While the hero, son of Danaë, was recounting these things among the crowd of Cepheus' people, the royal halls filled with a riotous throng. This wasn't the clamor that sings of wedding festivals, but that which announces fierce war. The banquet, turned into sudden tumult, you could compare to a calm sea that savage winds' rage stirs up with moved waves.

First among these was Phineus, reckless instigator of war, shaking an ash-wood spear with bronze tip. "Look," he said, "look, I'm here, avenger of my stolen bride! Neither your wings nor Jupiter falsely turned to gold will snatch you from me!"

As he prepared to hurl it, Cepheus cried out, "What are you doing? Brother, what mad spirit drives you to this crime? Is this the gratitude returned for such great merit? Do you repay with this the dowry of a saved life? It wasn't Perseus—if you seek the truth—who took her from you, but the grave power of the Nereids, horned Ammon, and the beast that came from the sea's depths to be sated on my own flesh. She was stolen from you at that time when she was about to die—unless, cruel man, you demand exactly that, that she perish, and you'll be lightened by our grief.

"Obviously it's not enough that you watched as she was bound and you, uncle and betrothed, brought no help. Beyond that, you'll grieve that she was saved by anyone and will snatch away the reward? If it seems great to you, you should have sought it from those rocks where she was fastened. Now allow him who sought her, through whom this old age isn't childless, to take what he bargained for both by merit and by word, and understand that he was preferred to you not, but to certain death."

Phineus said nothing in reply but looked alternately at Cepheus and Perseus, uncertain which one to attack. Hesitating briefly, he hurled the spear, twisted with all the strength anger gave, in vain at Perseus. When it stuck in the couch, then finally Perseus leaped up from the cushions and, fierce, would have pierced his enemy's chest with the thrown weapon—except that Phineus went behind the altars. And (shameful!) the altar helped the wicked man.

Yet the spear wasn't useless—it stuck in Rhoetus' forehead. After he fell and the iron was pulled from the bone, he kicked and spattered the laid tables with blood.

Then truly the crowd blazed up in untamed anger and hurled weapons. Some said Cepheus with his son-in-law should die. But Cepheus had gone out through the threshold of the dwelling, calling to witness justice and faith and the gods of hospitality that these things were happening against his will.

Warrior Pallas was present and protected her brother with her aegis and gave him courage.

---

There was an Indian, Athis, whom Limnaea, born from the Ganges river, was believed to have brought forth beneath glassy waves. Outstanding in beauty, which he increased with rich dress, still only twice eight years old, he wore a Tyrian cloak that a golden border surrounded. Golden necklaces adorned his neck and myrrh his wet hair in a curved band.

Though he was skilled at hitting distant targets with hurled javelin, he was more skilled at drawing the bow. Then too, as he was bending the pliant horns with his hand, Perseus struck him with a log that stood smoking on the middle altar and crushed his face into his shattered bones.

When Assyrian Lycabas saw him throwing up his handsome face in blood—Lycabas, most closely joined to him, both companion and not hiding his true love—after he'd mourned Athis breathing out life beneath the cruel wound, he seized the bow Athis had drawn and said, "Let your contest be with me! You won't rejoice long in the boy's fate—by which you have more envy than praise."

He hadn't yet finished all these words when the arrow flew from the string, penetrable—yet avoided, it hung in his billowing robe. Perseus turned on him the curved sword tested in Medusa's slaughter and drove it into his chest. But he, already dying, with eyes swimming in black night, looked around for Athis and leaned toward him and carried to the shades the solace of shared death.

---

Look—Phorbas, son of Methion from Syene, and Libyan Amphimedon, eager to join the fight, had fallen, slipping on blood with which the ground far and wide was soaked and warm. As they rose, his sword blocked them—driven into one's ribs, into Phorbas' throat.

But Perseus didn't attack Erytus, son of Actor, with his curved sword—his weapon was a broad two-edged ax—but lifting with both hands a huge mixing bowl, standing out with high figures and great in massive weight, he struck it against the man. Erytus vomited red blood and fell backward and beat the ground with his dying head.

