Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Erysichthon.
The gallery
Erysichthon Sells His Daughter Mestra
Jan Steen, c. 1650–1660
A Dutch Golden Age oil in the Rijksmuseum in which Jan Steen stages Ovid's cruel sequel to the oak-felling: Erysichthon, wasting under Demeter's curse of hunger, sells his shape-shifting daughter Mestra for food. The Thessalian king becomes a market-day prodigal — sacrilege rewritten as domestic desperation.
Erysichthon and Mestra
Johann Wilhelm Baur, c. 1639–1641
An etching from Baur's illustrated Metamorphoses: Erysichthon bargains over Mestra while the hunger that Ceres sent still claws at him. Seventeenth-century print cycles made the Thessalian king's appetite a stock Ovidian scene — the grove's vengeance carried into the marketplace.
Ceres' Nymph Telling Famine to Strike Erysichthon
Antonio Tempesta, 1606
Plate 80 from Tempesta's Metamorphoses series in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Ceres' nymph carries the order that Famine should enter Erysichthon's vitals. The print isolates the myth's machinery — not the axe in the grove, but the divine command that turns sacrilege into endless hunger.
Erysichthon Selling His Daughter
Antonio Tempesta, 1606
Plate 81 of the same Tempesta cycle: Mestra is sold again and again in shifting guise while her father eats through every ransom. Ovid's Thessalian king becomes a print-series emblem of appetite that consumes the household — the Metamorphoses as moral spectacle for early modern collectors.
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Ovid's Thessalian king fells Ceres' oak and receives Famine in his belly — Mestra sold for food until he consumes himself.
Hymns (Callimachus)
Callimachus
Callimachus' Hymn to Demeter is the Hellenistic telling Ovid knew — sacrilege in the grove and hunger that beggars a house.
Erysichthon of Thessaly
The earth-tearer king of Triopas' line — still the mythic emblem of appetite that no feast can satisfy.