In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, Limos was the goddess of starvation. She was opposed by Demeter

Demeter

In Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains, the fertility of the earth, and the seasons . Her common surnames are Sito as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society...

, goddess of grain and the harvest with whom Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

 wrote Limos could never meet, and Plutus

Plutus

Ploutos , usually Romanized as Plutus, was the god of wealth in ancient Greek religion and myth. He was the son of Demeter and the demigod Iasion, with whom she lay in a thrice-ploughed field. In the theology of the Eleusinian Mysteries he was regarded as the Divine Child...

, the god of wealth and the bounty of rich harvests. Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

's Theogony

Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...

identifies her as the daughter of Eris

Eris (mythology)

Eris is the Greek goddess of strife and discord, her name being translated into Latin as Discordia. Her Greek opposite is Harmonia, whose Latin counterpart is Concordia. Homer equated her with the war-goddess Enyo, whose Roman counterpart is Bellona...

 ("strife") and sister of Ponos

Ponos

Ponos was the god of hard labor and toil in Greek mythology. His mother was the goddess Eris , who was the daughter of Nyx . He was brother to Algos, Lethe, Limos, and Horcus....

 ("toil"), Lethe

Lethe

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...

 ("forgetfulness"), the Algea

Algos

Algea is used by Hesiod in the plural as the personification of sorrows and griefs, which are there represented as the daughters of Eris, Greek goddess of strife. Algos in Greek is a neuter noun literally meaning "pain"...

 ("pains"), the Hysminai

Hysminai

The Hysminai are figures in Greek mythology. Descendants of Eris, they are personifications of battle. Quintus Smyrnaeus wrote of them in Book V of the Fall of Troy in a passage translated by Arthur Way:Around them hovered the relentless Fates;...

 ("fightings"), the Makhai

Makhai

In Greek mythology, the Machai were the daemons of battle and combat, and were sons or daughters of Eris, siblings to other vicious personifications like the Hysminai, the Androktasiai, and the Phonoi.The daemons Homados , Alala , Proioxis , Palioxis...

 ("battles"), the Phonoi

Phonoi

In Greek mythology, the Phonoi were the male spirits of murder, killing and slaughter. While their sisters, the Androktasiai , presided over the slaughter of battle, they were considered to be responsible for murder and killing outside the battlefield. They were sons of Eris, goddess of strife,...

 ("murders"), the Androktasiai

Androktasiai

In Greek mythology, the Androktasiai were the female personifications of manslaughter.Hesiod in Theogony names their mother as Eris and their siblings as Lethe , Ponos , Limos , the Algea , the Hysminai , the Makhai , the Phonoi , the Neikea , the Pseudologoi , the Amphilogiai...

 ("man-slaughters"), the Neikea

Neikea

In Greek mythology, the Neikea were goddesses of arguments. Hesiod's Theogony identifies them as children of Eris through parthenogenesis and siblings Lethe , Ponos , Limos , the Algea , the Hysminai , the Makhai , the Phonoi , the Androktasiai , the Pseudologoi , the...

 ("quarrels"), the Pseudologoi

Pseudologoi

In Greek mythology, the Pseudologoi were gods of lies. Hesiod's Theogony identifies them as the children of Eris and brothers of Ponos , Lethe , the Algea , Limos , the Hysminai , the Makhai , the Phonoi , the Androktasiai , the Neikea , the Amphilogiai...

 ("lies"), the Amphilogiai

Amphilogiai

In Greek mythology, the Amphilogiai were goddesses of disputes. Hesiod's Theogony identifies them as the daughters of Eris and sisters of Ponos , Lethe , the Algea , Limos , the Hysminai , the Makhai , the Phonoi , the Androktasiai , the Neikea , the...

 ("disputes"), Dysnomia

Dysnomia

Dysnomia can refer to the following:*Dysnomia , a condition affecting memory.*Dysnomia , "Lawlessness" - a child of the mythological Greek goddess Eris.*Dysnomia , a moon of the dwarf planet Eris....

 ("lawlessness"), Atë

Ate

Atë or Aite a Greek word for "ruin, folly, delusion", is the action performed by the hero, usually because of hubris, that leads to his or her death or downfall. There is also a goddess by that name in Greek mythology, a personification of the same.In Homer's Iliad she is called eldest daughter...

 ("ruin"), and Horkos

Horkos

In Greek mythology, Horkos personifies the curse that will be inflicted on any person who swears a false oath. In his Works and Days, Hesiod states that the Erinyes assisted at the birth of Horkos, "whom Eris bore, to be a plague on those who take false oath".Hesiod's Theogony identifies him as...

 ("oath").

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Limos is said to make her home in a freezing and gloomy wasteland at the farthest edge of Scythia

Scythia

In antiquity, Scythian or Scyths were terms used by the Greeks to refer to certain Iranian groups of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dwelt on the Pontic-Caspian steppe...

, where the soil is barren and nothing grows. Demeter seeks her opposite's help there after being angered by the Thessalian

Thessaly

Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....

 king Erysichthon

Erysichthon

In Greek mythology, Erysichthon can refer to two different personages:-Erysichthon of Thessaly:...

, who cut down a grove that was sacred to the goddess. By way of an oread

Oread

In Greek mythology, an Oread or Orestiad was a type of nymph that lived in mountains, valleys, ravines. They differ from each other according to their dwelling: the Idae were from Mount Ida, Peliades from Mount Pelia, etc...

 nymph (as the two can never meet in person), Demeter bids Limos curse Erysichthon with never-ending hunger. The nymph beholds the fearsome spirit in a stony field:
Limos does as Demeter commands; at midnight she enters Erysichthon's chamber, wraps the king in her arms and breathes upon him, "filling with herself his mouth and throat and lungs, and [channeling] through his hollow veins her craving emptiness". Thereafter, Erysichthon is filled with an unquenchable hunger which ultimately drives him to eat himself.

In Virgil

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...

's Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

, Limos is one of a number of spirits and monsters said to stand at the entrance to the Underworld. Seneca the Younger

Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...

 writes that she "lies with wasted jaw" by Cocytus

Cocytus

Cocytus or Kokytos, meaning "the river of wailing" , is a river in the underworld in Greek mythology. Cocytus flows into the river Acheron, across which dwells the underworld, the mythological abode of the dead. There are five rivers encircling Hades...

, the Underworld river of lamentation.

External links

• Theoi Project: Limos, Greek god or spirit of hunger and starvation