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Lyssa (/ˈlɪsə/; Ancient Greek: Λύσσα, romanized: Lússa, lit. 'rage, rabies'), also called Lytta (/ˈlɪtə/; Ancient Greek: Λύττα, romanized: Lútta) by the Athenians, is a minor goddess in Greek mythology, the spirit of rage, fury,[1] and rabies in animals. She was closely related to the Maniae, the spirits of madness and insanity. Her Roman equivalent was variously named Ira, Furor, or Rabies. Sometimes she was multiplied into a host of Irae and Furores. In myth, Lyssa features in stories where she drives people insane to their doom.
The viral genus Lyssavirus, which includes the causative agent of rabies, was named after this goddess.
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Because seeds of alyssum were used (unsuccessfully) to treat rabies, the flower was named after the disease with the prefix α- in front, meaning without. Thus Lyssa is the etymological origin of the feminine name Alyssa.[2]
In Euripides' play Herakles, Lyssa is identified as the daughter of the night-goddess Nyx, "sprung from the blood of Uranus"—that is, the blood from Uranus' wound following his castration by his son Cronus.[3] The 1st-century Latin writer Hyginus lists Ira (Wrath, Lyssa) as the daughter of Terra (Gaia) and Aether.[4]
Heracles
Lyssa personifies mad rage and frenzy, as well as rabies in animals. In Herakles, she is called upon by Hera to inflict the hero Heracles with insanity. In this scenario, she is shown to take a temperate, measured approach to her role, professing "not to use [her powers] in anger against friends, nor [to] have any joy in visiting the homes of men." She counsels Iris, who wishes to carry out Hera's command, against targeting Heracles but, after failing to persuade, bows to the orders of the superior goddess and sends him into a mad rage that causes him to murder his wife and children.[3]
Actaeon
In a number of ancient Greek vases Lyssa appears on the scene of the death of Actaeon, the hunter who was transformed into a deer and devoured by his own hounds for seeing Artemis naked or trying to woo Semele. In a 440s BC red-figure bell-krater by the Lykaon Painter, Lyssa stands to the right of Actaeon, inflicting his dogs with rabies and directing them against him.[1][5] It has been theorised that the vase depicts the events of the myth as dramatised in Athenian tragedian Aeschylus' lost play Toxotides which dealt with Actaeon's death,[6] although this assertion is far from certain.[7]
In a different vase with Actaeon's death, Lyssa is present along with Aphrodite, Eros, Artemis and a woman that could be Semele, indicating a sexual nature of Actaeon's grave offence which led to him being eaten by his own rabid dogs.[8]
Others
Lyssa also had a role in the myth of Lycurgus, the Thracian king who tried to ban the worship of Dionysus, the god of madness. In an Apulian vase from around 350 BC, the winged Lyssa supplants Dionysus as the deity causing Lycurgus to attack and kill his wife and son.[6]
Aeschylus identifies her as being the agent sent by Dionysus to madden the impious daughters of Cadmus, who in turn dismember their kinsman Pentheus.[citation needed]
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