True Horror with Anthony Head (TV Series)

Werewolves (2004)

David Gilman Romano: Self

Quotes 

• Anthony Head - Presenter : So, werewolves. I must admit I would never have connected werewolves with ancient Greece.

  David Gilman Romano : Well, there are many ancient stories that link this place, Mount Lykaion, and the sanctuary of Zeus with the possibility of human sacrifice; and some of the stories involve werewolves.

  Anthony Head - Presenter : What are you hoping to find here?

  David Gilman Romano : Well, we're hoping to find many things, but among them would be whether or not the ancient Greeks really sacrificed humans here on this altar, which is twenty, twenty-five meters higher up.

  [He points upward to the crest of the ridge] 

  Anthony Head - Presenter : Let's go have a look.

  [They climb the ridge] 

  Anthony Head - Presenter : Wow. Sacrifice with a view!

• David Gilman Romano : This is one of the trenches that was excavated in the early twentieth century by Kourouniotes. He found the remains of bones, which he analyzed and found to be animal bones; but when we work here, we'd like to see if it's possible that the bones are human.

  Anthony Head - Presenter : And if they are human bones, how does that relate to werewolves?

  David Gilman Romano : Well, the story that's recounted a number of times in antiquity is that if, a human being ate of human flesh, from a human sacrifice, then he would be turned into a werewolf for nine years. And it would take nine years of not eating human flesh for him to become human again.

  Anthony Head - Presenter : Otherwise, he stays as a wolf?

  David Gilman Romano : [smiling]  That's the story.

• Anthony Head - Presenter : How would you say all these ancient myths found their way into popular culture? How did the werewolf make its way into the werewolf we know now?

  David Gilman Romano : Well, the stories were told and retold in antiquity, and in fact we have a summary of the story told to us by Augustine in the fourth or fifth century A.D., in which he recounts these various aspects of the Lykaion story, and it may be from that date that Christianity picked up the story.