Then Perseus laid low Polydegmon, created from Semiramis' blood, and Caucasian Abaris and Lycetus from Spercheus and Helices with unshorn hair and Phlegyas and Clytus, and trampled over built-up heaps of the dying.

Nor did Phineus dare to engage the enemy in close combat but hurled a javelin, which error carried against Idas, free in vain from war and following neither side's weapons. He, looking at cruel Phineus with fierce eyes, said, "Since I'm dragged to a side, Phineus, take the enemy you've made and repay wound with this wound!"

And now about to hurl back the spear drawn from his body, he fell collapsed in limbs drained of blood.

Then too Hodites, first after King Cepheus, fell by Clymenes' sword. Hypseus struck down Prothoenor, Lyncides struck Hypseus. Among them was also aged Emathion, cultivator of justice and fearing the gods. Since years prevented him from fighting, he fought with words and assailed and cursed the wicked weapons.

As he clung to the altar with trembling palms, Chromis struck off his head with a sword. It immediately fell on the altar, and there his half-living tongue spoke cursing words and breathed out its soul in the middle of the fires.

Then twin brothers Broteas and Ammon, invincible with boxing gloves (if gloves could be conquered by swords), fell by Phineus' hand, and Ampycus, priest of Ceres, his temples veiled with white ribbon. You too, Lampetides, not to be brought to these uses, but who would move the lyre with voice—work of peace! You'd been ordered to grace the feast and celebrate it with song.

Pedasus, seeing him standing at a distance and holding the unwarlike plectrum, mocked him and said, "Sing the rest to the Stygian shades!" and fixed his blade in his left temple. He fell and, with dying fingers, tried again the strings of the lyre and struck by chance a pitiful song.

Fierce Lycormas didn't let him fall unavenged. He snatched the sturdy bar from the right doorpost and struck it against the bones of his middle neck. Phorbas fell to earth like a sacrificed ox.

Cinyphian Pelates was trying to remove the bar from the left post too. As he tried, his right hand was fixed by the spear of Marmari

dan Corythos and stuck to the wood. As he clung there, Abas pierced his side. He didn't fall but, dying, hung by his hand held by the post.

Melaneus also was laid low, who'd followed Perseus' camp, and Dorylas, richest of Nasamonian land. Rich in land was Dorylas—none possessed more widely or piled up so many heaps of incense. The spear sent stood stuck in his groin at an angle—that deadly place.

When Bactrian Halcyoneus, author of the wound, saw him gasping out his soul and rolling his eyes, he said, "Keep this, of so many fields of land, that you're lying on!" And left the bloodless corpse.

The avenger, son of Abas, hurled back at him a spear snatched from the warm wound. It was received in the middle of his nose and went through the back of his neck and stuck out from both sides.

While Fortune aided his hand, he laid low with different wounds Clytius and Clanis, born from one mother. For a heavy ash shaft, balanced by his strong arm and driven through both of Clytius' thighs, while Clanis bit a javelin with his mouth.

Celadon of Mende died, and Astreus died, created from a Palestinian mother and doubtful father, and Aethion, once keen to see the future, then deceived by a false omen, and Thoactes, armor-bearer of the king and Agyrtes, infamous from his slain father.

More remained, though he was exhausted. For all had one spirit—to crush him. Bands conspired from all sides fought for a cause attacking merit and faith. On this side, the father-in-law, dutiful in vain, and the new wife with her mother favored him and filled the halls with wailing. But the sound of weapons and groans of the falling drowned them out, and Bellona meanwhile soaked the household gods, polluted with much blood, and stirred up renewed battles.

---

Phineus and a thousand who followed Phineus surrounded one man. Weapons flew thicker than winter's hail past both sides and past his eyes and ears. He placed his shoulders against the stone of a great column and, bearing a safe back and turning to face the opposing ranks, withstood those pressing. From the left side pressed Chaonius Molpeus, from the right Nabataean Ethemon.

