Lover of Zeus, Tormented by Hera

This story is yet another example of how getting involved with Zeus is

never a good idea! He destroys lives whenever he gets involved! Mostly

because he could not control his lusts, and the women usually suffered

for it.

Lamia was mortal at the start of this tale of woe, and was the daughter of

the king of Libya, Belus when she caught the eye of Zeus. There are

some versions that say that Lamia was the daughter of the sea-god

Poseidon, but for our story we will have her as a beautiful, mortal woman

cursed by her relationship with Zeus.

As Lamia grew up, her beauty caught the attention of Zeus from his

home on Mount Olympus. Zeus, never able to control his desires, took

Lamia as one of his many lovers. Zeus’ wife Hera was well aware of his

constant infidelity and as Zeus took more and more women as his lovers

her anger grew and grew. Her mission became that she would destroy

all the women who Zeus had affairs with, which really seems to be a

case of punishing the wrong person, but that is by the by.

By the time Hera became set on vengeance, Lamia had become a

mother of a number of Zeus’ children and Hera decided to make Lamia

pay for that by having her murder her own children. In some versions,

Lamia is tricked into eating her children. Either way, Lamia was tricked

into committing once of the worst things a mother can do, kill her own

children.

Hera was not done with the ill-fated Lamia. She gave her insomnia.

Lamia had lost her children, and she was now prevented from seeing

them even in her dreams. Anyone who has suffered from any form on

insomnia, for any length of time, will know that being unable to sleep will

send you insane. Sleep is important to keeping the body and mind

healthy, and Lamia was never allowed even a moments sleep.

As she began to lose her grip on her mind, Lamia began to see visions,

awful visions of what she had done to her own children. Again, this is

where the story has more than one version of what happened.

In one version, driven mad by her visions, Lamia clawed out her own

eyes to try and stop seeing the horrific visions of her children dying over

and over. In another version, Zeus took pity on Lamia, which is the least

he could do with it being his fault and everything, and gave Lamia the

ability to remove her eyes at will so she could have some respite from

the visions that plagued her.

However, despite removing her eyes, she still suffered endlessly and as

time passed, her remaining sanity seeped away. Lamia mourned her

children, and it caused her endless pain when she saw mother’s with

their children, happy and content. She wanted others to suffer the same

as she did and so she began to take away the children of other women

and eat them.

As she stole and killed more and more children, her inhumanity began to

affect her looks and she began to change from a mortal woman into a

monster that matched her behaviour. Lamia was seen as woman but

from the waist down she was a serpent. From this point on, her physical

appearance matched her evil behaviour.

Lamia’s story is a difficult one. She was lured in by Zeus and as a result

of his lusts she was punished by Hera. It could be argued that Lamia is

also a victim here as she was driven to insanity by Hera’s jealous

behaviour which resulted in the death of Lamia’s children.

Maybe a moral of the story is to beware beauty as it can lead to your

downfall in many ways. Catching the eye of Zeus never ends well!