Laestrygones

"Skin-Reapers." According to Homer, a race of cannibalistic giants who dwelt in a land where the sun never set, located on the northernmost shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus. The hero Odysseus came upon their lands when the storm winds had driven him far from the island of Aeolus. The giants ate many of Odysseus' men and destroyed eleven of his twelve ships; Odysseus' ship was spared because it was hidden in a cove.

They are said to have been the children of Poseidon.1 Their king was the cruel Antiphates.

❧

They are said to originally have lived in Campania, in the region around Formiae, and afterwards in Sicily.

References

Notes

  1. Gellius. Noctes Atticae x, 21.

Sources

  • Aken, Dr. A.R.A. van. (1961). Elseviers Mythologische Encyclopedie. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Bartelink, Dr. G.J.M. (1988). Prisma van de mythologie. Utrecht: Het Spectrum.
  • Hesiod. Catalogue of Women, fragment 40A.
  • Homer. Odyssey x, 80, 106-199; xii, 1.
  • Juvenal, xv, 18.
  • Pliny the Elder. Natural History iii, 59; vii, 9.
  • Tibullus, iv, 1, 59.