As a tigress, stimulated by hunger in a different valley when she's heard the lowings of two herds, doesn't know which one she should rather rush at and burns to rush at both—so Perseus, uncertain whether to attack right or left, drove Molpeus back with a wound through his leg and was content with his flight. For Ethemon didn't give time but raged and, wanting to give wounds to his high neck, not looking carefully, drove his sword with all his strength and broke it on the edge of the struck column. The blade flew off and stuck in its master's throat.

Yet that blow didn't give strong enough causes for death. Perseus, with his Cyllenian curved sword, pierced him trembling and stretching useless arms in vain.

But when he saw his courage succumbing to the crowd, Perseus said, "Since you yourselves force me, I'll seek help from my enemy! Turn away your faces, if any friend is present!" And he held forth the Gorgon's face.

"Seek another whom your marvels move," said Thescelus. But as he prepared with his hand to hurl the fatal javelin, he froze in that gesture—a marble statue.

Next to him, Ampyx attacked the chest, full of great spirit, of Lyncides with his sword. As he attacked, his right hand stiffened and moved neither forward nor back.

But Nileus, who'd falsely claimed he was born from the seven-channeled Nile and had engraved seven rivers on his shield, part in silver, part in gold, said, "Look, Perseus, at the origin of our race! You'll carry great consolation to the silent shades—that you fell by so great a man." The last part of his voice was suppressed in mid-sound. You'd believe his open mouth wanted to speak, but they weren't open to words.

Eryx rebuked them and said, "You're made torpid by a flaw of spirit, not by Gorgon's powers! Rush in with me and throw to the ground this youth wielding magic weapons!" He was about to rush in—the earth held his footsteps, and he remained, motionless stone, an armed statue.

These, however, suffered punishment deservedly. But there was one soldier of Perseus. While Aconteus fought for him, he hardened into stone on seeing the Gorgon. Astyages, thinking he still lived, struck him with his long sword. It rang with sharp clanging. While Astyages was stunned, he drew the same nature and remained with a wondering expression on his marble face.

It would take too long to tell the names of men from the middle ranks. Two hundred bodies remained for battle—two hundred bodies stiffened when the Gorgon was seen.

---

Then finally Phineus repented the unjust war. But what could he do? He saw statues in various forms and recognized his own men. Calling each by name, he sought help and, not quite believing, touched the nearest bodies—they were marble.

He turned away and, suppliant with confessing hands and slanting arms extended, said, "You win, Perseus! Remove your portents and the stone-making face of your Medusa, whoever she is—remove her, I pray! Neither hatred nor desire for kingship drove us to war. We took up arms for a wife! Your cause was better by merit, mine by time. I don't regret yielding. Grant nothing, most brave one, except this life—let all else be yours!"

As he spoke such things and didn't dare look at him whom he begged with his voice, Perseus said, "What I can grant and it's a great gift to a coward—put away fear!—I'll grant. You'll be violated by no iron. Moreover, I'll give memorials lasting through ages. You'll always be gazed upon in my father-in-law's house, so that my wife may console herself with the image of her betrothed."

He spoke and carried Phorcys' daughter to that side to which Phineus had turned with frightened face. Even then, as he tried to turn his eyes, his neck stiffened and the moisture of his eyes hardened into stone. Yet his timid mouth and suppliant expression in the marble and submissive hands and servile face remained.

---

Victorious, the son of Abas entered his ancestral walls with his wife—avenger and protector of his innocent parent. He attacked Proetus, for Proetus had driven out his brother by arms and possessed Acrisius' citadel. But neither by the help of arms nor by the citadel he'd wrongly seized did he overcome the fierce eyes of the snake-haired monster.

Yet you, Polydectes, ruler of little Seriphus—neither the youth's courage tested through so many labors nor your troubles had softened you. No, hard, you exercised inexorable hatred, and there was no limit to unjust anger. You even disparaged his praise and argued that Medusa's death was feigned.

"We'll give you proof of truth. Spare your eyes!" Perseus said, and with Medusa's face made the king's face into flint without blood.

