| “ | Her hair was coarse, her face sallow, her eyes sunken; her lips crusted and white; her throat scaly with scurf. Her parchment skin revealed the bowels within; beneath her hollow loins jutted her withered hips; her sagging breasts seemed hardly fastened to her ribs; her stomach only a void; her joints wasted and huge, her knees like balls, her ankles grossly swollen. | „ |
| ~ Ovid, Metamorphoses. |
Limos was the goddess of starvation in Greek and Roman mythology and was considered an enemy of Plutus, god of plenty, and Demeter, goddess of the harvest. She made very rare appearances in ancient Greek writings, and was only slightly more prominent in Roman mythology.
History[]
Hesiod's Theogony[]
| “ | And hateful Eris bore painful Ponos Lethe and Limos and the tearful Algea |
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Limos is briefly mentioned in Hesiod's Theogony, a poem about the origins of all the Greek gods. She is described as a daughter of Eris, the goddess of strife, and a sibling of Ponos, Lethe, Algos, Dysnomia, Atë and Horkos.
Ovid's Metamorphoses[]
Limos supposedly resides in a frozen wasteland, where the land is barren and nothing grows. Demeter, despite being the enemy of Limos, sent a nymph to ask the goddess to punish Erysichthon of Thessaly for cutting down trees sacred to Demeter. Limos did what was asked; at night she entered Erysichthon's bedroom and breathed on him, transferring her unquenchable hunger to him. This drove Erysichthon to sell all his possessions to buy food, attempt to sell his daughter into slavery (although she was rescued by Poseidon) and ultimately eat himself.
Role as a death goddess[]
According to the Roman writer Virgil, Limos was a goddess of the Underworld. In Virgil's Aeneid, she is described as one of the spirits or monsters who stand outside the entrance of the Underworld. The philosopher Seneca the Younger also referred to Limos as lying "with wasted jaw" beside the Underworld river Cocytus. This suggests that Limos may be a lesser personification of one of the other gods of the Underworld.
