This was probably the state of the superstition when the Greeks added Striges to their own list of nightly terrors; and the very form of the word in modern Greek, στρίγλα or στρίγγλα (being apparently a diminutive, _strigula_, such as spoken Latin would readily have formed from the literary form _strix_), testifies to the borrowing of the belief. In Greece the latter of the two ways in which Ovid explained the origin of the Strix seems to have been generally accepted as correct. It is true that the modern Greeks still have a real bird called στριγλοποῦλι[480] (either some kind of owl or the night-jar), which not only loves twilight or darkness in the upper world but is also said to haunt the gloomy demesnes of Charos below--thereby revealing perhaps some slight evidence of its relationship to the _strix_ which tormented the brother giants; but the Strigla has long ceased to be a real bird, and (apart from the confusion with a Lamia or Gello) is always a witch. The condition of the belief in the eighth century is noticed by John of Damascus[481]. ‘There are some of the more ignorant who say that there are women known as Striges (Στρῦγγαι), otherwise called Geloudes. They allege that these are to be seen at night passing through the air, and that when they happen to come to a house they find no obstacle in doors and bolts, but though the doors are securely locked make their way in and throttle infants. Others say that the Strix devours the liver and all the internal organs of the children, and so sets a short limit to their lives. And they stoutly declare, some that they have seen, and others that they have heard, the Strix entering houses, though the doors were locked, either in bodily form or as a spirit only.’ Again in the eleventh century Michael Psellus noticed the same superstition, though as we have seen his language suggests some confusion of Striges with Gelloudes. But he is really describing the faculty of the former to assume the shape of birds when he says, ‘The superstition obtaining nowadays invests old women with this power. It provides them with wings in their extreme age, and represents them as settling[482] unseen upon infants, whom, it is alleged, they suck until they exhaust all the humours in them’[483].