---

Thus far Minerva, daughter of the golden one, had given herself as companion to her brother. From there, enclosed in a hollow cloud, she left Seriphus, Cythnos and Gyaros left on the right. Taking what seemed the shortest route over the sea, she sought Thebes and virgin Helicon.

When she'd gained the mountain, she stopped and addressed the learned sisters thus: "Fame of a new spring has reached our ears—one that the hard hoof of the wing-footed horse opened. This was my reason for the journey. I wanted to see the marvelous deed. I saw him born from his mother's blood."

Urania received her: "Whatever is the cause for seeing our home, goddess, you're most welcome to our spirit. Yet the fame is true. Pegasus is the origin of this spring." And she led Pallas to the sacred waters.

After marveling long at the waves made by the hoof's blows, she looked around at the groves of ancient forests and caves and grass marked with countless flowers, and called the daughters of Mnemosyne fortunate equally in their pursuit and place.

One of the sisters addressed her thus: "O Minerva, who would have come to our chorus if your courage hadn't carried you to greater works, you speak truth and rightly approve our arts and place. We have a grateful lot, if only we're safe. But (so nothing is forbidden to crime) everything terrifies virgin minds, and dread Pyreneus turns before my eyes, and I haven't yet recovered my full mind.

"That fierce man had seized Daulis and Phocean fields with Thracian soldiers and held unjust kingdoms. We were seeking Parnassus' temple. He saw us going and, revering our divinity with false expression, said (for he'd recognized us), 'Daughters of Mnemosyne, stop, I pray, and don't hesitate to avoid beneath my roof the harsh constellation and rain' (there was rain). 'Lesser gods have often entered smaller huts.'

"Moved by his words and the weather, we nodded to the man and entered his first dwelling. The rains had stopped and, with the south wind conquering the north winds, the dark clouds fled from the cleared sky. There was an impulse to go. Pyreneus closed his dwelling and prepared violence—which we escaped by taking wings.

"He himself, as if about to follow, stood high on the citadel and said, 'Whatever path is yours will also be mine,' and, mad, he threw himself from the peak of the highest tower and fell on his face. With shattered bones of his mouth, he beat the ground, dying, stained with wicked blood."

---

The Muse was speaking when wings sounded through the air and voices came from high branches, greeting. She looked up and sought from where such clear-speaking tongues sounded and thought, daughter of Jove, that a human spoke. It was a bird. Nine in number, lamenting their fate, sat on branches, imitating everything—magpies.

As she marveled, the goddess thus began to the goddess: "These too recently increased the crowd of birds, defeated in contest. Rich Pierus in Pellaean fields fathered them. Their mother was Paeonian Euippe. About to give birth nine times, she called nine times on powerful Lucina.

"The crowd of foolish sisters swelled with their number and came here through so many Haemonian and Achaean cities and entered combat with such a voice:

"'Stop deceiving the ignorant crowd with vain sweetness! Compete with us, Thespian goddesses, if you have any confidence. We won't be conquered in voice or art, and we're equal in number. Either yield, defeated, from the Medusaean spring and Hyantean Aganippe, or we'll yield from Emathian fields to snowy Paeonia! Let nymphs judge the contest.'

"It was indeed shameful to compete, but it seemed more shameful to yield. The chosen nymphs swore by streams and sat on seats made from living rock.

"Then, without drawing lots, she who'd first declared she'd compete sang the gods' war and put the giants in false honor and diminished the great gods' deeds. She told how Typhoeus, sent from earth's lowest seat, made fear for the gods and all gave their backs in flight until the Egyptian land received them, exhausted, and the Nile, divided into seven mouths.

"She told that earth-born Typhoeus came here too and the gods hid themselves in false forms. 'The flock's leader,' she said, 'became Jupiter—from which Libyan Ammon is now shaped with curved horns. The Delian god became a raven, Semele's offspring a goat, Phoebus' sister a cat, Saturn's daughter a snowy cow, Venus hid as a fish, Mercury with an ibis' wings.'

"Thus far she'd moved her vocal mouth to the lyre. We Muses are asked for our song—but perhaps you don't have leisure, nor can you lend ears to our songs."

