METAMORPHOSES BOOK V sown; tares and thorns and stubborn grasses choked the wheat.
- Then did Arethusa, Alpheus' daughter, lift her
head from her Elean pool and, brushing her dripping locks back from her brows, thus addressed the goddess: 'O thou mother of the maiden sought through all the earth, thou mother of fruits, cease now thy boundless toils and do not be so grievously wroth with the land which has been true to thee. The land is innocent against its will it opened to the robbery. It is not for my own country that I pray, for I came a stranger hither. Pisa is my native land, and from Elis have I sprung; I dwell in Sicily a foreigner. But I love this ountry more than all; this is now my home, here is my dwelling-place. And now, 1 pray thee, save t, O most merciful. Why I moved from my place and why I came to Sicily, through such wastes of sea, afitting time will come to tell thee, when thou shalt be free from care and of a more cheerful countenance. The solid earth opened a way before me, and passing hrough the lowest depths, I here lifted my head again and beheld the stars that had grown unfamiliar. Iherefore, while I was gliding beneath the earth in my Stygian stream, I saw Proserpina there with these very eyes. She seemed sad indeed, and her face was still perturbed with fear; but yet she was a queen, the great queen of that world of darkness, the mighty consort of the tyrant of the underworld." The mother upon hearing these words stood as if turned to stone, and was for a long time like one bereft of reason. But when her overwhelming frenzy had given way to over- whelming pain,she set forthinherchariot to the realms of heaven. There, with cłouded countenance, with lishevelled hair, and full of indignation, she appeared before Jove and said: "I have come, O Jupiter, as 878
