In Ovid’s Metamorphoses a mighty oak, sacred to Ceres, falls at the hands of the appalling Thessalian chief, Erysichthon.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Erysichthon has offended the Goddess of plenty: now Ceres chooses as the instrument of her terrible revenge her antithesis, Fames, who personifies famine and hunger.
Hear Ovid’s chilling description of her in Latin and follow in English here.
Erysichthon, the blasphemer, begins Ovid’s horror-story about crime and punishment in his metamorphoses. The oak-tree in the picture, the Fredville Oak, has a roughly similar circumference to Ceres’s sacred tree, which Erysichthon is about to profane.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
Erysichthon’s terrible hunger, the punishment inflicted on him by the Goddess Ceres, drives him to sell his own daughter: she finds a way to escape her new master, but there is no way for Erysichthon to escape a terrible death.
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English translation here.
The Thessalian King Erysichthon holds the Gods in contempt. He has not only cut down Ceres’s sacred oak and killed the Dryad within, but boasted that he would do the same for Ceres herself, given the opportunity. We have already met the agent that Ceres has chosen to revenge herself on him: Fames, the personification of Hunger. Now, having received her orders, she slips down to the Earth to carry them out …
Hear Ovid’s Latin and follow in English here.