"Don't doubt, and tell me your song in order!" Pallas said and sat in the grove's light shade.

---

The Muse continued: "We gave the contest's burden to one. Calliope arose and, her hair bound with ivy, tried the plaintive strings with her thumb and joined this song to the struck chords:

"'Ceres first moved the soil with curved plow, first gave crops and gentle nourishment to lands, first gave laws. All things are Ceres' gift. She must be sung by me. If only I could speak songs worthy of the goddess! Certainly the goddess is worthy of song.

"'A vast island was piled on gigantic limbs—Trinacria—and presses with great masses Typhoeus, who dared to hope for the heavenly seats. He indeed strives and struggles often to rise, but his right hand is pressed beneath Ausonian Pelorus, his left beneath you, Pachynus, Lilybaeum weighs down his legs, Aetna presses his head. Beneath it, lying on his back, fierce Typhoeus spits out sand and vomits flame from his mouth.

"'Often he struggles to heave off the earth's weight and roll towns and great mountains from his body. Then the land trembles and the king of the silent himself fears lest the ground lie open and, uncovered by broad chasm, let in daylight and terrify the trembling shades.

"'Fearing this disaster, the tyrant left his dark seat and, carried on a chariot of black horses, carefully circled the foundations of Sicilian land. After he'd explored enough that no places were crumbling and laid aside his fear, Venus the Erycinian, sitting on her mountain and embracing her winged son, said:

"'Arms and hands and my power, my son—those by which you conquer all—take your weapons, Cupid, and drive swift arrows into the god's chest to whom fell the last lot of the threefold kingdom.

"'You conquer the gods above and Jupiter himself, you conquer the defeated powers of the sea and him who rules the sea's powers. Why do the realms of Tartarus hold back? Why don't you extend your and your mother's empire? A third part of the world is at stake. Yet in heaven—which is already our patience—we're spurned, and with me Love's powers are diminished.

"'Don't you see Pallas and Diana the huntress have withdrawn from me? Ceres' daughter too will be a virgin if we allow it, for she aims at the same hopes. But you, for our allied kingdom, if there's any gratitude in that, join the goddess to her uncle.'

"Venus spoke. Cupid loosened his quiver and, at his mother's bidding, from a thousand arrows separated one—but than which none was sharper, none less uncertain, none that obeyed the bow more. Bracing his knee, he bent the pliant horn and struck Dis in the heart with the barbed reed.

"'Not far from Henna's walls is a deep lake named Pergus. Not more songs of swans does Cayster hear on its gliding waves. A forest crowns the water, encircling every side, and with its foliage as a veil wards off Phoebus' blows. The branches give coolness, the moist ground Tyrian flowers. There's perpetual spring.

"'In this grove, while Proserpina played and picked either violets or white lilies, and while with girlish eagerness she filled baskets and her robe and competed to surpass her equals in gathering, she was almost simultaneously seen and loved and seized by Dis—so hurried was love.

"'The goddess, terrified, with sad voice called her mother and companions, but her mother more often. Since she'd torn her garment from its top edge, the gathered flowers fell from her loosened tunic. Such simplicity accompanied her girlish years that even this loss moved virgin grief.

"'The ravisher drove his chariot and, calling each by name, urged on his horses. Over their necks and manes he shook the dark rust-stained reins and was carried through deep lakes and the Palici's pools, boiling with sulfur from broken earth, and where the Bacchiadae, people born from two-sea'd Corinth, raised walls between unequal harbors.

"'There is a bay between Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa that narrows, enclosed by confining horns. Here lived Cyane, most famous among Sicilian nymphs, from whose pool too the name was given. From the middle of her pool she rose, up to her waist, and recognized the goddess.

"'You'll go no farther!' she said. 'You can't be Ceres' son-in-law against her will. She should have been asked, not snatched. If I may compare small things to great, Anapis also loved me—yet I married persuaded, not, like this one, terrified.'

