Furies had spread their couches there as had also Fear and Hunger. The
Hydra hissed with each one of its nine heads and the Chimaeras breathed
fire. There was a giant with a hundred arms, and Discord whose hair was
bound with a fillet made of vipers.
"Take me back to the light. I want to go home. Oh, I beg of you, take me
home!" Proserpine cried, but her words only echoed through the vaults of
the kingdom of darkness. And when she tried to make her escape, her
frail little hands were bruised from beating against the thick iron
door that shut her in.
The next morning Aurora rode through the sky to put away the stars and
touch the clouds with the pink color of the dawn. Looking down to the
earth, she saw a goddess who had arisen long before the dawn and was
hurrying up and down the earth, wringing her hands and with tears in her
eyes. She wore a chaplet woven of the golden heads of the grain, and she
was straight and strong and beautiful in her flowing robes of green, but
she did not lift her eyes from the earth, so deep was her sorrow.
That evening Hesperus, who followed in Aurora's course each sunset to
lead out the stars, saw the same goddess. Her robes were torn and
stained from her travels and bedraggled with the dew. She was still
weeping, and still searching. She was going to search, without rest, all
night.
Many others saw this goddess in the days that followed. She was always
roaming from daylight until dark, in the open, in sunlight and
moonlight, and in falling showers. She was weary and sad. In such a
plight a peasant, named Celeus, found her one day. He had been out in a
field gathering acorns and blackberries, and binding bundles of sticks
for his fire. The goddess sat there on a stone, too tired to go on.
"Why do you sit here alone on the rocks?" Celeus asked her. He carried a
heavy load, but he stopped to try and succor her. "Come to my cottage
and rest," he entreated her. "My little son is very ill, and we have
only a most humble roof, but such as it is we will be glad to share it
with you."
The goddess rose and gathered her arms full of crimson poppies. Then she
followed Celeus home.
They found deep distress in the cottage, for the little boy was so ill
as to be almost past hope. His mother could scarcely speak for her
sorrow, but she welcomed the wandering goddess and spread the table for
her with curds and cream, apples, and golden honey dripping from the
comb. The goddess ate, but her eyes were on the sick child and when his
mother poured milk into a goblet for him she mingled the juice of her
poppies with it.
At last night came, and the peasants slept. Then the goddess arose and
took the little boy in her arms. She touched his weak limbs with her
strong, skilful hands, said a charm over him three times, and then laid
him in the warm ashes of the fire.
"Would you kill my son? Wicked woman that you are to so abuse my
hospitality!" the child's mother cried, awaking and seeing what the
goddess had done.
But just then a strange thing happened. The cottage was filled with a
splendor like white lightning, and a light seemed to shine from the skin
of the goddess. A lovely perfume was scattered from her fragrant
garments, and her hair was as bright as gold.
"Your son will not die, but live," she told the wife of Celeus. "He
shall grow up and be great and useful. He shall teach men the use of the
plough, and the rewards which labor can win from the cultivation of the
soil."
"Who are you?" the woman asked in amazement as she saw the boy's white
cheeks grow rosy with new life.
"I am Ceres," the goddess answered, "whose grief is greater than yours,
for my child is lost. I search the earth for her, and never find her."
With these words she was gone, as if she had wrapped herself in a cloud
and floated away to meet the dawning of another day of her journey.
That was who this wanderer of the earth was, the immortal Ceres, who
still did not care to live without her loved little daughter,
Proserpine.
She was obliged to neglect her work of caring for the earth in her
search for Proserpine, and disaster came to the land for many seasons.
The cattle died and no plough broke the furrows. The seed failed to come
up. There was too much sun and too much rain. The birds stole the
harvest, little as there was, and seeds and brambles were the main
growth. Even Arethusa, the nymph of the fountain, was about to die as
Ceres, in her search, came to the banks of the River Cyane, where Pluto
had passed with Proserpine to his own domain. Ceres had almost given up
hope.
"Ungrateful soil that I have clothed with herbs and fruits and grains,"
she said. "You have taken my child and shall enjoy my favors no longer."
