Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/237

METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV power is second to heaven alone, I ask great things, I know; but do thou pity these my friends, whom thou seest plunged in the broad Ionian sea, and receive them among thy sea-deities. Some favour is due to me from the sea, if in its sacred depths my being sprang once from foam, and in the Gree tongue I have a name from this." Neptune con- sented to her prayer and, taking from Ino and her son all that was mortal, gave them a being to be revered, changing both name and form; for he called the new god Palaemon, and his goddess- mother, Leucothoë. The Theban women who had been Ino's com- panions followed on her track as best they could, and saw her last act from the edge ot the rock Nothing doubting that she had been killed, in mourning for the house of Cadmus they beat their breasts with their hands, tore their hair, and rent their garments; and they upbraided Juno, saying that she was unjust and too cruel to the woman who had wronged her. Juno could not brook their reproaches and said: I will make yourselves the greatest monument of my cruelty." No sooner said than done. For she who had been most devoted to the queen cried: I sha follow my queen into the sea"; and was just about to take the leap when she was unable to move at all, and stood fixed fast to the rock. A second, while she was preparing a^ain to smite her breasts as she had been doing, felt her lifted arms grow stiff. Another had by chance stretched out her hands towards the waters of the sea, but now 'twas a figure of stone that stretched out hands to those same waters. Still another, plucking at her hair to tear it out, you might see with sudden stiffened fingers still in act to 217