"She spoke and, stretching arms in opposite directions, blocked the way. Saturn's son no longer held back his anger and, urging on his terrible horses, hurled his royal scepter, twisted with strong arm, into the pool's depths. The struck earth made a road to Tartarus and received the headlong chariot in its middle crater.

"'But Cyane, grieving for the goddess snatched and her fountain's rights scorned, bore an inconsolable wound in her silent mind and was consumed entirely in tears. Into those waters of which she'd just been the great divinity, she melted away.

"'You'd see her limbs soften, her bones yield to bending, her nails lose their hardness. First the slenderest parts of all liquefied: blue hair and fingers and legs and feet (for brief is the passage from slender limbs to cool waters). After this, shoulders and back and sides and breasts vanished into thin streams. Finally, instead of living blood in corrupted veins, water entered, and nothing remained that you could grasp.

"'Meanwhile the terrified daughter was sought in vain by her mother through all lands, all depths. Neither Aurora coming with wet hair saw her resting, nor Hesperus. She lit two pine torches with flames from Aetna and, restless, carried them through frosty darkness. Again, when kindly day had dimmed the stars, she sought her daughter from sun's setting to sun's rising.

"'Tired from labor, she'd conceived thirst, and no springs had washed her mouth, when by chance she saw a hut covered with thatch and knocked on its small doors. From there an old woman came out and, seeing the goddess, gave her sweet liquid when she asked—which she'd made thick before with toasted barley.

"'While she drank what was given, a hard-faced and bold boy stood before the goddess and laughed and called her greedy. Offended, while she hadn't yet finished drinking, the goddess drenched him as he spoke with the liquid mixed with barley. His face drank the spots and, where he'd just had arms, he had legs. A tail was added to his changed limbs, and he was contracted to brief form lest he have great power to harm, and smaller than a small lizard's measure.

"'Wondering and weeping and preparing to touch the portent, the old woman fled. The creature sought hiding and has a name suited to shame—body starred with various spots.

"'What lands and what waters the goddess wandered through would take long to tell. The world failed her searching. She returned to Sicily and, as she passed through everything in her wandering, came to Cyane. She, had she not been changed, would have told all. But she had neither mouth nor tongue willing to speak, nor had she anything with which to speak.

"'Yet she gave clear signs and showed, known to the parent, Persephone's belt, fallen by chance in that place, in the sacred pool, displayed in the topmost waters. When she recognized it, as if only then she'd known of the rape, the goddess tore her unkempt hair and struck her breast repeatedly with her palms.

"'She still didn't know where her daughter was, yet she accused all lands and called them ungrateful and unworthy of crops' gift—Trinacria before the others, in which she'd found traces of her loss. Therefore there, with savage hand, she broke the plows turning the soil, and in equal anger gave farmers and farm-cattle to death and ordered the fields to fail their trust and spoiled the seeds.

"'The land's fertility, famous through the wide world, lay false. The crops died in their first shoots. Now too much sun, now too much rain destroyed them. Stars and winds harmed them, and greedy birds gathered the scattered seeds. Tares and thorns exhausted the wheat harvests, and invincible grass.

"'Then Alpheus' head lifted from the Elean waves and pushed back his dripping hair from forehead to ears and said:

"'O mother of crops and mother of the maiden sought through the whole world, cease your immense labors and don't rage violently against the land faithful to you. The land deserved nothing and lay open, unwilling, to rape. Nor am I a suppliant for my homeland—I came here as a guest. Pisa is my homeland and I trace my origin from Elis. I live in Sicily as a foreigner, but this land is more pleasing to me than any soil. Now Arethusa has these household gods, this dwelling. Preserve it, most gentle one.

"'Why I was moved from my place and carried through such expanse of sea's waves to Ortygia—a suitable hour for my story will come when you're lightened of care and have a better expression. Earth gives me a passable path and, carried beneath the deepest caverns, here I lift my head and see the stars again, unused to them.

"'So while I glided beneath the earth in the Stygian pool, I saw your Proserpina there with my own eyes. She indeed was sad and not yet without frightened expression, but still a queen, still greatest of the shadowy world, still nonetheless the powerful matron of the infernal tyrant.'