But Arethusa spoke:
"Do not blame the earth, Mother Ceres," she said. "It opened unwillingly
to take your daughter. I come from the waters. I know them so well that
I can count the pebbles in the bottom of this river, the willows that
shade it and the violets on the bank. I was at play not long since in
the river and Alpheus, the god of the stream, pursued me. I ran and he
followed in an attempt to keep me from going back to my home in the
fountain. As I tried to escape him, I plunged through the depths of the
earth and into a cavern. While I passed through the bowels of the earth
I saw your Proserpine. She was sad, but had no look of terror. Pluto had
made her his queen in the realm of the dead. I have made my way back to
tell you."
Ceres knew then that Proserpine was lost to her unless Jupiter helped in
taking her away from the king of darkness. She summoned her chariot and
rode to Mount Olympus, but even Jupiter had not complete power over
Pluto.
"If Proserpine has taken food in Pluto's realm, the Fates will not allow
her to return to earth," he told Ceres. "But I will send my swift
messenger, Mercury, with Spring to try and bring her home."
In all that time Proserpine had eaten none of the rich food that Pluto
had set before her, only six seeds of a red pomegranate as she had
pressed the fruit to her lips to quench her thirst. But Spring, with all
her strength that can bring new leaves and blooms from dead branches,
with the help of Mercury, the god of the winged shoes, brought
Proserpine the long way back to her mother for six months. The remaining
six months of the year, one month for each pomegranate seed that she had
eaten, Proserpine was doomed to spend as queen of Pluto's kingdom of
darkness.
No one, and particularly not her mother, worried very much, though,
about those months of darkness because of the wonders that Proserpine
brought when she returned to earth. Every tree that she touched with her
garments burst into green, and wherever her feet pressed the earth the
grass and wild flowers appeared and spread. Ploughing and planting were
begun again, and the new shoots of the corn pushed up through the
ground.
Indeed, it seemed to Ceres that her other child, the corn, was telling
the story of lost Proserpine. The seed of the corn that is thrust into
the earth and lies there, concealed in the dark, is like Proserpine
carried off by the god of the underworld. Then Spring gives the seed a
new form and it appears to bless the earth, just as Proserpine was led
forth to her mother and to the light of day.
THE PLOUGHMAN WHO BROUGHT FAMINE.
Erisichthon had made up his mind to kill the Dryad who lived in the oak
tree.
He was one of the strongest ploughmen in all Greece, and he knew Ceres
who presided over the fields and her favorite Dryad of the oak tree very
well. The oak tree had stood for centuries in a grove in which Ceres
loved to rest, and it was almost a forest in itself. It overtopped the
other trees as far as they stretched above the shrubs. Its trunk
measured fifteen cubits around, and it was supported upon roots that
were almost as strong as iron cables.
It was supposed in those old days of Greece to be a tree of wonders. It
was this oak that guarded the wide agricultural domain of Ceres, and the
Dryad who lived inside was one of the messengers of this goddess through
the farms and orchards. She was a slender, fair young creature who would
never grow old and carried sunbeams in her hands that brought new
growth wherever she spilled them.
When the grove was empty and still, all the other Dryads would step
softly from their dwelling places in the cypress, the olive and the pine
trees and join hands as they danced lightly about the oak tree, singing
their praises of the great Ceres who fed with her bounty the whole of
Greece. The country people, and even those from the cities, came to pay
their homage to Ceres' oak, bringing garlands of roses and laurel that
they hung on its boughs, and carving messages of thanks and love for the
Dryad on its bark.
Erisichthon knew all this, but he wanted a quantity of wood for his farm
without the trouble of earning it. He decided the property of Ceres was
his, by right, because he had ploughed her fields at the time of the
planting. So Erisichthon saw no reason why he should spare the wonderful
oak tree, even if it did shelter a Dryad. He called his servants
together, armed them with freshly sharpened axes, and they set out for
the forest.
When they reached the oak tree, Erisichthon's men hesitated. The tree
looked like a temple, its wide spreading branches sheltering the other
trees, and its great trunk towering toward the sky like a bronze pillar.
Each man remembered Ceres' bounty toward him, her gifts of apples and
corn, grapes and wheat, and best of all her offering of land that would
bring plenty for the ploughing and planting.
"We cannot cut it. This is a tree well beloved of Ceres," the men said
to their master.
