History of Horror: Ancient Horror

• Circa 2100 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh: monsters, scorpions, forces of nature & a ghost.
• Circa 1500 BCE. The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
• Circa 750-700 BCE. The Iliad: ghost appearances.
• Circa 750-700 BCE. The Odyssey: tales of gods, monsters, giant cannibals & magic.
• Circa 750-700 BCE. Hesiod's Theogony, more monsters and supernatural entities.
• Circa 630-540 BCE. Biblical Book of 1 Samuel: Witch of Endor & ghost of the Prophet Samuel.
• Circa 8th till 6th centuries BCE. Visions of the Jewish prophets
• Between circa 7th & 4th centuries BCE. Biblical Book of Job: Chaos monsters Behemoth & Leviathan
• Circa 5th century BCE. The Greek plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides: supernatural & physical horror.
• Circa 3rd century BCE. Apollonius Rhodius' Argonautica: Jason & the Argonauts encounter monsters and supernatural threats.
• Circa 200 BCE. Plautus' The Haunted House.
• Circa 1st century BCE. Horace & Virgil, the supernatural.
• 1st century BCE. Seneca' Thyestes, cannibalism and ghosts.
• 1st century CE. New Testament, fear of demon possession and leprosy.
• 77 CE. Pliny the Elder's Natural History, mythological and legendary creatures appear.
• 1st century CE. Petronius' Satyricon: first known account of a werewolf.
• 1st century CE. Ovid's Metamorphoses, tales of human transformations.
• Circa 96 CE. St. John's Revalation records his apocalyptic visions.
• 100 BCE. Pliny the Younger, speaks of a haunted house in a letter.
• 2nd century CE. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius (The Golden Ass) by Lucius Apuleius includes transformation, witchcraft & more.

GREEK DRAMA

A Scene from Euripides' The Bacchae (approx. 400 BCE)

Pentheus being torn by maenads. Roman fresco from the northern wall of the triclinium in the Casa dei Vettii (VI 15,1) in Pompeii. Used under Creative Commons public domain CC0 image.

Scene from Sophocles'  Oedipus Rex (approx. 429 BCE)
Oedipus blinds himself.

Albert Greiner: Nederlands: LOUIS BOUWMEESTER als Oedipus. 
Source: 'Onze Tooneelspelers (1899)' (Q71545457). Used under Creative Commons public domain CC0 image.

Orestes pursued by the Furies in The Eumenides by Aeschylus (5th century BCE)

Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862) - Google Art Project
Used under Creative Commons public domain CC0 image.

1. Charybdis, a sea monster.
2. Chimera, three-headed beast.
3. Cyclopes, monster with one eye.
4. Gorgons, three sisters--Stheno, Euryale, Medusa--with snake hair and looks that killed.
5. Harpies, bird body and woman's head.
6. Hydra, sea monster.
7. Ladon, Greek dragon.
8. Minotaur, half bull, half man.
9. Scylla, a sea monster.
10. Sphinx. with a lion's body, bird's wings and female head.

1. The god Cronos (Saturn) eats his children.
2. Pentheus is torn apart by the worshippers of Dionysus.
3. Tithonus was made immortal but was not given eternal youth.
4. Oedipus puts out his eyes.
5. The Minotaur kills the youth of Athens in the Labyrinth.
6. Medea murders her two sons.
7. Heracles (the Roman Hercules) murders his wife and children in a fit of madness.
8. Procrustes fits his guests to a bed by stretching them or cutting off their legs.
9. Clytemnestra and her lover murder her husband, Agamemnon.
10. Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, the Cyclops, then kills him.