Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Erysichthon, cursed by Demeter with unsatiable hunger, sells his daughter Mestra for food. Poseidon had been her lover and granted her the power to change shape. Each time she is sold—as mare, bird, cow, deer—she shifts form, escapes the buyer, and returns to her father so he may sell her again. Ovid makes this cycle the cruel engine that briefly staves off the famine until Erysichthon finally consumes his own flesh. Hesiodic fragments already know Mestra as a shape-shifter given to Poseidon and linked to Erysichthon’s house. Catalogue Mestra’s gift and the repeated sale-escape as a separate entry from Callimachus’s Demeter–Erysichthon hymn; label Ovid as the fullest narrative while noting the Greek Catalogue background.