化身为狼的男人们

Men Becoming Wolves

# non-fiction, 2021-03-28

# 节选自《古代世界的狼人》

# Authored by Daniel Ogden, “The Werewolf in the Ancient World” (Lapham’s Quarterly 2021-03-22)

狼人故事在古籍中其实并不鲜见，但一眼扫去不得不承认，其中只有一篇称得上绝佳。它被包含在佩特洛尼乌斯（Petronius）大约公元66年写下的拉丁讽刺小说《萨蒂里孔》（Satyricon，后借名与费德里科·费里尼电影《爱情神话》）中“特里马乔宴会”（Cena Trimalchionis, or Banquet of Trimalchio）一节。我们要谈的，就是在特里马乔为暴富的坎帕尼（Campanians）自由民们举行的极奢晚宴上，像露营鬼故事一样被互相讲述的轶事。这一则由尼斯罗（Niceros）讲出：

There is in fact quite a lot of ancient evidence for the subject of werewolves, but, it must be conceded, at first glance the ancient world has bequeathed us only one really good, corking story about them, and Petronius supplies it in the “Cena Trimalchionis” section of his comic Latin novel of circa 66, the Satyricon. The tale in question is one of a pair of what might be termed “campfire horror stories” exchanged at a tastelessly extravagant dinner party thrown by Trimalchio for his fellow nouveau-riche Campanian freedmen, and it is told by Niceros. Niceros proceeds as follows:

当我还是个奴隶的时候，住在一个窄小的街道上。那间房子现在已经是格拉维拉（Gravilla）的了。那时，凭着上帝的旨意，我爱上了客栈老板泰伦提乌斯（Terentius）的老婆。你们应该认识塔伦图姆的梅丽莎（Melissa of Tarentum），她可真是个美人。但向赫拉克勒斯发誓，我爱她绝不只是馋她的身子，还因为她人品真的很好。我问她要任何东西她都不会拒绝。就算只赚两便士她也一定会分我一个。她为我攒钱，从不骗我。她的老公死在了庄园之后，我便想尽一切办法和她待在一起，只有在危难时刻人才会认识到谁才是自己真正的朋友。正巧那天领主动身去卡普亚（Capua）处理些琐事，我趁这个机会劝说我的房客和我一同去第五界碑。他是一个像冥王奥库斯（Orcus）一样勇敢的士兵。

When I was still a slave, we lived in a narrow street. The house is now Gravilla’s. There, by the will of the gods, I fell in love with the wife of Terentius the innkeeper. You knew Melissa of Tarentum, that gorgeous creature. But, by Hercules, I didn’t love her just for her body or for sexual reasons, but because she had such a nice personality. If I asked her for anything, I was never refused. If she made tuppence, she gave me a penny. She kept my money for me, and never cheated me. Her husband met his end one day out on the estate. I did everything I could to get to her. It’s in times of need that you realize who your friends are. By chance the master had set off on his way to Capua to deal with some odds and ends. I seized the opportunity and persuaded our guest to come with me to the fifth milestone. He was a soldier, as brave as Orcus.

我们鸡鸣前出发，月亮像白日一样明亮。中途走到乱坟岗，我伙伴对着块墓碑撒了泡尿。我憋住了尿，数着碑石唱歌壮胆。等回头看他时，他已经把衣服都扒了下来扔在路边。我当场吓得半死，像个死人一样呆站着。他对着衣服撒了一圈尿，突然变成了一头狼。我可不是开玩笑，没谁的遗产能值钱到让我撒谎。就像我刚刚说的，变成狼之后，他嚎叫起来跑进了林子里。起初我不知道该干嘛，后来回过了神想把他的衣服拾起来。但都已经化成了石头。我问你们谁摊上这破事不会吓破胆？可我拔出了剑借着月光继续赶路，鼓起劲走到我女朋友的家。进门时我只剩下最后一口活气，就像只野鬼。汗早就浸透了大腿根，眼睛都看不见了，就是到现在我都还没缓过劲来。梅丽莎很奇怪为什么我这么晚才到，她说：“你若是早点来，兴许还能帮帮我们。有头狼闯进了庄园里偷袭牲畜，像个屠夫一样放它们的血。虽然最后给它跑了，但我们也没吃亏，奴隶们插了柄矛到它脖子上。”听到这我瞌睡全没了，等天一亮立马跑回家，活像个被打劫了的客栈老板。

We shifted our butts just before cockcrow. The moon was shining like the midday sun. We arrived among the tombs. My man went for a pee against a gravestone. I held back, singing and counting the stones. Then, when I looked back at my companion, he had taken all his clothes off and laid them beside the road. I almost died of fright, and I stood there like a dead man. He peed a circle around his clothes and suddenly became a wolf. Don’t think I’m joking. No one’s inheritance is worth so much to me as to make me lie. But, as I’d begun to say, after he had become a wolf, he began to howl and ran into the woods. At first I didn’t know where I was, but then I went to his clothes to pick them up. They had turned to stone. Whoever died with fright, if I didn’t then? But I drew my sword and hacked at the shades, until I arrived at my girlfriend’s house. I was like a ghost when I got in, and almost bubbling out my final breath. My groin was awash with sweat, my eyes were dead, and I have barely recovered from the experience even now. Melissa expressed amazement that I’d walked there so late and said, “If you’d come earlier, at least you could have helped us. For a wolf got into the estate and among the flocks. He was draining the blood out of them like a butcher. But even if he got away, the last laugh was ours, for our slave managed to get a spear through his neck.” When I heard this, I could not even think of sleep, but when it was fully light I ran off home like the robbed innkeeper.

