ERYSICHTHON THE INSATIABLE

 

“And just like a greedy fire never refuses food and burns up countless torches and, where a greater supply of fuel is available, seeks more and more, and grows only more voracious with abundance, thus the mouth of the sacrilegious…. simultaneously eats and demands every meal.”- Ovid

I was young when I first met Erysichthon. In those days, no houses had been built behind our home and the grasslands flowed from the hills, punctuated by low lying dense shrubs, down the floodplain to a creek. Sheep and horses grazed there periodically and on Sunday mornings from my parents’ bedroom window, we would watch a family of foxes emerge from their den in a small cave on the slope and trot amiably down to the creek for a drink of water. Towards the horizon, the creek, flowing towards the Maribyrnong, crossed paths with another of its kind and at their confluence, stood alone amidst the landscape, an enormous weeping willow, swaying even at the slightest of breezes.

The willow bounded my existence: my parents had no qualms about me spending most of my free time searching for frogs or tortoises in the creek but it was law that I was not to stray further then the willow tree. On hot days, I would sit underneath its branches, a perfect hiding place from the world and while listening to the wind whispering through its leaves, the cicadas chirping in trochaic pentameters by way of accompaniment, ponder the lyrics to the Greek folksong, «Ιτιά».

One day I came home from school to find the entire side of the hill gone. As far as the eye could see, grasses and shrubs had been torn away and deep brown gashes scored the landscape. Further away, the willow tree which marked the utmost limit of my horizon had gone. In its place, lurked an excavator, its shadow looming large upon the churned up ground in the afternoon sun. With tears in my eyes, I ran towards the creek. The workers had all gone home and the excavator, stood motionlessly. High on its boom, someone had placed a sticker that bore one word: “Erysichthon.” Decades later, the area is covered in houses and yet I return to the creek bank, in search of my tree, cursing the machinery that caused its uprooting.

Erysichthon was, of course, the king of Thessaly, who according to mythology decided to impress his friends by building a brand new banqueting hall. Taking trusted companions with him, he set off for a grove which was sacred to Demeter, the the goddess of agriculture and fertility. In this grove, dryads and other wood nymphs were said to dance in honour of the goddess. All this of course meant nothing to Erysichthon, whose only thought was how to acquire the lumber. He raised his axe and buried it in the side of a poplar tree.

The king might have sensed something was wrong when the tree began to groan in pain like an injured human. Had he been of an intuitive bent, he may have become disconcerted by the sudden appearance out of nowhere, of Demeter’s priestess, Nicippe, reminding him of the sacredness of the place and exhorting him to lay down his axe. Erysichthon, however, would have none of it. Roughly pushing the priestess aside, he proceeded to lay waste to the grove. This was unfortunate, as Nicippe was actually Demeter in disguise and to insult an earth goddess is the height of folly.

Incensed, Demeter exacted a terrible revenge, cursing him with an insatiable hunger and enlisting the help of Dionysus in order to likewise curse him with an unquenchable thirst. Erysichthon consumed everything in sight but the more he ate, the hungrier he become and then went on to expend his entire wealth in the pursuit of acquiring more foodstuffs to consume, going even so far, according to one variant of the myth, to sell his own daughter. In the version propagated by Hellenistic poet Callimachus in the ‘Catalogue of Women,’ Erysicththon, shorn of all dignity, becomes a beggar at the side of the road, begging for scraps and eating dirt. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses however, an even more tragic fate awaits him: “The wretched man began to tear at his own limbs with his maiming bite and feed his body by making it smaller.”

A cautionary tale against greed and hubris, one may think that the punishment of the foolish king is rather dire. Trees, after all, are a resource that people need in order to survive, and was it not arbitrary and selfish of a goddess concerned only with the guarding of her privileges and prerogatives to deny this to Erysichthon? The names of the main protagonists harbour a clue. Demeter, literally means the “Earth Goddess,” the entity that makes human life possible. The name of the Thessalian king, on the other hand, means “Earth-tearer.” His destruction of the sacred grove is not merely an arbitrary arrogation of a natural resource, (he did not require the wood in order to put a roof over his head or for fuel but rather in order to construct an unnecessary vanity project) but an act of violence, a violation of the Mother of all. In such a gendered reading of the myth, we note that is the males who create harm by invading a ‘female’ space, inflicting wanton destruction upon fertility and thus, life itself.

While the ancient Greeks were not environmentalists in the sense we use the term today, the myth of Erysichthon does indicate the  human vices that have implications for some of our most pressing contemporary problems.

Thus, Erysichthon’s destruction of the sacred grove can be seen as symbolising humanity’s relentless exploitation of natural resources for personal gain, ignoring the sacredness and interdependence of the environment. Similarly, climate change is driven by overexploitation of resources like forests, fossil fuels, and oceans, leading to deforestation, pollution, and biodiversity loss – a violation of “Mother Earth.” This aspect of the myth thus may warn against short-term greed and emphasises the need to respect ecological limits to avoid devastating consequences.

In similar vein, the curse of insatiable hunger visited upon Erysichthon, the Ultimate Consumer, could parallel humanity's insatiable consumption patterns, which prioritise growth and consumption over sustainability and which ultimately lead to dehumanisation where everything is reduced to a commodity, as symbolised by the sale of the king’s daughter. Consequently, the tale serves as a dire warning about the dangers of unchecked consumerism, which leads to environmental degradation and destruction.

It is difficult not to parallel Erysichthon's curse as a cycle of destruction that he cannot escape, much like the feedback loops in climate change, where melting ice caps lead to more heat absorption, which accelerates further melting. His fate, rather than serving solely as a punishment, underscores how irreversible harm to nature can lead to self-destruction. Ovid himself outlines how the king “had consumed all material,” before the final and greatest form of consumerism followed as an inevitable consequence: his horrific autophagy.

Erysichthon, arguably the first character in world literature to have an eating disorder, causes us to ask difficult questions of ourselves. Do we feel pity for him and his gruesome fate, or contempt, secure in the knowledge that we would have acted differently? Do we view Earth/Demeter as an arbitrary and vengeful deity who will only tolerate so much before she moves to protect her own, casting us, with our Judeao-Christian narrative that places us at the centre of Existence, aside? Or is she in fact, a vulnerable being that needs us just as much as we need her? The manner in which we view the myth not only creates ambivalence in the way we see ourselves but also the world around us.

One thing however, is unequivocal. Erysichthon’s other name, as mentioned by Callimachus,  is Aithon, the “burning one.” In keeping with his name, Ovid refers to the “flame of his appetite.” Like a fire, he is all consuming and his legacy are ashes. But then again,  new life according to mythology is gained by rising from the ashes of one’s predecessor, that is, if one is of the correct species and of course, in the end, if the burn is controlled….

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@homtail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 30 November 2024