- Also spelled:
- Laestrygonians or Lestrygonians
Laestrygones
Laestrygones, in Greek mythology, fictional race of cannibalistic giants described in Book 10 of Homer’s Odyssey. When Odysseus and his men land on the island inhabited by the Laestrygones, the giants pelt Odysseus’s 12 ships with boulders, sinking all but Odysseus’s own ship. (Read: Gods and Monsters in the Odyssey.)
In some accounts the Laestrygones were regarded as descendants of Laestrygon, a son of Gaea, the Greek personification of Earth, and Poseidon, god of the sea, horses, and earthquakes. Ruled by Antiphates, the Laestrygones inhabited the city of Telepylos in a strange land of almost perpetual daylight called Lamos.
Odysseus’s disastrous encounter with the Laestrygones in the Odyssey occurs after he sails from the island of Aeolia with a bag of winds given by Aeolus, lord of the winds. Odysseus’s ships are blown off course when his men precipitately open the bag. The ships reach Lamos six days later, and 11 of the 12 ships take shelter within a natural harbor that has a narrow opening and is surrounded by cliffs. Odysseus’s own ship remains outside and thus survives the massacre that takes place shortly after.
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Odysseus sends three of his crew to reconnoiter the unfamiliar land, and the results turn out to be catastrophic. On arriving at the palace, one man is seized and eaten by Antiphates, who then alerts other Laestrygones. The two surviving crew members rush back to warn their companions but are too late to stop the devastation that follows. The Laestrygones sink the trapped fleet by flinging huge boulders at them and drag the sailors ashore to be eaten. The twelfth ship, with Odysseus on board, escapes the carnage by quickly sailing away toward their next stop—the island of the sorceress Circe. (Read: The Geography of the Odyssey.)