ABSTRACT

IN no country has the Vampire tradition more strongly prevailed and more persistently maintained its hold upon the people than in modern Greece. To the confirmation and perpetuation of this and cognate beliefs, a large number of factors have lent their varying influences, and not the least remarkable of these has been the quota furnished by the popular superstition of antiquity, legends and practices which were even in Pagan days more or less covertly accepted and employed and which after the advent of Christianity although driven to the most obscure and the most ignorant hiding places, obstinately survived and helped to mould and modify the religion of the Greek peasant when once the Great Schism had allowed these weeds and tares of antiquity an opportunity of verdure and efflorescence.