Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

‘Chop those trees down, or feel its sting!’ he cried.

With their king cracking the whip and urging them on, the men reluctantly chopped down the trees. But when they came to a giant oak that stood alone at the end of the grove they stopped again.

‘Why, this is the tallest and broadest of them all!’ said Erysichthon. ‘That alone will provide the timber for the rafters and columns of my throne room and still leave enough over for a great bed for me.’

The foreman pointed a trembling finger at the oak’s branches, which were hung with garlands.

The king was unimpressed. ‘And?’

‘My lord,’ whispered the foreman, ‘each wreath stands for a prayer that the goddess has answered.’

‘If the prayers have already been answered she will have no need of flower arrangements. Cut it down.’

But seeing that the foreman and his team were too afraid to proceed, the impetuous Erysichthon snatched up an axe and set about it himself.

He was a strong man and, like most rulers, he loved to show off his will, skill and sinew. It was not long before the trunk creaked and the mighty oak began to sway. Did Erysichthon hear the plaintive cries of a hamadryad in the boughs? If he did he paid no heed but swung his axe again and again, until down crashed the tree – branches, votive wreaths, garlands, hamadryad and all.

As the oak died, so died its hamadryad. With her last breath she cursed Erysichthon for his crime.

Demeter heard of Erysichthon’s sacrilege and sent word to Limos. Limos was one of the vile creatures that had flown from Pandora’s jar. She was a demon of famine who might be regarded as Demeter’s inverse, the goddess’s necessary opposite in the mortal world. One the fecund and bountiful herald of the harvest, the other the mercilessly cruel harbinger of hunger and blight. Since the two existed in an irreconcilable matter–antimatter relationship, they could never meet in person, so Demeter sent a nymph of the mountains as her envoy, to urge Limos to deliver the hamadryad’s curse on Erysichthon, a task the malevolent demon was only too happy to undertake.

Limos had, according to Ovid, rather let herself go. With sagging, withered breasts, an empty space for a stomach, exposed rotten bowels, sunken eyes, crusted lips, scaly skin, lank, scurfy hair and swollen pustular ankles, the figure and face of Famine presented a haunting and dreadful spectacle. She stole that night into Erysichthon’s bedroom, took the sleeping king in her arms and breathed her foul breath into him. Her poison fumes seeped into his mouth, throat and lungs. Through his veins and into every cell of his body slid the terrible, insatiable worm of hunger.

Erysichthon awoke from strange dreams feeling very, very peckish. He surprised his kitchen staff with an enormous breakfast order. He consumed every morsel, yet still his appetite was unsated. All day he found that the more he ate the more ravenous he became. As days and then weeks passed, the pangs of hunger gnawed deeper and deeper. No matter how much he consumed he could never be satisfied, nor gain so much as an ounce of weight. Food inside him acted like fuel on a fire, causing the hunger to burn ever more fiercely. For this reason his people began referring to him behind his back as AETHON, which means ‘burning’.

He was perhaps the first man ever to eat himself out of house and home. One by one all his treasure and possessions, and even his palace, were sold off to buy food. But still this wasn’t enough, for nothing could appease his colossal appetite. At last, he was reduced to selling his daughter MESTRA to raise money to quieten the remorseless demands of his unassuageable appetite.

This was a more cunning and less barbarous act than perhaps it sounds: the beautiful Mestra had once been a lover of Poseidon’s, who had rewarded her with the ability to alter her shape at will – a power in the especial gift of the god of the ever changing sea. Every week Erysichthon would offer his daughter to a rich suitor and accept the bride-money. Mestra would accompany her fiancé to his home, escape in the shape of one animal or another and return to Erysichthon, ready to be sold again to a fresh gullible suitor.

Even this arrangement proved insufficient to tamp down the dreadful flames of hunger, and in desperation one day he chewed off his left hand. The arm followed, then his shoulder, feet and hams. Before long, King Erysichthon of Thessaly had eaten himself all up. Demeter and the hamadryad were avenged.

The Doctor and the Crow

The Birth of Medicine

There was once an intensely attractive young princess called CORONIS, who came from the Thessalian kingdom of Phlegyantis. So great was her beauty that she caught the attention of the god Apollo, who took her as a lover. You might think that the companionship and love of the most beautiful of the gods would be enough for anyone, but Coronis – while pregnant with Apollo’s child – fell for the charms of a mortal called ISCHYS and slept with him.