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Fames

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In Roman Mythology, Fames is the personification of hunger, who was able to 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.

Roman Comedy

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:

I suspect that Hunger was my mother: from the time that I was born I’ve never been full. And no one will repay his mother better ... or has repaid her better than I repay my mother, Hunger: she carried me in her belly for ten [lunar] months, whereas I have been carrying her in my belly for over ten years. ... Every day I get pangs in my stomach, but I can’t give birth to my mother and I don’t know what to do.

Sources

Ancient

Claudian

Carmina

3.25–44

Dire Allecto once kindled with jealous wrath on seeing widespread peace among the cities of men. Straightway she summons the hideous council of the nether-world sisters to her foul palace gates. Hell’s numberless monsters are gathered together, Night’s [Nox] children of ill-omened birth. Discord [Discordia], mother of war, imperious Hunger [Fame], Age [Senectus], near neighbour to Death [Morbus]; Disease, whose life is a burden to himself; Envy that brooks not another’s prosperity, woeful Sorrow with rent garments; Fear [Timor] and foolhardy Rashness with sightless eyes; Luxury, destroyer of wealth, to whose side ever clings unhappy Want with humble tread, and the long company of sleepless Cares, hanging round the foul neck of their mother Avarice. The iron seats are filled with all this rout and the grim chamber is thronged with the monstrous crowd.

Ovid

Metamorphoses

8.738–878 (Miller and Gould)

8.791–794

the goddess Ceres, said to her "There is
an ice-bound wilderness of barren soil
in utmost Scythia, desolate and bare
of trees and corn, where Torpid-Frost, White-Death
and Palsy and Gaunt-Famine, hold their haunts"

8.802–816

she searched for Famine in that granite land,
and there she found her clutching at scant herbs,
with nails and teeth. Beneath her shaggy hair
her hollow eyes glared in her ghastly face,
her lips were filthy and her throat was rough
and blotched, and all her entrails could be seen,
enclosed in nothing but her shriveled skin;
her crooked loins were dry uncovered bones,
and where her belly should be was a void;
her flabby breast was flat against her spine;
her lean, emaciated body made
her joints appear so large, her knobbled knees
seemed large knots, and her swollen ankle-bones
protruded.

814–820

Grim Famine hastened to obey the will
of Ceres, though their deeds are opposite,
and rapidly through ether heights was borne
to Erysichthon's home. When she arrived
at midnight, slumber was upon the wretch,
and as she folded him in her two wings,
she breathed her pestilential poison through
his mouth and throat and breast, and spread the curse
of utmost hunger in his aching veins.

[Miller/Gould:] Famine did the bidding of Ceres, although their tasks are ever opposite, and flew through the air on the wings of the wind to the appointed mansion. Straight she entered the chamber of the impious king, who was sunk in deep slumber (for it was night); there she wrapped her skinny arms about him and filled him with herself, breathing upon his throat and breast and lips; and in his hollow veins she planted hunger. When her duty was done, she left the fertile world, and returned to the homes of want and her familiar caverns.

Melvile

Plautus

Stichus

155–170

GELASIMUS

I suspect that Hunger was my mother: from the time that I was born I’ve never been full. And no one will repay his mother better [than I am repaying my mother . . . completely against my will] or has repaid her better than I repay my mother, Hunger: she carried me in her belly for ten months,⁹ whereas I have been carrying her in my belly for over ten years. And she carried me as a tiny baby, which is why I think she had less trouble; I am not carrying a tiny Hunger in my belly, but the greatest and heaviest by far. Every day I get pangs in my stomach, but I can’t give birth to my mother and I don’t know what to do. And I’ve often heard the common saying that an elephant is normally pregnant for an entire ten years;¹⁰ that’s the breed this Hunger is certainly from: it’s been attached to my belly for several years already.

Plautus. Stichus. Trinummus. Truculentus. Tale of a Travelling Bag. Fragments. Edited and translated by Wolfgang de Melo. Loeb Classical Library 328. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013

Seneca

Hercules

686–696

Here lies the foul swamp of the torpid Cocytus; here is the shriek of the vulture, there of the foreboding owl, and the grim echoing omen of the unlucky screech owl. Black bedraggled foliage hangs in shadowy fronds on an overhanging yew tree, the haunt of sluggish Sleep. There lies sad Hunger [Famesque] with wasted jaws, and Shame, too late, covers its guilty face. There are Fear [Metus] and Panic, Death [Morbus] and gnashing Resentment; behind them black Grief, trembling Disease and steel-girt War; hidden at the back, feeble Old Age [Senectus] supports its steps with a stick.

Servius

Commentary on the Aeneid of Vergil

6.605

FURIARUM MAXIMA id est saevissima, hoc est Fames, ut "vobis Furiarum ego maxima pando". unde et famem praenuntiat, ut hanc esse Furiarum maximam doceat.

Virgil

Aeneid

6.268-281

On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis and his phantom realm, even as under the niggard light of a fitful moon lies a path in the forest, when Jupiter has buried the sky in shade, and black Night has stolen from the world her hues. Just before the entrance,¹⁴ even within the very jaws of Hell, Grief and avenging Cares have set their bed; there pale Diseases dwell, sad Age, and Fear, and Hunger, temptress to sin, and loathly Want, shapes terrible to view; and Death and Distress; next, Death’s own brother Sleep, and the soul’s Guilty Joys, and, on the threshold opposite, the death-dealing War, and the Furies’ iron cells, and maddening Strife, her snaky locks entwined with bloody ribbons.

¹⁴ The realm of Pluto is conceived as being approached through an entrance court, at the far side of which is the threshold (limen, 279), with the doors (fores, 286) admitting to the interior. There Aeneas finds a vast domain, divided into several parts. He first follows a path leading to Acheron.

Modern

Grimal

s.v. Fames

The allegory of Hunger. Her name was a translation of Limos, described by Hesiod as one of the daughters of Eris (Strife). Virgil portrayed her in the entrance-hall of Hades, alongside Poverty. Ovid embellished the picture and depicted her as living in Scythia, a desolate land, where she nibbled ceaselessly at what scanty vegetation she could find. At the demand of Ceres, she carried off ERYSICHTHON and drove him to doom.

Hard

p. 133

In Ovid's account ...

Schaffner

Brill's New Pauly

s.v. Fames

(Greek λιμός/limós). Personification of hunger; also called the most powerful of the Furies ( Furiae) (Serv. Aen. 6,605) who arouses a voracious appetite that cannot be assuaged (in Plaut. Stich. 155-170 the never sated parasite describes F. as his mother). She is often listed in the catalogue of the great evils that populate the entrance to the Underworld (Verg. Aen. 6,273-281; Sen. Herc. f. 650ff.; Claud. Carm. 3,30ff.). Ovid (Met. 8,796-822) has F. ─ brilliantly represented as a figure who is emaciated and close to death herself ─ living in the desolate area of the Caucasus.

Schaffner, Brigitte (Basle)