Limos

Limos is the personification of hunger and famine in Greek mythology. Hesiod lists her among the children of Strife (Eris), together with other personified evils, and Ovid shows her sent by the goddess Demeter (Ceres) to punish Erysichthon for cutting down a sacred grove. She is a minor figure, not one of the great gods.

Parents and Siblings

Hesiod says that Night bore Eris, and that grim Eris in turn bore Ponos (Toil), Lethe (Forgetfulness), Limos (Famine), the tearful Algea (Pains), the Hysminai (Fightings), the Machai (Battles), the Phonoi (Murders), the Androktasiai (Manslaughters), the Neikea (Quarrels), Lies and Words (Logoi), the Amphillogiai (Disputes), Dysnomia (Lawlessness) and Ate (Ruin), who keep one another company, and Horkos (Oath), who afflicts mankind most when anyone willingly swears a false oath (Hesiod, Theogony 223–232). Hesiod does not name a father. Limos is therefore a sister of these personified troubles, not a goddess with a cult or a story of her own in his poem.

Famine in Hesiod and Virgil

In the Works and Days, Hesiod tells his brother Perses to work, so that Famine will hate him and Demeter of the fair garlands will love him and fill his barn with food, for Famine is the constant companion of the man who does no work (Hesiod, Works and Days 299–302). In the Aeneid, Aeneas sees “evil-counselling Hunger” (malesuada Fames) with Fear and foul Want among the forms stationed at the mouth of the underworld (Virgil, Aeneid 6.273–277).

Limos and Erysichthon

The one story in which Famine acts is that of Erysichthon, son of Triopas. Callimachus tells it in his Hymn to Demeter: the Pelasgians in Dotium had made a fair grove for Demeter, full of pines, elms, pear trees and apple trees, and the goddess loved it as much as Eleusis. Erysichthon went there with twenty attendants, armed with axes, and began to cut down a great poplar, though the goddess herself, in the form of her priestess, warned him. Demeter then sent a cruel and burning hunger on him: however much he ate, he wanted more, and his parents hid him from banquets out of shame (Callimachus, Hymn 6, to Demeter).

Ovid tells the story in more detail and brings in Famine as a character. Erysichthon, a scorner of the gods, cut down an oak sacred to Ceres in which the dryads lived; the tree groaned and bled, and Ceres decided to punish him with Famine. Because the fates do not allow Ceres and Famine to come together, she sent a mountain nymph (an oread) to Scythia, to a freezing, treeless waste where Cold, Pallor, Trembling and gaunt Famine live, telling her to command Famine to enter the heart of the sacrilegious man and not to be overcome by any abundance. The nymph travelled there in Ceres’ dragon-drawn chariot. Famine flew to Erysichthon’s house through the air, embraced the sleeping man and breathed herself into his throat, chest and veins. He woke with a raging hunger that no amount of food could satisfy; he used up the family’s wealth and even sold his own daughter, and finally began to tear his own limbs with his teeth (Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.738–878, with the fates’ ban at 8.785–786 and Scythia at 8.788–791).

Limos Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 223–232, Works and Days 299–302; Virgil, Aeneid 6.273–277; Callimachus, Hymn 6 (to Demeter); Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.738–878.

See Also: Demeter, Eris, Horcus, Ponos, Algea, Ate, Dysnomia, Lethe, Erysichthon, Nyx