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 METAMORPHOSES BOOK V power to harm, and became in form a lizard, though vet smaller in size. The old womam wondered and wept, and reached out to touch the marvellous thing, but he fled from her and sought a hiding-place. He has a name1 suited to his offence, since his body is starred with bright-coloured spots. « Over what lands and what seas the goddess wandered it would take long to tell. When there was no more a place to search in, she came back to Sicily, and in the course of her wanderings here she came to Cyane. If the nymph had not been changed to water, she would have told her all. But, though she wished to tell, she had neither lips nor tongue, nor aught wherewith to speak. But still she gave clear evidence,and showed on the surface of her pool what the mother knew well, Persephone's girdle, which had chanced to fall upon the sacred waters. As soon as she knew this, just as if she had then for the first time learned that her daughter had been stolen, the goddess tore her unkempt locks and smote her breast again and again with her hands. She did not know as yet where her child was; stilh she reproached all lands, calling them ungrateful and unworthy of the gift of corn; but Sicily above all other lands, where she had found traces of her loss. So there with angry hand she broke in pieces the plows that turn the glebe, and in her rage she gave to destruction farmers and cattle alike, and bade the plowed fields to betrav their trust, and blighted the seed. The fertility of this land, famous throughout the world, lay false to its good name: the crops died in early blade, now too much heat, now too much rain destroying them. Stars and winds were baleful, and greedy birds ate up the seed as soon as it was 871