中途路过原本衣服变成石头的地方，却只剩下了一滩血。到了家中，那个士兵正像头公牛一样倒在床上，有个医生在治他的脖子。我这才意识到他就是个换皮者/狼人（versipellis）。打这以后我再也不敢和他一起吃饭，就算有人拿刀逼我也不行。这事随你们怎么看，要是我有半句谎话，就让守护神们惩罚我吧。

When I came to the place where the clothes had turned to stone, I found nothing but blood. But when I arrived home, my soldier was lying on his bed like an ox, and a doctor was attending to his neck. I realized that he was a skin-changer/werewolf [versipellis], and I could not thereafter bring myself to taste bread with him, not even if you had forced me on pain of death. Others can make up their own mind about this, but if I’m lying, may your guardian spirits exercise their wrath upon me.

古代世界并没有给狼人取名，至少没有专用的名字。希腊词汇里没有对这一现象的特有名词，只是简单地说人（其实总是男人）变成了狼（lykos）。直到公元二世纪，一个医生兼诗人马塞勒斯·希德特斯（Marcellus Sidetes）（以狼的词根）创造了术语 lykanthrōpos/lycanthrope 以及对应的名词 lykanthrōpia/lycanthropy，用以概括现今认为是精神疾病的各类病症。之后这些术语就被一直局限于马塞勒斯原作中的医学用法。

It could be said that the ancient world did not have a proper term for werewolf, or at any rate an exclusive one. Greek texts employ no special term for the phenomenon but merely speak of people—always men, in fact—turning into a wolf (lykos). Only in the second century did the medical poet Marcellus Sidetes develop the term lykanthrōpos, “lycanthrope,” together with its corresponding abstract, lykanthrōpia, “lycanthropy,” to describe what we would today consider to be a variety of mental illness. Thereafter these terms remained almost wholly confined to the narrow medical tradition that recycled Marcellus’ original work.

在拉丁语中，名词 versipellis，也就是换皮者，在佩特洛尼乌斯的文章中被用于指代狼人。尽管有证据表明这个词的使用场景不限于此，但至少在另一篇文章中这种用法再一次出现。

In Latin, while the term versipellis, literally “skin-changer,” may carry the specific connotation of “werewolf” in our Petronian passage, other attestations indicate that it could also have a wider application. In one further passage at least it does seem to carry the specific connotation of “werewolf” again.

普林尼（Pliny）在公元79年前介绍了有关莱卡亚（Lykaia）的神话传说，其中狼人占中心地位。他这样写道：

Pliny, writing before 79, introduces his words on the rites and myths of the Lykaia, to which werewolfism is central, in the following terms:

我们应该坚信男人变身成狼再复原回来的故事不是真的。不然，我们就该相信这几百年来听说过的所有奇妙的志怪故事了。尽管如此，我们还是该探明关于受诅咒的狼人（versipelles）这一大众迷信的起源。

We should be confident in the belief that it is untrue that men are turned into wolves and restored again to their own form. Otherwise, we should believe everything that we have learned to be fabulous over all these centuries. All the same, we will indicate the origin of the popular superstition that skin-shifters/werewolves [versipelles] are among those subject to a curse.

在公元前190年的《安菲托》（Amphitruo）一书中，普劳图斯（Plautus）把宙斯描述为 versipellis/vorsipellis，因为他变形成安菲特律翁（Amphitryon）的样子，只为了与安菲特律翁的妻子阿尔克墨涅（Alcmene）和自己的私生子赫拉克勒斯（Heracles）睡在一起。在后来公元二世纪的《变形记》（Metamorphoses）里，阿普列尤斯（Apuleius）用这个词来形容色萨利（Thessaly）附近的女巫们，因为她们能够变身成不同的动物，例如鸟，狗，老鼠，飞虫，甚至是黄鼠狼。在公元300年《反对异教徒》（Against the Pagans）书中，亚挪比乌（Arnobius）用 versipellis 作为喀耳刻（Circe，巫术女神）的别称。尽管可以被视为用于比喻“狡诈”，但更易被理解为影射喀耳刻将男人变形为野兽的能力。所以这一名词在此处意为“改换他人皮肤者”，不过也有可能是作者亚挪比乌认为喀耳刻也具有改换自己形态的能力。

In his c. 190 BC Amphitruo, Plautus describes Zeus as versipellis/vorsipellis as he changes his form into that of Amphitryon, in order to sleep with the latter’s wife, Alcmene, and sire Heracles. In his later second-century Metamorphoses Apuleius applies the term to the witches of Thessaly that change themselves into the forms of different animals, specifically birds, dogs, mice, flies, or, as the unfolding narrative reveals, weasels. In his c. 300 Against the Pagans Arnobius applies versipellis as an epithet to Circe. While it could be intended here merely in the degraded sense of “deceitful,” it is strongly tempting to read the term as making allusion to her transformations of men into animals. It could be that the term is therefore used to signify “a changer of the skins of others,” but it is also possible that Arnobius infers that Circe must have had the ability to change her own form too.