Hecatē said this, and received not one word in reply:

instead, Demeter rushed her away, and the pair of them

soon reached Helios, the watcher of gods and men.

Demeter stopped by his horses, and spoke to him from there.

‘If ever I have pleased you, Helios, or if ever

I have done you a favour, do this one for me now:

my daughter’s voice was lost on the trackless air,

shrill with distress; I heard, but looked and saw nothing.

You gaze down all day from the broad sky,

and see everything on dry land and the ocean:

so if you have seen who forced away my child

from me, and who went off with her, whether

a man or a god, please, quickly, just tell me.’

She said this, and the son of Hyperion replied:

‘Holy Demeter, daughter of Rhea with her long hair,

you are going to hear it all – for I think highly

of you and, yes, I pity you, grieving as you are

for the loss of your skinny-legged little girl. So:

of all the immortal gods, none other is responsible

than the master of the clouds, Zeus himself, who gave her

to Hades his brother to call his own

as a beautiful wife. Hades with his team of horses

snatched her, and dragged her to the thickening dark

as she cried and cried. But come now; you are a goddess:

call an end to this huge sorrow; be reasonable:

there is no need for such uncontrollable rage.

Hades, the lord of millions, is hardly, after all,

the worst son-in-law amongst the immortals,

and he is your own flesh and blood, your own brother.

As for his position – well, he has what was allotted

originally when things were split three ways,

the master of those amongst whom he dwells.’

So saying, Helios took up the reins, and his horses

were away all at once, bearing up the chariot

like birds with slender wings. And now grief fastened

– a harsher, a more dreadful pain – at Demeter’s heart.

Furious with the black cloud-god, the son of Cronos,

she abandoned the gods’ city, and high Olympus,

to travel through rich fields and the towns of men,

changing her face, wiping all its beauty away,

so that nobody, neither man nor woman, when

they saw her could recognise her for a goddess.

She wandered a long time, until she came to the home

at Eleusis of the good man Celeus, master there.

Heartsore, heart-sorry, Demeter stopped by the roadside

at the well they called the Maiden’s Well, where people

from the town would come for water; sat in the shade

cast over her by heavy branches of olive,

and looked for all the world like a very old lady,

one long past childbearing or the gifts of love,

just like a nurse who might care for the children

of royalty, or a housekeeper in their busy house.