"I care not whether it be a tree beloved of the goddess or not,"
Erisichthon shouted angrily to them. "If I cut it down I shall have no
more need of Ceres, for its wood will make me rich beyond the need of
planting. She owes me a living on account of the past seasons in which I
have worked for her. If Ceres herself were in my way I would cut her
down also!" he exclaimed.
With this terrible threat on his lips, the lawless ploughman seized an
axe from one of his trembling servants and began chopping the trunk of
the mighty tree. He had great strength, and each blow cut a deep gash.
As Erisichthon cut in toward the heart of the oak tree, that held the
Dryad, the oak began to shiver and groan, but he showed it no mercy. He
ordered his men to tie ropes to the branches and pull, and he continued
to cut it until the tree fell with a crash that was like the sound of a
thunderbolt, and brought down with it a great part of the forest that
surrounded it.
As the giant trunk lay on the ground at the feet of Erisichthon, there
was a sighing of the branches like that of a summer breeze passing
through, and the leaves fluttered as if they had been stirred by the
flight of a bird. It was the spirit of the Dryad whom Erisichthon had so
hurt, taking her way to her family of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Those Dryads who were left in the grove hastened to Ceres with news of
what had happened.
"This man must be punished!" they cried.
Ceres bowed her head in assent, and the fields of grain bowed also, and
the branches of the fruit trees drooped. It was the ripe time of the
harvest, but there were no crops on the farm of Erisichthon, and Ceres
decreed that no neighbor should share with him.
In the northern part of Greece lay the ice topped mountains of Scythia,
a bleak, unfertile region without fruit or grain. Cold, and Fear, and
Shuddering lived there and one other, who was more to be dreaded than
all three. This was Famine with unkempt hair and sunken eyes, blanched
lips, and her skin tightly drawn over her sharp bones. She made her home
in a hard, stony field where she pulled up the scanty herbage with her
claw-like fingers and tried to subsist on it.
After Erisichthon had cut down the old oak tree Ceres sent to Scythia
for Famine.
Erisichthon found that it was going to be a month's task to cut up his
wood and carry it to his farm, so he went home to rest over night,
planning to start the work in the morning. He felt hungry after his hard
work of chopping down the tree, but he had not even a pomegranate for
his supper. All his food had strangely disappeared. He decided to go to
bed and try to forget his hunger in sleep.
"I will sell a load of wood in the morning for many gold coins," he
thought, "and buy food in plenty."
So Erisichthon lay down on his couch and was soon fast asleep. Then
Famine sped in through the window and hovered over where he lay. She
folded her wings around him and breathed her poison into his veins. Then
she hastened back to Scythia, for she had no other errand in a land of
plenty.
Erisichthon did not wake but he stirred in his sleep and moved his jaws
as if he were eating, for he was very hungry in his dreams. In the
morning he woke with a raging hunger that was a hundred times worse than
that of the day before.
He sold his load of wood and spent all the money for whatever food the
earth, the air, and the sea produced. He consumed vast quantities of
fish, fowl, the flesh of lambs, fruit and vegetables; but the more
Erisichthon ate, the greater was his hunger. The amount of food that
would have been enough for the whole of Athens was not sufficient for
this man. He continually craved more.
Erisichthon sold the wood of the entire oak tree, and began selling
pieces of the land that made his farm in order to get food for appeasing
his terrible hunger. At last his fields were gone and he had to sell his
furniture, his tools, his books, and all his vases. Still he could not
get food enough to appease his gnawing appetite, so he sold his house
and lived in a tent that he set up beside the road. But his hunger was
still unsatisfied and in his madness Erisichthon sold his only daughter
to be the slave of a fisherman who cast his nets beside the Aegean Sea.
The girl loved her father very dearly and her grief, as she gathered sea
weed along the shore for her master, touched the heart of Neptune, the
god of the sea. He changed her to the form of a horse, and she went home
to Erisichthon, hoping that he would look upon so fine an animal with
favor, and give it a home. But her father sold the horse to a chariot
racer. She escaped and went again to the shore where Neptune changed
her, in turn, to a stag, an ox, and a rare bird. Each time she made her
way home, and each time her father sold her to buy food. So the bird
flew away to Mount Olympus and was never seen again.
At last there came a day when Erisichthon could feed himself no longer.
There was nothing left to him in the world that he could sell, and his
hunger was so great that he went, like a raving beast, up and down the
bountiful fields of Ceres demanding that food be given him.
