Key Points

- Female spectors used by mothers and nurses to frighten children from misbehaving

Brief Bio

The original Mormo was a woman of Corinth, who ate her children then flew out; according to an account only attested in a single source. Mormolyca is designated as the wetnurse of Acheron by Sophron.

Mormo or Moromolyce has been described as a female specter, phantom, or ghost by modern commentators. A mormolyce is one of several names given to the female phasma (phantom) in Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana.

Mormo is glossed as equivalent to Lamia and mormolykeion, considered to be frightening beings, in the Suda, a lexicon of the Byzantine Periods. Mombro or Mormo are a bugbear, the Suda also says.

"Mormo" and "Gello" were also aliases for Lamia according to one scholiast, who also claimed she was queen of the Laestrygonians, the race of man-eating giants.