In the ancient and fertile lands of Thessaly, where the Dotian Plain stretches beneath the watchful shadows of the mountains, there once reigned a king named Erysichthon. He was the son of Triopas, a man of noble lineage and great power, but Erysichthon lacked the wisdom and piety that usually accompanied such status. While the people of Thessaly revered the earth and the deities who provided for them, Erysichthon viewed the natural world as a mere commodity to be bent to his iron will. He was a man of cold heart and boundless ambition, who believed that even the gods should yield to his desires. This pride, known to the Greeks as hubris, would eventually become the architect of his total destruction.
Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and the lady of the golden grain, held a particular sanctuary in the Dotian Plain. It was a dense, ancient grove of trees that had stood since the dawn of time. These were not ordinary trees; they were spirits in wood, inhabited by dryads and protected by the divine law of the sanctuary. At the heart of this grove stood a massive oak tree, so wide that several men could not encircle it with their joined arms. Its branches were hung with votive ribbons and wreaths, each a testament to a prayer answered or a harvest granted by the goddess. It was a place of deep silence and profound holiness, where even the wind seemed to whisper the name of Demeter.
Erysichthon, however, desired to build a new and magnificent banquet hall where he could host revelries that would be talked about for generations. He surveyed his lands and decided that the timber from Demeter’s sacred grove was the only wood suitable for such a grand construction. His advisors and subjects were horizontal with fear when they heard his decree. They pleaded with him, reminding him that the grove was tapu, a forbidden place under the protection of the goddess. Erysichthon laughed at their superstitions. To him, the oak was merely lumber, and the goddess a distant memory. He gathered twenty of his strongest servants and marched toward the grove, axes in hand, ready to desecrate the sanctuary.
When they reached the edge of the grove, the air grew heavy and the birds fell silent. The servants hesitated, their hands trembling on their axe handles. Seeing their cowardice, Erysichthon seized an axe from the nearest man. With a sneer of contempt, he stepped toward the great oak. As he swung the blade and bit into the ancient bark, a low, agonizing groan issued from the heart of the tree. Crimson blood—not sap, but the life-blood of a dryad—began to flow from the wound. A voice, thin and ethereal, cried out from within the trunk, warning the king that his life would be the price for the death of the tree. Erysichthon, undeterred, struck again and again, decapitating the sacred spirit of the wood until the giant oak crashed to the forest floor, crushing the smaller trees beneath it.
Demeter was not slow to notice the wound inflicted upon her sanctuary. She heard the dying scream of the nymph and felt the loss of the ancient oak. However, she did not strike Erysichthon down with lightning or earthquake. Instead, she chose a punishment far more lingering and terrible. She summoned an Oread, a mountain nymph, and commanded her to travel to the frozen, barren wastes of Scythia. There, in a land where no grain grows and the soil is as hard as iron, lived Limos—the personification of Famine. Limos was a creature of horror: her skin was tight over her bones, her hair matted with dust, and her eyes were sunken pits of endless craving.
Following Demeter's orders, the Oread found Limos in a field of stones, gnawing on sparse tufts of grass with yellowed teeth. The nymph delivered the goddess's message: Limos was to enter the house of Erysichthon and take up residence within his very vitals. Though Famine and the Goddess of Harvest can never meet, for their natures are opposites, Limos obeyed the divine command. She flew through the air, carried by cold winds, and arrived at the palace in Thessaly under the cover of night. While Erysichthon slept, Limos wrapped her skeletal arms around him and breathed her icy, hollow breath into his mouth, planting the seed of insatiable hunger in his belly.
When Erysichthon woke the next morning, he felt a strange, hollow sensation in his stomach. It was a mild craving at first, but as he sat down for breakfast, the sensation intensified. He ate bread, meat, fruit, and honey, yet after the table was cleared, he felt emptier than when he had begun. He ordered more food, then more. By noon, he had consumed enough to feed a small village, yet he sat at his table weeping with a hunger that felt like a fire burning in his core. He summoned his cooks, ordering them to prepare every delicacy known to Greece. He ate the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the beasts of the field, but Limos sat within him, devouring the essence of everything he swallowed.
Days turned into weeks, and the King’s hunger became a public scandal. He spent the royal treasury on exotic imports, buying grain from Egypt and spices from the east. He sold his horses, his cattle, and his hunting dogs to pay for a single day’s meals. The more he ate, the more haggard he became. His cheeks sank, his ribs protruded, and his skin took on a sickly, greyish hue. He was a walking ghost, a king who had become a slave to his own gullet. His subjects watched in horror as their monarch devolved into a beast, roaming his halls and screaming for sustenance that never satisfied the void inside him.