Erysichthon ‘ Ovid's Giant?

• Published in: Greece and Rome 1986-04, Vol.33 (1), p.55-63
• Main Author: Griffin, Alan H. F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Criminal motive; Fathers; Giants; Hunger; Hymns; Literary characters; Nymphs; Poetry; Processions; Religious poetry
• ISSN: 0017-3835; 1477-4550
• DOI: 10.1017/S001738350002996X

Callimachus' sixth hymn to Demeter is of considerable importance to the student of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The reason is that it provides us with one of the very few opportunities to put an episode in the Metamorphoses alongside what was apparently its chief source. I say its chief source because Ovid's description of how Demeter punishes Erysichthon for violating her sacred grove by inflicting on him an insatiable hunger is very close to Callimachus' outline of the same story and includes a number of undoubted verbal echoes of the Greek poet. Ovid certainly knew Callimachus sixth hymn well. But, of course, there may have been other treatments of the Erysichthon legend, now lost, which Ovid also drew on to a greater or lesser extent. There is a further point to bear in mind. We seem to be dealing in Ovid with two stories, not with a single legend. The first is the story of Erysichthon's sacrilege and punishment, the second is the story of a girl with powers of selftransformation. These two stories may originally have been quite independent of each other, but we find them linked as early as the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Callimachus does not use the second story about the transformations of Erysichthon's daughter.