Famine and hunger personified, one of the grim, fatherless children whom Eris (Strife) bore to beset mortal life.1
In Hesiod's genealogy of woes, abhorred Eris (Strife) bore Limos without a father, setting Famine among Toil, Forgetfulness, the tearful Sorrows, Battles, Murders and Oath — the dark powers that, born of discord, weave themselves into the texture of mortal existence.2
Famine is therefore no random misfortune but a power with a place in the order of things, kin to the other afflictions of Night's wider household and answerable to the same moral economy that governs human suffering.3
Hesiod's Works and Days turns this lineage into a precept: Limos (Famine) is ever the meet comrade of the sluggard, hating the man who works and clinging to the idle, so that both gods and men resent the one who lives without labour.4
Ovid gives the figure a vivid Latin form as Fames (Hunger) in the tale of Erysichthon: dwelling in a frozen Scythian waste, hollow-eyed and gnawing at scant herbs, she is summoned by Ceres — who may not approach her in person — to inflict an insatiable, devouring hunger; here Hunger is a Roman personification and not made a child of Eris.5
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
