Note 552 — Chapter V · THE DEMONOLOGY OF GHOSTS AND SPRITES AND BOGEYS.

On the epithet ἠεροφοῖτις ‘blood-haunting,’ usually translated ‘walking in darkness,’ Roscher (Myth. Lex. s.v.) has based a whole mistaken theory of the nature of the Erinyes as ‘storm-clouds.’ The Townley scholion (ad loc.) offers an alternative reading of the epithet more consonant with the nature of the Erinys: οἱ δὲ εἰαροπῶτις, ἐγκειμένου τοῦ εἶαρ ὅπερ ἐστὶ κατὰ Σαλαμινίους αἷμα. On this showing the Erinyes would be not those who ‘walked in darkness’ but those who sucked the blood, a view certainly consonant with the picture of the Erinyes presented by Aeschylus: ἀπὸ ζῶντος ῥοφεῖν ἐρυθρὸν ἐκ μελέων πέλανον (Eum. 264). The termination -πωτις instead of -φοιτις gives of course a simple and satisfactory meaning; but, accepting ἠερο- as representing the Cyprian form εἶαρ ‘blood,’ it is perhaps possible to retain -φοιτις and explain the epithet as ‘blood haunting.’ Another alternative is suggested by Fick, i.e. that the primitive form is ἡαρο-ποῖτις ‘blutrachend,’ ποῖτις being akin to ποινή, cf. Apollo Poitios (see A. Fick, ‘Götternamen,’ in Bezzenberger. Beiträge, XX. p. 179).