Lyssa

Q: Who was Lyssa?

Lyssa (Greek Lyssa, also spelled Lytta) was the spirit of rage and madness in Greek mythology. The word lyssa means raging fury, in war as well as in madness, and later the rabies of dogs.

Lyssa (Greek Lyssa, also spelled Lytta) was the spirit of rage and madness in Greek mythology. The word lyssa means raging fury, in war as well as in madness, and later the rabies of dogs. The tragedians personify her. She is a character in Euripides’ Heracles, where she drives Heracles to kill his own children, and she is invoked in his Bacchae.

Lyssa’s Parentage

In Euripides’ Heracles, Iris introduces her as the child of Night, and Lyssa herself says that she was born “of Night and from the blood of Uranus” (Euripides, Heracles 822–823, 843–844). Iris addresses her as an unwedded maiden of black Night (Heracles 834), and the chorus sings of a “Gorgon of Night” with a hundred heads of snakes, whose eyes glitter (Heracles 883–884).

Family of Lyssa

Parents: Nyx, Uranus

See the full family tree

Lyssa and Heracles

The best-known story about Lyssa is in Euripides’ Heracles. After Heracles has completed his labours for Eurystheus, Hera wishes to bring new bloodguilt on him by making him kill his children. Iris, the messenger of the gods, brings Lyssa from the sky to the roof of his palace in Thebes and tells her to send madness on him. Lyssa protests first. She says that she holds her honours not to harm her friends and that she does not like visiting the homes of men; she calls Heracles a man of great service to gods and mortals and advises Hera and Iris to think again. Iris insists, and Lyssa says that she will act, calling the sun as witness that she does so unwillingly (Euripides, Heracles 843–873). As the madness begins, Lyssa herself describes it: Heracles shakes his head, silently rolls his eyes, and breathes like a bull ready to charge (Heracles 867–870). Then she goes into the house. A messenger later tells how, in his madness, Heracles took his own sons for the sons of Eurystheus: he shot one with an arrow, struck another with his club, and killed his wife Megara and the third child with a single arrow, until Athena threw a stone at his chest and he fell asleep (Euripides, Heracles 965–1008).

Lyssa and Dionysus

In the Bacchae, the chorus of Dionysus’ followers calls on the “swift hounds of Lyssa” to go to the mountain where the daughters of Cadmus are celebrating his rites and to goad them against Pentheus, who spies on the maenads in women’s clothing (Euripides, Bacchae 977–981). In the Iliad the word is used of Hector, in whom a mighty rage, lyssa, has settled (Homer, Iliad 9.239).

Lyssa and the Maniae

The Maniae are the “Madnesses”. Pausanias saw a sanctuary of goddesses of that name beside the road from Megalopolis to Messene, which he took to be a surname of the Eumenides, and where Orestes was said to have been driven mad for shedding his mother’s blood (Pausanias 8.34.1).