Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/72

40 The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her child from the ground; her daughters entered at her cries, and began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. All night they strove to appease the goddess.

Strictly executing the injunctions of Dêmêtêr. Keleos convoked the people of Eleusis and erected the temple on the spot which she had pointed out. It was speedily completed, and Dêmêtêr took up her abode in it, apart from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for the loss of her daughter, and withholding her beneficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole year, a desperate and terrible year: in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the furrow, Dêmêtêr suffered it not to emerge from the earth. The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task; for Dêmêtêr resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other goddesses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermês to Hadês, to bring Persephonê away: Persephonê joyfully obeyed, but Hadês prevailed upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from him.

With transport did Dêmêtêr receive back her lost daughter, and the faithful Hekatê sympathized in the delight felt by both at the reunion. It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth: she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of Dêmêtêr, who consented again to