Earliest description of a werewolf

"It may be that these people are wizards; for the Scythians, and the Greeks settled in Scythia, say that once a year every one of the Neuri becomes a wolf for a few days and changes back again to his former shape." This is the first literary reference to humans who, through magic, transform into wolves and then back into human form. It appears in the Histories of ancient Greek geographer Herodotus, written c.430 BC, in a section describing a tribe of Scythians and Greeks known as the Neuri who probably lived in the Western Balkans.

There are earlier references to humans turned into wolves, but their transformations appear permanent. In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh (c.2150 BC), when the hero Gilgamesh refuses to become the goddess Ishtar’s husband, he describes how she treated a previous lover: ‘You loved the Shepherd… Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf, so his own shepherds now chase him and his own dogs snap at his shins.’

Another early example of a man transforming into a wolf features in the Greek myth of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. Lycaon made the mistake of angering Zeus, the chief Greek deity, and in revenge, Zeus turned him into a wolf. In the first century AD, Roman poet Ovid gave his version of the transformation: ‘…He tried to speak, but his voice broke into an echoing howl. His ravening soul infected his jaws; his murderous longings were turned on the cattle; he still was possessed by bloodlust. His garments were changed to a shaggy coat and his arms into legs. He was now transformed into a wolf.’

It was also in the first century AD where we see a vague connection between transformation and the moon. The moon was linked to the supernatural, which was probably why Roman writer Petronius described a man turning into a wolf on a night when ‘the moon shone like high noon’. It was only later that the full moon became explicitly linked with werewolf transformations.

The word ‘werewolf’ is an Old English term, ‘wer’ meaning ‘man’. Many other words have been used to describe this folkloric figure, such as werwulf in German, loup-garou in French, and vargr in Icelandic. Its earliest recorded usage was in the Ecclesiastical Ordinances of King Cnut, ruler of the Anglo-Scandinavian Empire (1016-1035), in which werewolf is synonymous with the Devil: ‘Therefore must be the shepherds be very watchful… that the madly audacious were-wolf do not too widely devastate, nor bite too many of the spiritual flock.’