"The mother, hearing these words, stood stupefied as if turned to stone and for a long time was like one stunned. When heavy grief was driven out by heavy madness, she rode her chariot to the heavenly shores. There, with clouded whole face and hair disheveled, she stood resentfully before Jupiter and said:

"'I come as a suppliant to you, Jupiter, for my blood and for yours. If no gratitude comes from the mother, let the daughter move her father. Don't let your care for her, I pray, be less valuable because she was born from my childbirth. Look, my daughter sought long is finally found—if you call finding to lose more certainly, or if you call knowing where she is finding. That she was seized I'll bear, if only he returns her! For your daughter isn't worthy of a predator husband, even if mine no longer is.'

"Jupiter responded: 'The daughter is a pledge and burden common to me and you. But if only we're pleased to add true names to things, this wasn't injury done but love. Nor will that son-in-law be a shame to us, goddess, if only you're willing. How much it is to be Jupiter's brother! What if the rest weren't lacking—but they're not, and he yields to me only by lot.

"'But if such desire for separation is in you, Proserpina will return to heaven—but by a fixed law, if she's touched no food there with her mouth. For so was it secured by the Parcae's pact.'

"He'd spoken, but Ceres was resolved to lead back her daughter. The fates didn't allow it thus, since the maiden had broken her fast and, while innocently she wandered in the cultivated gardens, had plucked a red fruit from a curved tree and, taking seven grains from the pale rind, had pressed them in her mouth.

"No one saw this except Ascalaphus, whom once Orphne (they say), not the most obscure among Avernus' nymphs, bore from her own Acheron in dark forests. He saw and by cruel testimony took away her return.

"Erebus' queen groaned and made the witness a foul bird. Sprinkling his head with Phlegethon's water, she turned it into a beak and feathers and huge eyes. Taken from himself, he was wrapped in tawny wings and grew into a head and bent back into long talons and barely moved his feathers, born through his sluggish arms. He became a foul bird, herald of coming grief, the lazy screech-owl, dire omen to mortals.

"'He, however, could seem to have deserved punishment by his tongue and testimony. But you, Acheloides, from what source do you have feathers and birds' feet while wearing maidens' faces? Is it because, learned Sirens, you were in the number of companions when Proserpina was gathering spring flowers?

"'After you sought her in vain through the whole world, you wished immediately that the seas too might feel your care—that you could walk on waves with your wings as oars. You found the gods easy and saw your limbs suddenly turn yellow with feathers. Yet lest that song, born to soothe ears, and such great gift of voice should lose the use of tongue, virgin faces and human voice remained.

"'But Jupiter, mediating between his brother and sad sister, divided the turning year in equal parts. Now the goddess, a shared divinity of two kingdoms, is with her mother for as many months, with her husband for as many. Immediately her face and mind's expression changed. For the brow that could seem sad even to Dis is joyful—as the sun, which before was covered by watery clouds, comes forth victorious from the clouds.

---

"'Nurturing Ceres, secure with her daughter received, asks what was the cause of your flight, why you are, Arethusa, a sacred spring. The waters fell silent. The goddess from their deep spring raised her head and, drying her green hair with her hand, told the old loves of the Elean river.

"'I was one part of the nymphs that are in Achaia,' she said. 'No other more eagerly gathered glades, no other more eagerly set nets. But though fame of beauty was never sought by me, though I was brave, I had the name of beautiful. Nor did my too-praised appearance please me. That gift of body in which others usually rejoice—I, a rustic, blushed at and thought it a crime to please.

"'Tired, I was returning (I remember) from the Stymphalian forest. There was heat, and labor had doubled the great heat. I found waters going without ripple, without murmur, transparent to the bottom—through which every pebble deep down was countable—waters you'd scarcely think were moving.

"'Gray willows and poplars nourished by water gave spontaneous shade to the sloping banks. I approached and first dipped the tracks of my foot, then to the knee. Not content with this, I ungirded myself and placed my soft garments on a curved willow and plunged naked into the waters.

