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.

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