But those whom Famine touches because they break Ceres' laws, and
destroy life and property find no help unless they try to restore the
order that they have hurt. Erisichthon was too weak to work, and he
could never raise another oak tree like that one which had been growing
for centuries. So he went, at last, to live with Famine in Scythia which
was a long way from the Mount of the gods.
THE BEE MAN OF ARCADIA.
Strange things were happening in a field of the beautiful country called
Arcadia. A youth who wore a wreath of green laurel leaves on his dark
hair sat on a rock and held a lyre in his hands from whose strings he
drew sweet music. And as he played a wolf, who had been the terror of
the shepherds for many leagues around, came out of the woods and lay
down like a great dog at the feet of the youth. Next, the nearby olive
trees bent their heads to listen and then moved toward him until they
stood in a circle at his feet. Then the hard rock on which the musician
rested covered itself with soft green verdure and bluebells and violets
began to lift their heads, growing out of its age-old stones.
This was what always happened when Orpheus, the son of Apollo, played
the lyre that his father had given him and had taught him to use.
Nothing could withstand the charm of his music. Not only the farmers and
shepherds, the nymphs and fauns of Arcadian woods and fields were
softened and drawn by his tunes, but the wild beasts as well laid by
their fierceness and stood, entranced, at his strains.
Orpheus touched his lyre again and played an even lovelier song. And out
of the forest glided the nymph, Eurydice, taking her place near Orpheus.
His music had won her devotion and Hymen, the god of marriage, had made
the two very happy. Their deepest wish was that they might never be
separated.
The whole of Arcadia was charmed by Orpheus' lute. No, there was just
one person in that beautiful country who positively disliked music, and
that was the bee-man, Aristaeus. In fact, Aristaeus could not see the
value of anything beautiful, the statues and vases in the temple of
Apollo, the tapestries the weavers decorated with so many soft colors,
the tints of the wild flowers, or the arch of the rainbow in the sky
after a shower. This bee-man could find no interest in anything except
his combs of yellow honey, their number, and how many gold coins he
would be paid for them. Not only did Aristaeus dislike beautiful
things, but he did not want others to enjoy them. A cross old Arcadian,
was he not?
He was feeling particularly disagreeable on the morning when Orpheus
began playing his lute near his farm. And when Eurydice, whom Orpheus so
loved, approached him to ask for a comb of his delicious honey for
dinner for the two, Aristaeus entirely lost his temper. He not only
refused the nymph, which no one but a very stingy person could have
done, for she smiled at him so winningly and asked for it so politely;
but he chased Eurydice off his farm.
No one had treated Eurydice so rudely in all her life before. Even Pan
had gathered flowers for her to twine into garlands and had refrained
from teasing her as he did almost all the other nymphs. And here she
was, a long distance from Orpheus and pursued by an ugly tempered
country man! Eurydice ran like the wind, the bee-man coming fast behind
her. She was much fleeter than he and would have reached the woods
safely, but she stepped suddenly on a snake that she had not seen as it
lay coiled up in the grass. The snake stung Eurydice's bare feet and she
dropped down on the ground.
"It serves her right!" the bee-man said, not going to see how badly she
was hurt. And with that he went back to his bees.
Aristaeus was the very first bee-man, the myths tell us. When the gods
made the little creatures of the earth they made also the honey bees and
taught them how to build themselves homes in hollow trees or holes in
the rocks, to find the nectar in the flowers, and make from it their
thick, golden honey. Aristaeus was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene,
and he came to Arcadia with the remembrance of the music of the waters
and the brightness of the sun in his heart, but when he discovered how
to attract the bees to his farm and take their honey away from them and
sell it, he forgot everything except his business. That was when he
began to dislike Orpheus and to become blind to the fair country in
which he lived.
"Three hives are swarming to-day," the bee-man thought as he came home.
"I ought to be able to get a good sum for the honey." Then, as he
reached the orchard where his hives were placed on the wall, he looked
about him in amazement. Hives, bees, all were gone. Not a buzz, a
sting, or a single drop of honey was left!
Aristaeus looked throughout the entire countryside for his bees for
days, but he could not find a single one. At last he gave up the search
and did what a good many boys and girls would be apt to do in the same
emergency. He went to ask the advice of his mother, the sea-nymph
Cyrene.