"'While I struck and drew them, gliding in a thousand ways, and threw my shaken arms, I sensed some murmur in the middle of the pool. Frightened, I stood on the nearer bank's edge.

"'Where do you hurry, Arethusa?' Alpheus said from his waters. 'Where do you hurry?' he said again to me in a hoarse voice. Just as I was, I fled without my garments (the other bank held my clothes). He pressed harder and burned more—because I was naked, I seemed readier to him.

"'So I ran, so that fierce one pressed me—as doves usually flee a hawk on trembling wing, as a hawk usually presses trembling doves. I sustained running all the way beneath Orchomenus and Psophis and Cyllene and Maenalus' folds and cold Erymanthus and Elis, nor was he swifter than I.

"'But I couldn't endure the course long, unequal in strength. He could bear long labor. Yet through fields and tree-covered mountains and rocks and crags and where there was no path, I ran. The sun was at my back. I saw a long shadow go before my feet—unless fear saw it. But certainly the sound of feet terrified me, and his huge panting breath blew at my hair's ribbons.

"'Worn out by the labor of flight, I said, Bring help—I'm caught!—to your weapon-bearer, Diana, to whom you've often given the carrying of your bow and arrows enclosed in the quiver!'

"'The goddess was moved and, carrying one from thick clouds, threw it over me. The river searched for me, concealed in darkness, and, unknowing, circled around the hollow cloud. Twice, unaware, he circled the place where the goddess had covered me, and twice he called "Io Arethusa! Io Arethusa!"

"'What spirit did I, wretched, then have? Wasn't it that of a lamb if it hears wolves roaring around high pens, or of a hare who, hiding in a thicket, sees the hostile mouths of dogs and dares give no motion to its body?

"'Yet he didn't leave. For he saw no footprints going farther. He watched the cloud and the place. Cold sweat seized my besieged limbs. Blue drops fell from my whole body. Wherever I moved my foot, a pool flowed. From my hair dew fell. More swiftly than I now tell you the deed, I was changed into waters.

"'But still the river recognized his beloved waters. Laying aside the man's form he'd assumed, he turned into his own waves to mix himself with me. The Delian goddess broke the ground, and I, plunged in dark caverns, was carried to Ortygia, which is pleasing to me by the goddess's name—it first brought me to the upper air.'

"Here Arethusa ended. The fertile goddess yoked twin snakes to her chariot and restrained their mouths with reins and was carried through middle air between heaven and earth. She sent her light chariot to the Tritonian city and gave seeds to Triptolemus and ordered him to scatter them partly on rough ground, partly on land recultivated after long time.

"Now the youth had been carried high over Europe and Asian land. He turned toward Scythian shores. A king there was Lyncus. He entered that king's household. Asked from where he came and the cause of his journey and his name and homeland, he said:

"'My homeland is famous Athens. My name is Triptolemus. I came neither by ship through waves nor by foot through lands—the passable air lay open to me. I bring Ceres' gifts, which scattered through wide fields may return fruitful harvests and gentle nourishment.'

"The barbarian envied and, so he himself might be author of so great a gift, received him in hospitality and attacked him, weighed down with sleep, with iron. As he tried to pierce his chest, Ceres made him a lynx and ordered the Mopsopian youth to drive the sacred pair again through air."

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'The greatest of us had finished her learned song. But the nymphs, dwelling on Helicon, said with harmonious sound that the goddesses had won. When the defeated hurled insults, I said, "Since punishing you by contest isn't enough and you add abuse to fault, and our patience isn't free, we'll go to punishments and follow where anger calls."

'The Emathides laughed and spurned the threatening words. Attempting to speak and with great clamor to threaten with shameless hands, they saw feathers come out through their nails and plumage cover their arms.

'Each saw the other's mouth harden into rigid beak and a new bird join the forests. While they wanted to beat their breasts, lifted by arms' movement, they hung in air—the forests' taunts, magpies.

'Even now in birds their old eloquence remained and their hoarse chatter and immense eagerness for speaking.'