We begin and end with a consideration of the myth of Erysichthon. Herein Erysichthon, a man with no reverence for the gods, mutilates the sacred grove of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. His punishment is to be cursed by Famine, so that no matter how much he consumes, he is never full. His final act, after eating whole forests and rivers, among other things, is to eat himself. For such a rich symbol and story, Erysichthon is almost unknown, compared to figures like Narcissus and Echo, who are features of everyday speech and thought. We try to think through the twists and turns of this story, and relate it the dominant concerns of the Metamorphoses as a whole. We consider again the meaning of piety in the poem, what Proteus has to tell us about poetry, how Icarus relates to ambition, and what difference it makes, if any, that the stories in book VIII are being told to the hero Theseus. Is Ovid using a playful style to mask a careful structure, or is he like the drunken barfly, leaping from one story to the next by any careless association?