Thus she came to thy havens, land of Attica. There for the first time she sat her down most rueful on a cold stone: that stone even now the Cecropids call the Sorrowful. For many days she tarried motionless under the open sky, patiently enduring the moonlight and the rain. Not a place but has its own peculiar destiny: what now is named the Eleusis of Ceres was then the plot of land of aged Celeus. He carried home acorns and blackberries, knocked from bramble bushes, and dry wood to feed the blazing hearth. A little daughter drove two nanny-goats back from the mountain, and an infant son was sick in his cradle. “Mother,” said the maid—the goddess was touched by the name of mother—“what dost thou all alone in solitary places?” The old man, too, halted, despite the load he bore, and prayed that she would pass beneath the roof of his poor cottage. She refused. She had disguised herself as an old dame and covered her hair with a cap. When he pressed her, she answered thus: “Be happy! may a parent’s joy be thine for ever! My daughter has been taken from me. Alas! how much better is thy lot than mine!” She spoke, and like a tear (for gods can never weep) a crystal drop fell on her bosom warm. They wept with her, those tender hearts, the old man and the maid; and these were the words of the worthy old man; “So may the ravished daughter, whom thou seekest, be restored safe to thee, as thou shalt arise, nor scorn the shelter of my humble hut.” The goddess answered him, “Lead on; thou hast found the way to force me”; and she rose from the stone and followed the old man. As he led her and she followed, he told her how his son was sick and sleepless, kept wakeful by his ills.
As she was about to pass within the lowly dwelling, she plucked a smooth, a slumbrous poppy that grew on the waste ground; and as she plucked, ’tis said she tasted it forgetfully, and so unwitting stayed her long hunger. Hence, because she broke her fast at nightfall, the initiates time their meal by the appearance of the stars. When she crossed the threshold, she saw the household plunged in grief; all hope of saving the child was gone. The goddess greeted the mother (her name was Metanira) and deigned to put her lips to the child’s lips. His pallor fled, and strength of a sudden was visibly imparted to his frame; such vigour flowed from lips divine. There was joy in the whole household, that is, in mother, father, and daughter; for they three were the whole household. Anon they set out a repast—curds liquefied in milk, and apples, and golden honey in the comb. Kind Ceres abstained, and gave the child poppies to drink in warm milk to make him sleep. It was midnight, and there reigned the silence of peaceful sleep; the goddess took up Triptolemus in her lap, and thrice she stroked him with her hand, and spoke three spells, spells not to be rehearsed by mortal tongue, and on the hearth she buried the boy’s body in live embers, that the fire might purge away the burden of humanity. His fond-foolish mother awoke from sleep and distractedly cried out, “What dost thou?” and she snatched his body from the fire. To her the goddess said: “Meaning no wrong, thou hast done grievous wrong: my bounty has been baffled by a mother’s fear. That boy of yours will indeed be mortal, but he will be the first to plough and sow and reap a guerdon from the turned-up soil.”
She said, and forth she fared, trailing a cloud behind her, and passed to her dragons, then soared aloft in her winged car. She left behind bold Sunium, and the snug harbour of Piraeus, and the coast that lies on the right hand. From there she came to the Aegean, where she beheld all the Cyclades; she skimmed the wild Ionian and the Icarian Sea; and passing through the cities of Asia she made for the long Hellespont, and pursued aloft a roving course, this way and that. For now she looked down on the incense-gathering Arabs, and now on the Indians: beneath her lay on one side Libya, on the other side Meroe, and the parched land. Now she visited the western rivers, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Po, and thee, Tiber, future parent of a mighty water. Whither do I stray? ’Twere endless to tell of the lands over which she wandered. No spot in the world did Ceres leave unvisited. She wandered also in the sky, and accosted the constellations that lie next to the cold pole and never dip in the ocean wave. “Ye Parrhasian stars, reveal to a wretched mother her daughter Persephone; for ye can know all things, since never do ye plunge under the waters of the sea.” So she spoke, and Helice answered her thus: “Night is blameless. Ask of the Sun concerning the ravished maid: far and wide he sees the things that are done by day.” Appealed to, the Sun said, “To spare thee vain trouble, she whom thou seekest is wedded to Jove’s brother and rules the third realm.”
After long moaning to herself she thus addressed the Thunderer, and in her face there were deep lines of sorrow: “If thou dost remember by whom I got Persephone, she ought to have half of thy care. By wandering round the world I have learned naught but the knowledge of the wrong: the ravisher enjoys the reward of his crime. But neither did Persephone deserve a robber husband, nor was it meet that in this fashion we should find a son-in-law. What worse wrong could I have suffered if Gyges had been victorious and I his captive, than now I have sustained while thou art sceptered king of heaven? But let him escape unpunished; I’ll put up with it nor ask for vengeance; only let him restore her and repair his former deeds by new.” Jupiter soothed her, and on the plea of love excused the deed. “He is not a son-in-law,” said he, “to put us to shame: I myself am not a whit more noble: my royalty is in the sky, another owns the waters, and another the void of chaos. But if haply thy mind is set immutably, and thou art resolved to break the bonds of wedlock, once contracted, come let us try to do so, if only she has kept her fast; if not, she will be the wife of her infernal spouse.”
The Herald God received his orders and assumed his wings: he flew to Tartarus and returning sooner than he was looked for brought tidings sure of what he had seen. “The ravished Maid,” said he, “did break her fast on three grains enclosed in the tough rind of a pomegranate.” Her rueful parent grieved no less than if her daughter had just been reft from her, and it was long before she was herself again, and hardly then. And thus she spoke: “For me, too, heaven is no home; order that I too be admitted to the Taenarian vale.” And she would have done so, if Jupiter had not promised that Persephone should be in heaven for twice three months. Then at last Ceres recovered her looks and her spirits, and set wreaths of corn ears on her hair; and the laggard fields yielded a plenteous harvest, and the threshing-floor could hardly hold the high-piled sheaves. White is Ceres’ proper colour; put on white robes at Ceres’ festival; now no one wears dun-coloured wool.
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