Force me not yet to prophesy against my will. Not yet is the tripod seat at Pytho my care; not yet is the great serpent dead, but still that beast of awful jaws, creeping down from Pleistus, wreathes snowy Parnassus with his nine coils. Nevertheless I will speak unto thee a word more clear than shall be spoken from the laurel branch. Flee on! swiftly shall I overtake thee and wash my bow in blood. Thou hast in thy keeping the children of a slanderous woman. Not thou shalt be my dear nurse, nor Cithaeron. Pure am I and may I be the care of them that are pure.” So he spake. And Leto turned and went back. But when the Achaean cities refused her as she came—Helice, the companion of Poseidon, and Bura, the steading of Dexamenus, the son of Oeceus—she turned her feet back to Thessaly. And Anaurus fled and great Larisa and the cliffs of Cheiron; fled, too, Peneius, coiling through Tempe.
But thy heart, Hera, was even then still pitiless and thou wert not broken down nor didst have compassion, when she stretched forth both her arms and spake in vain: “Ye nymphs of Thessaly, offspring of a river, tell your sire to hush his great stream.
Entwine your hands about his beard and entreat him that the children of Zeus be born in his waters. Phthiotian Peneius, why dost thou now vie with the winds? O sire, thou dost not bestride a racing horse. Are thy feet always thus swift, or are they swift only for me, and hast thou to-day been suddenly made to fly?” But he heard her not. “O burden mine, whither shall I carry thee? The hapless sinews of my feet are outworn. O Pelion, bridal chamber of Philyra, do thou stay, O stay, since on thy hills even the wild lionesses oftentimes lay down their travail of untimely birth.” Then shedding tears, Peneius answered her: “Leto, Necessity is a great goddess. It is not I who refuse, O Lady, thy travail; for I know of others who have washed the soilure of birth in me—but Hera hath largely threatened me. Behold what manner of watcher keeps vigil on the mountain top, who would lightly drag me forth from the depths. What shall I devise? Or is it a pleasant thing to thee that Peneius should perish? Let my destined day take its course. I will endure for thy sake, even if I must wander evermore with ebbing flood and thirsty, and alone be called of least honour among rivers. Here am I! What needeth more? Do thou but call upon Eileithyia.” He spake and stayed his great stream. But Ares was about to lift the peaks of Pangaeum from their base and hurl them in his eddying waters and hide his streams. And from on high he made a din as of thunder and smote his shield with the point of his spear, and it rang with a warlike noise.
And the hills of Ossa trembled and the plain of Crannon, and the windswept skirts of Pindus, and all Thessaly danced for fear: such echoing din rang from his shield. And even as when the mount of Aetna smoulders with fire and all its secret depths are shaken as the giant under earth, even Briares, shifts to his other shoulder, and with the tongs of Hephaestus roar furnaces and handiwork withal; and firewrought basins and tripods ring terribly as they fall one upon the other: such in that hour was the rattle of the fair-rounded shield. But Peneius retired not back, but abode his ground, steadfast even as before, and stayed his swift eddying streams, until the daughter of Coeüs called to him: “Save thyself, farewell! save thyself; do not for my sake suffer evil for this thy compassion; thy favour shall be rewarded.”
So she spake and after much toil came unto the isles of the sea. But they received her not when she came—not the Echinades with their smooth anchorage for ships, nor Cercyra which is of all other islands most hospitable; since Iris on lofty Mimas was wroth with them all and utterly prevented them. And at her rebuke they fled all together, every one that she came to, along the waters. Then she came unto primeval Cos, the isle of Merops, the holy retreat of the heroine Chalciope, but the word of her son restrained her: “Bear me not, mother, here.
I blame not the island nor have any grudge, since a bright isle it is and rich in pasture as any other. But there is due to her from the Fates another god, the most high lineage of the Saviours; beneath whose crown shall come—not loth to be ruled by a Macedonian—both continents and the lands which are set in the sea, far as where the end of the earth is and again whence his swift horses carry the sun. And he shall know the ways of his sire.
Yea and one day hereafter there shall come upon us a common struggle, when the Titans of a later day shall rouse up against the Hellenes barbarian sword and Celtic war, and from the furthest West rush on like snowflakes and in number as the stars when they flock most thickly in the sky; forts too [and villages of the Locrians and Delphian heights and Crisaean plains and [glens of the mainland] be thronged about and around, and shall behold the rich smoke of their burning neighbour, and no longer by hearsay only; but already beside the temple behold the ranks of the foemen, and already beside my tripods the swords and cruel belts and hateful shields, which shall cause an evil journey to the foolish tribe of the Galatians.
Of these shields some shall be my guerdon; others, when they have seen the wearers perish amid fire, shall be set by the banks of Nile to be the prizes of a king who laboured much. O Ptolemy who art to be, these prophecies I declare for thee. Greatly shalt thou praise in all the days to be him that prophesied while yet in his mother’s womb. But mark thou, mother: there is to be seen in the water a tiny island, wandering over the seas. Her feet abide not in one place, but on the tide she swims even as a stalk of asphodel, where the South wind or the East wind blows, whithersoever the sea carries her. Thither do thou carry me. For she shall welcome thy coming.”
When he had spoken thus much, the other islands in the sea ran away. But thou, Asteria, lover of song, didst come down from Euboea to visit the round Cyclades—not long ago, but still behind thee trailed the sea-weed of Geraestus... since thy heart was kindled, seeing the unhappy lady in the grievous pangs of birth: “Hera, do to me what thou wilt. For I heed not thy threats. Cross, cross over, Leto, unto me.”
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