The first vampire was Italian

Dhruv Saxena
7 min readJan 11, 2021

Dracula was a great book. But did you know that he wasn’t actually the first vampire. No, the origin of the fanged devil actually has its roots in Greek mythology much like everything else. But the Greek tale is completely unlike the one narrated by Bram Stoker. No, it’s actually about love, a concept found in a lot of Greek tales, which is what makes it so different from Bram’s story.

But enough of the prelude. Let’s dive into the story itself.

So, our tale of love, jealousy and backstabbing begins in Italy, of all places, the ancestral home of pizza and the star of our tale is Ambrogio. So Ambrogio had a pretty normal childhood, went to school, had mates, drank beer on Sundays with his buddies(JK) and had pizza nights every night, because Italy. He grew up to be quite adventurous and around 20 years or so, decided to travel to Delphi, the home of the most famous Oracle, the Oracle of Delphi.
Why Delphi, you ask, Why not other places? Well, same reason I’d pick Burger King over McDonalds, their burgers are more awesome, and in this case instead of burgers, we have fortunes. So he got himself a boat, said Ciao to Italy and set out for Greece. A month or so later, he arrived at the western edge of Greece, Astakos, with a K much to his disappointment. From there he continued by horse or foot to Delphi.

The Delphic oracle was seated at Apollo’s temple, the god of prophecies among other things. The temple at Delphi was Apollo’s biggest gives reason to believe that the Delphic oracle may have been ‘special’.

So Ambrogio arrives at the temple chest puffed out, because what could go wrong for this handsome Italian fella? Well turns out, quite a lot. The actual words of the prophecy are unclear, but summarized it goes: The curse, the moon, blood will run. As you can correctly imagine, it scared our brave hero shitless. That night he slept quite restlessly and the next morning, having nothing to do and hoping that the prophecy was wrong, went to the oracle for clarification. But, aha, the twist in the story comes now, at the temple he saw a beautiful girl, Selene. Our brave hero no sorry, simp, strikes up a conversation with her and before you know it, in a couple weeks’ time both of them are nuts about each other. They keep seeing each other at dawn until it was time for Ambrogio to leave. But does he leave Delphi to return to Italy to fulfil his duty of perfecting the pizza? No, the little idiot asks Selene to marry him. And Selene, even more of a bigger idiot agrees. Not only that, she agrees to go to Italy with him. Why is she even more of a bigger idiot, you must be thinking. Selene had a sister who was an oracle at Delphi. This is why she hung around the temple everyday, to take care of her sister and the temple, not to be hit on by Italian dudes who’ve had bad days. Now ,two young people have confessed their love for each other and have agreed to live together for the rest of their lives
Happy ending.
Wrong. The twist in the tale comes in the form of none other than (drumroll please) Apollo. That’s right, the god of prophecies among other things Apollo. He too has a crush, if you put it in modern contexts on Selene. You can imagine that he wasn’t exactly making wedding arrangements when Selene agreed to marry Ambrogio. No, quite the opposite in fact. He became so angry that he decided to curse Ambrogio at sunset the day before everyone’s favorite couple was supposed to elope. What was the curse you ask? Well, sunlight would burn his skin, so they wouldn’t be able to elope or heck, even meet, at dawn. The next morning, as Ambrogio was getting ready to leave for Italy with his fiancé, he discovered that sunlight burned his skin. Distraught, he ran to Hades, the god of the underworld for assistance. Not my first choice, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Hades, offered Ambrogio a deal- If he stole Artemis, the goddess of the hunt’s silver bow, Hades would offer him and Selene protection in the underworld from Apollo.
Now keep in mind that the underworld, is literally under the world so Amby would be safe against sunlight nevertheless, it was Apollo he really needed protection from, because the god of sun wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows as he’d been spurned by ladies quite a few times.

Ambrogio agreed to the deal and before he could leave to complete his quest, Hades asked him to leave his soul as collateral, in case our thickheaded Ambrogio decided to make a no-show. However, Hades took some pity on our love-struck hero and gave him a magical bow and 11 arrows. Seeing as he was in quite a hurry, Hades forgave him for not saying thank you and let him go without any fuss. Now Ambrogio thought, “Oh man. Selene must be worried. I got to think of some way to explain the delay without getting a tan in the process. Ah there goes a swan, let me kill one of the most graceful animals on Earth and use it’s blood as ink and feather as a pen.” I mean, I’m telling you the guy’s crazy.
The next morning when Selene saw the note, she had to act like everything was normal because she was working at Apollo’s temple. This gory one sided love letter exchange continued, until Ambrogio ran out of arrows. If you’re concerned about the fate of swans, well he killed tons of swans with them until he was left with the last one. After writing the notes, he offered the swans as sacrifices to Artemis, the goddess. When he missed the last shot, he began to cry and taking pity on him, Artemis gave him her silver bow and arrow to make the last shot. But turns out Ambrogio was shedding crocodile tears. As soon as he laid his hands on Artemis’s weapon, he made a dash for the underworld. Unfortunately for him, being the goddess of the hunt had its perks, one of them being outrunning heartbroken Italian guys. She cursed him(this guy cant get a break with the curses) that silver would also burn his skin. Crying(again, but for real this time) he fell to the ground writhing in pain. Before Artemis could smite him, he begged her for mercy and explained the mess he was in. Hearing his tale of woe, she pitied him(again) and gave him fangs, claws and the ability to remain immortal by drinking the blood of animals. She offered him a deal- Both Ambrogio and Selene had to worship Artemis for the rest of their lives, leave Apollo’s temple and move in to Artemis’s(unfurnished) temple. Ambrogio agreed immediately and wrote a note to Selene asking her if she was down with the plan. The next morning, when Selene read the note, she headed to the docks, where as per Amby’s instructions, if she agreed with the plan, she’d find him in a coffin in a ship. The next morning, they escaped to Artemis’s temple where they lived for a long long time.

Oh, I forgot to mention this part. Since Artemis wasn’t a big fan of romance, the reunited at last couple couldn’t touch, kiss, or hold hands even. Also no children, obviously. The duo, however, still agreed with the plan.
Before long, the time came when Selene was on her deathbed and Ambrogio was still young and youthful thanks to his diet of blood(and pizzas). Desperate, he killed another swan and offered it as a sacrifice to Artemis. After he’d told her his tale of woe(the sequel), Artemis again pitied him and offered him another deal. He could touch Selene just once: He had to drink her blood and after she was drained, Artemis would make her the goddess of the moon, assuring immortality. As you can imagine, Ambrogio was vehemently against this plan but Selene begged him to do it and well, he did. Must be hard saying no when your girlfriend’s made a pouty face. Selene became the goddess of moon and every night the clever girl would touch Ambrogio through moonlight . Thus ends our tale of two.
Now, this story is based off the scriptures of Delphi, a document whose authenticity is held in high suspicion, as some people believe that it was written as recently as the 18th century. Also, there are multiple versions of this story, so in one, Selene was a goddess from the beginning and in another the dream couple have children. Some stories claim that Ambrogio is still alive, living in Florence, Italy. Yet another version claims that the years after Selene’s death, vampires existed in clans and fighting broke out among them.
Also the behavior of certain gods is well doubtful. First of all, no god or goddess accepts a ‘second hand’ sacrifice, especially Artemis, considering she was one of the Olympians. Second, Artemis is the virgin goddess and took a chastity vow and her hunters had to follow the same, including the no romance rule. The fact that Artemis helped a distraught lover out, not once but thrice, is highly doubtful.
So yeah. But I liked the story, so thought I’d share it.
Thanks for reading!

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