Erysichthon’s Family Tree

About Erysichthon →

Family

• Mestra(child)

  Mestra is the daughter of Erysichthon. After her father was cursed with insatiable hunger, he sold Mestra into slavery repeatedly to buy food, exploiting the shape-shifting gift Poseidon had granted her.

• Triopas(parent)

  Erysichthon is the son of Triopas, a Thessalian king, according to Callimachus's Hymn to Demeter. Triopas's lineage is cursed after Erysichthon's sacrilege against Demeter's grove.

Enemy of

• Demeter

  Erysichthon cut down the trees in Demeter's sacred grove to build a banquet hall. The goddess cursed him with insatiable hunger that consumed his wealth, his household, and finally himself.

Associated with

• Autolycus

  In Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, Autolycus married Erysichthon's daughter Mestra after acquiring her through one of her father's sales. Autolycus thus became connected to Erysichthon's cursed household.

• Limos

  In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Demeter sent the spirit Limos to breathe insatiable hunger into Erysichthon as he slept. Limos embraced him and filled his body with famine, then returned to her Scythian wasteland.

• Mestra

  Erysichthon exploited his daughter Mestra's shape-shifting gift by selling her into slavery repeatedly. Each time Mestra escaped by transforming, only to be sold again, until her father's hunger finally consumed him.