He went to the edge of the river where he knew she lived and called her.
"O mother, the pride of my life is taken away from me. I have lost my
precious bees. My care and skill have availed me nothing. Can you turn
from me this blow of misfortune?"
His mother heard these complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom
of the river with her attendant nymphs around her. They were busy
spinning and weaving beautiful designs in water weeds and painting
pebbles while another told stories to amuse the rest. But the sad voice
of the bee-man interrupted them and one put her head above the water.
Seeing Aristaeus, she returned and told his mother, who ordered that he
be brought down to her.
At the command of Cyrene, the river opened itself and let him pass
through, as it stood curled like a mountain on either side. The bee-man
descended to the place where the fountains of the great rivers lie. He
saw the enormous rock beds of the waters and was almost deafened by
their roar as he saw them hurrying off in all their different directions
to water the face of the earth. Then Aristaeus came to his mother's
palace of shells and stone and he was taken to her apartment where he
told her his troubles.
Cyrene, being a dweller of the waters which are the fountain of life,
was very wise. She understood at once that her son had made a mistake in
not seeing that it was possible to combine beauty and usefulness.
Arcadia needed bees, but it needed Orpheus and his lute also, and the
gods had punished the bee-man for his sordidness. Still, he was her son
and Cyrene decided to try and help Aristaeus out of his difficulty.
"You must go to old Proteus, who is the herdsman of Neptune's
sea-calves," Cyrene said. "He can tell you, my son, how to get back your
bees, for he is a great prophet. You will have to force him to help
you, however. If you are able to seize him, chain him at once; he will
answer your questions in order to be released. I will conduct you to the
cave where he comes at noon to take his nap. Then you can easily secure
him, but when he finds himself in chains he will cause you a great deal
of trouble. He will make a noise like the crackling of flames so as to
frighten you into loosing your hold on the chain. Or he may become a
wild boar, a fierce tiger, a lion with ravenous jaws or a devouring
dragon. But you have only to keep Proteus fast bound and when he finds
all his arts to be of no avail he will return to his natural shape and
obey your commands."
So Cyrene led Aristaeus to the cave by the sea and showed him where to
hide behind a rock while she, herself, arose and took her place behind
the clouds. Promptly at noon old Proteus, covered with dripping green
weeds, issued from the water followed by a herd of sea calves who spread
themselves out on the shore. The herdsman of the sea counted them, sat
down on the floor of the cave, and then in a very short time had
stretched himself out, fast asleep. Aristaeus waited until he was
snoring and then he bound him with a heavy chain he had brought for the
purpose.
When Proteus awoke and found himself captured, he struggled like a wild
animal at bay. Next, he turned to flame and then, in succession to many
terrible beasts, but Aristaeus never once let go of the chain that
secured him. At last he returned to his true form and spoke angrily to
Aristaeus.
"Who are you, who boldly invades my domain and what do you want?"
Proteus demanded.
"You know already," the bee-man replied, "for you have the powers of a
prophet and nothing is hidden from you. I have lost my bees, and I want
to have them returned to me."
At these words, the prophet fixed his eyes on Aristaeus with a piercing
look.
"Your trouble is the just reward sent you by the gods because you killed
Eurydice," he said. "To avenge her death, her companion nymphs sent this
destruction to your bees."
"I killed Eurydice?" Aristaeus asked in amazement. "Does she no longer
listen to the music of Orpheus?"
"Yes, but not in Arcadia," Proteus explained. "When she was stung by
the viper, she was obliged to make her way alone to the dark realm of
Pluto. Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both
gods and men, and then he started out to search for Eurydice. He passed
through the crowd of ghosts and entered the realm beyond the dark river
Styx. There, in front of the throne of Pluto, he sang of his longing
that Eurydice might be restored to him, until the cheeks of even the
Fates were wet with tears.
"Pluto himself gave way to Orpheus' music and called Eurydice. She came
to Orpheus, limping on her wounded foot. They roam the happy fields of
the gods together now, he leading sometimes and sometimes she. And
Jupiter has placed Orpheus' lyre among the stars."
As Proteus finished telling his story, the penitent Aristaeus fell on
the ground at his feet.