Pr. Id. 12th
Next come the games of Ceres. There is no need to declare the reason; the bounty and the services of the goddess are manifest. The bread of the first mortals consisted of the green herbs which the earth yielded without solicitation; and now they plucked the living grass from the turf, and now the tender leaves of tree-tops furnished a feast. Afterwards the acorn was produced; it was well when they had found the acorn, and the sturdy oak afforded a splendid affluence. Ceres was the first who invited man to better sustenance and exchanged acorns for more useful food. She forced bulls to yield their necks to the yoke; then for the first time did the upturned soil behold the sun. Copper was now held in esteem; iron ore still lay concealed; ah, would that it had been hidden for ever! Ceres delights in peace; and you, ye husbandmen, pray for perpetual peace and for a pacific prince. You may give the goddess spelt, and the compliment of spurting salt, and grains of incense on old hearths; and if there is no incense, kindle resinous torches. Good Ceres is content with little, if that little be but pure. Ye attendants, with tucked up robes, take the knives away from the ox; let the ox plough; sacrifice the lazy sow. The axe should never smite the neck that fits the yoke; let him live and often labour in the hard soil.
The subject requires that I should narrate the rape of the Virgin: in my narrative you will read much that you knew before; a few particulars will be new to you.
The Trinacrian land got its name from its natural position: it runs out into the vast ocean in three rocky capes. It is the favourite home of Ceres: she owns many cities, among them fertile Henna with its well-tilled soil. Cool Arethusa had invited the mothers of the gods, and the yellow-haired goddess had also come to the sacred banquet. Attended as usual by her wonted damsels, her daughter roamed bare-foot through the familiar meadows. In a shady vale there is a spot moist with the abundant spray of a high waterfall. All the hues that nature owns were there displayed, and the pied earth was bright with various flowers. As soon as she espied it, “Come hither, comrades,” she said, “and with me bring home lapfuls of flowers.” The bauble booty lured their girlish minds, and they were too busy to feel fatigue. One filled baskets plaited of supple withes, another loaded her lap, another the loose folds of her robe; one gathered marigolds, another paid heed to beds of violets; another nipped off heads of poppies with her nails; some are attracted by the hyacinth, others lingered over amaranth; some love thyme, others rosemary, others melilot; full many a rose was culled, and flowers without a name.
Persephone herself plucked dainty crocuses and white lilies. Intent on gathering, she, little by little, strayed far, and it chanced that none of her companions followed their mistress. Her father’s brother saw her, and no sooner did he see her than he swiftly carried her off and bore her on his dusky steeds into his own realm. She in sooth cried out, “Ho, dearest mother, they are carrying me away!” and she rent the bosom of her robe. Meantime a road is opened up for Dis; for his steeds can hardly brook the unaccustomed daylight. But her troop of play-mates, when they had heaped their baskets with flowers, cried out, “Persephone, come to the gifts we have for thee!” When she answered not their call, they filled the mountain with shrieks, and smote their bare bosoms with their sad hands.
Ceres was startled by the loud lament; she had just come to Henna, and straightway, “Woe’s me! my daughter,” said she, “where art thou?” Distraught she hurried along, even as we hear that Thracian Maenads rush with streaming hair. As a cow, whose calf has been torn from her udder, bellows and seeks her offspring through every grove, so the goddess did not stifle her groans and ran at speed, starting from the plains of Henna. From there she lit on prints of the girlish feet and marked the traces of the familiar figure on the ground. Perhaps that day had been the last of her wanderings if swine had not foiled the trail she found. Already in her course she had passed Leontini, and the river Amenanus, and the grassy banks of Acis. She had passed Cyane, and the springs of gently flowing Anapus, and the Gelas with its whirlpools not to be approached. She had left behind Ortygia and Megara and the Pantagias, and the place where the sea receives the water of the Symaethus, and the caves of the Cyclopes, burnt by the forges set up in them, and the place that takes its name from a curved sickle, and Himera, and Didyme, and Acragas, and Tauromenum, and the Melas, where are the rich pastures of the sacred kine. Next she came to Camerina, and Thapsus, and the Tempe of Helorus, and where Eryx Hes for ever open to the western breeze.
Already had she traversed Pelorias, and Lilybaeum, and Pachynum, the three horns of her land. And wherever she set her foot she filled every place with her sad plaints, as when the bird doth mourn her Itys lost. In turn she cried, now “Persephone!” now “Daughter!” She cried and shouted either name by turns; but neither did Persephone hear Ceres, nor the daughter hear her mother; both names by turns died away. And whether she spied a shepherd or a husbandman at work, her one question was, “Did a girl pass this way?” Now o’er the landscape stole a sober hue, and darkness hid the world: now the watchful dogs were hushed. Lofty Etna hes over the mouth of huge Typhoeus, whose fiery breath sets the ground aglow. There the goddess kindled two pine-trees to serve her as a light; hence to this day a torch is given out at the rites of Ceres. There is a cave all fretted with the seams of scolloped pumice, a region not to be approached by man or beast. Soon as she came hither, she yoked the bitted serpents to her car and roamed, unwetted, o’er the ocean waves. She shunned the Syrtes, and Zanclaean Charybdis, and you, ye Nisaean hounds, monsters of shipwreck; she shunned the Adriatic, stretching far and wide, and Corinth of the double seas.
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