Lityerses was a talented swordsman, and was bloodthirsty and aggressive. He challenged people to harvesting contests and beheaded those he beat, putting the rest of their bodies in the sheaves.
Heracles won the contest and killed him, then threw his body into the river
Maeander.[1][2][3] He was also known as the "Reaper of Men." One source describes him as a glutton who could eat "three asses'
panniers" of food and drink "a ten-
amphora cask" of wine at a time.[4]
The
Phrygian reapers used to celebrate his memory in a harvest-song which bore the name of Lityerses.[2] The Phrygians' song for Lityerses was, according to one tradition, a comic version of the
Mariandyni's lament sung for
Bormus.[5]
Theocritus in his tenth
Idyll gives a specimen of a Greek harvest-song addressed to Demeter, called 'the Song of the Divine Lityerses'. In this song, there is no mention of the legend; it is merely an ordinary reaping-song.[citation needed]
In Written Stories
In The Lost Hero, a resurrected Lityerses meets
Jason Grace,
Piper McLean and
Leo Valdez and tries to kill them. However they escape and Lityerses is turned to gold due to a mistake of his father,
King Midas. Jason throws a rug on the statue to keep him from being freed.
In The Dark Prophecy, Lityerses is shown to be working under
Commodus who is a part of the evil god emperors, Triumvirate Holdings, having been freed by Commodus. However, after
Apollo saves him from execution by the hands of Commodus, he helps Apollo throughout the book and chooses to live at the Waystation.
In The Tower of Nero, Lit is mentioned to have settled in well and to be running an elephant visitation program at the Waystation.
Suida, Suda Encyclopedia translated by Ross Scaife, David Whitehead, William Hutton, Catharine Roth, Jennifer Benedict, Gregory Hays, Malcolm Heath Sean M. Redmond, Nicholas Fincher, Patrick Rourke, Elizabeth Vandiver, Raphael Finkel, Frederick Williams, Carl Widstrand, Robert Dyer, Joseph L. Rife, Oliver Phillips and many others.
Online version at the Topos Text Project.