Fames Explained

In Roman Mythology, Fames is the personification of hunger, who can arouse an insatiable appetite. She was often said to be one of the several evils who inhabit the entrance to the Underworld. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, she lives in Scythia, a desolate place where she scrabbles unceasingly for the scant vegetation there, and at Ceres' command, she punishes Erysichthon with a never-ending hunger. Servius calls Fames the greatest of the Furies. She is the equivalent of the Greek Limos.^[1]

Sources

Plautus

In Stichus (200 BC), a comedy by the Roman playwright Plautus, the ever-hungry Gelasimus, in the role of the parasite, one of the stock characters in Roman comedy, describes Fames as his mother:^[2]

Virgil, Seneca, and Claudian

The Latin poets Virgil, Seneca the Younger, and Claudian all list Hunger as among the many evils said to dwell in the Underworld. Describing the approach to the Underworld, Virgil, in his Aeneid, says:Seneca, in his Hercules, says that next to the Underworld river Cocytus lies:

While Claudian lists among "Hell's numberless monsters ... Discord, mother of war, imperious Hunger, Age, near neighbour to Death" and several others.^[3]

Ovid

Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, tells the story of the Thessalian king Erysichthon and his grim fate at the hands of Fames.^[4] When Erysichthon cut down a grove of trees sacred to Ceres, the goddess of grain, looked to her antithesis Fames to deliver her punishment: "Let pestilent Hunger torture his body!"

In Ovid's account, Fames lives at the farthest edge of Scythia, a frozen, gloomy wasteland, high in the Caucasus Mountains, where little grows. But, Ceres and Hunger being opposites, the Fates never let the two meet. So, in her stead, Ceres sent an oread nymph to seek out Fames:

So the nymph when to Scythia. There she found Fames ceaselessly grubbing ("nail and tooth") in the ground for whatever little bit of vegetation she could find. She was starving and emaciated:

Fames did as Ceres had commanded. She entered Erysichthon's chamber:

Thereafter, Erysichthon is filled with a never ending hunger. He sells all his possessions, including his daughter as a slave, in a futile attempt to satisfy his insatiable appetite. He is ultimately driven to eat his own body.

References

• Callimachus, Hymn VI to Demeter in Callimachus and Lycophron with an English Translation by A. W. Mair; Aratus, with an English Translation by G. R. Mair, London: W. Heinemann, New York: G. P. Putnam 1921. Internet Archive, Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Claudian, Claudian with an English Translation by Maurice Platnauer, Volume I, Loeb Classical Library No. 136. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd.. 1922. . Internet Archive.
• Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. . Internet Archive.
• Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, . Google Books.
• Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume I: Books 1-8. Translated by Frank Justus Miller. Revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical Library No. 42. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977, first published 1916. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, translated by David Raeburn, Penguin Classics, 2004. .
• Plautus, Stichus in Stichus, Three-Dollar Day, Truculentus, The Tale of a Travelling-Bag, Fragments, edited and translated by Wolfgang de Melo, Loeb Classical Library No. 328, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2013. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Schaffner, Brigitte, s.v. Fames, in Brill’s New Pauly Online, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry, published online: 2006.
• Seneca, Hercules in Seneca, Tragedies, Volume I: Hercules. Trojan Women. Phoenician Women. Medea. Phaedra. Edited and translated by John G. Fitch. Loeb Classical Library No. 62. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2018. . Online version at Harvard University Press.
• Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil, Georgius Thilo, Ed. 1881. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library (Latin).
• Virgil, Aeneid [books 1–6], in Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid: Books 1-6, translated by H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library No. 63, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1999. . Online version at Harvard University Press.

Notes and References

1. Schaffner, s.v. Fames; Grimal, s.v. Fames; Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil 6.605.
2. Schaffner, s.v. Fames.
3. [Claudian]
4. Hard, p. 133; Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.738–878. Compare Callimachus, Hymn VI to Demeter 31ff.