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The nearer Letiko and the two hares came to the house the nearer also came the lamia, and when the hare was about to slip in by the house door she caught it by its little tail and tore it out. When the hare came in the mother stood up and said to it: 'Welcome, dear little hare; because you have brought me back Letiko I will silver your little tail.
For though in peace he vented himself in his pleasures, and, when there was nothing to do, ran headlong into any excesses, in war he was as sober and abstemious as the most temperate character. The story is told, that once, after Lamia had gained open supremacy over him, the old man, when Demetrius coming home from abroad began to kiss him with unusual warmth, asked him if he took him for Lamia.
Of all the disreputable and flagitious acts of which he was guilty in this visit, one that particularly hurt the feelings of the Athenians was that, having given comment that they should forthwith raise for his service two hundred and fifty talents, and they to comply with his demands being forced to levy it upon the people with the utmost rigor and severity, when they presented him with the money, which they had with such difficulty raised, as if it were a trifling sum, he ordered it to be given to Lamia and the rest of his women, to buy soap.
The world is so far right in regarding beauty with a sort of superstitious dread, as a presence almost uncanny among our mere mortal concerns, a daemonic thing, which is what the world has meant when it has, not unnaturally, confused it with the spirits of evil; for surely it is a supernatural stranger in our midst, a fairy element, and, like the lorelei and the lamia, it does beckon its votaries to enchanted realms away and afar from "all the uses of the world."
She was lithe as a serpent, graceful as a young panther, another Lamia come to damn the souls of men with those arts denounced in a long dead age by Apolonius of Tyana. "She seemed, at once, some penanced lady elf, Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self...."
On a fly-leaf of the score MacDowell has written this glossary of the story as told by Keats: "Lamia, an enchantress in the form of a serpent, loves Lycius, a young Corinthian. In order to win him she prays to Hermes, who answers her appeal by transforming her into a lovely maiden.
When he found that the citizens were making a great boasting, and were ready to rush into a war without counting the cost, he said he would advise one only “whenever he saw the young men ready to keep their ranks, the old men to pay the money, and the orators to abstain from taking it for themselves.” However, the Athenians made a league with the Thessalians and other Greeks against Macedon, and put their army under the command of Leosthenes, a young man to whom Phocion said, “Your speeches are like cypress trees, stately and lofty, but bearing no fruit.” Leosthenes defeated Antipater and the Macedonians at Lamia, and besieged them; but still Phocion had no hope, and when asked whether he could wish for better success, he said, “No, but better counsels.”
Our friend Lucius Lamia was somewhat insolent: for on Domitius saying, "It is your fault, equites of Rome, that such things have happened: for you give verdicts laxly," he said, "Yes, we give verdicts, but you senators give evidence of character." Nothing was done that day: the house stood adjourned at nightfall. And so the elections are supposed to be put off till March.
Similarly, in Lamia, we may remember the name of the serpent-woman's lover with difficulty; but who can forget the colours of her serpent-skin or the furnishing of her couch and of her palace in Corinth: That purple-lined palace of sweet sin? In Keats every palace has a purple lining. So much may be said in definition of Keats's genius. It was essentially an aesthetic genius.
The character of Elsie is exceptional, but not purely ideal, like Cristabel and Lamia. In Doctor Kittredge and his "hired man," and in the Principal of the "Apollinean Institoot," Dr.
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