Limos

  λιμός



 

  Limos was the goddess of hunger, starvation and famine. She was one of the daughters/children of Eris, the goddess of chaos, discord and strife. She was the opposite of Demeter, goddess of grain, food and harvest and Plutus, the god of wealth and the bounty of rich harvests. Her Roman counterpart was Limus or Fames.

She is identified as the daughter of Eris ("strife") and sister of Ponos ("toil"), Lethe ("forgetfulness"), the Algea ("pains"), the Hysminai ("fightings"), the Makhai ("battles"), the Phonoi ("murders"), the Androktasiai ("man-slaughters"), the Neikea ("quarrels"), the Pseudologoi ("lies"), the Amphilogiai ("disputes"), Dysnomia ("lawlessness"), Atë ("ruin"), and Horkos ("oath").

Limos is said to make her home in a freezing and gloomy wasteland at the farthest edge of Scythia, where the soil is barren and nothing grows. Her physical description was: "Her hair was coarse, her face sallow, her eyes sunken; her lips crusted and white; her throat scaly with scurf. Her parchment skin revealed the bowels within; beneath her hollow loins jutted her withered hips; her sagging breasts seemed hardly fastened to her ribs; her stomach only a void; her joints wasted and huge, her knees like balls, her ankles grossly swollen."

In Virgil's Aeneid, Limos is one of a number of spirits and monsters said to stand at the entrance to the Underworld.[3] Seneca the Younger writes that she "lies with wasted jaw" by Cocytus, the Underworld river of lamentation.

 Limos, Demeter, and King Erysichthon 

Probably, Limos' most well-known myth was when Demeter sought her help after Erysichthon, a Thessalian king, cut down a grove that was sacred to the goddess. By way of an oread nymph (as the two can never meet in person), Demeter bid to Limos curse Erysichthon with never-ending hunger.



Limos does as Demeter commands; at midnight she enters Erysichthon's chamber, wraps the king in her arms and breathes upon him, "filling with herself his mouth and throat and lungs, and [channeling] through his hollow veins her craving emptiness". Thereafter, Erysichthon is filled with an unquenchable hunger which ultimately drives him to eat himself.

 Powers 


 * She has the standard powers of a goddess.
 * She is the embodiment / personification of hunger itself. With this, she can cause others to starve to death. Her breath can fill someone with unquenchable hunger to the point that the victim eats himself.
 * She's a rather dangerous goddess. As she is the embodiment of hunger and famine, she can cause famine on any scale including: a region, country, continent or even a planet. Even if used on a minuscule scale, her powers can ultimately cause global disruption.



 