looked into the hall: in sheer terror for the child

she screamed, and did her best to raise the alarm,

seeing the worst and believing it, she called out

to her little boy, half-keening: ‘Demophoön,

my own baby, this stranger is hiding you

in the big fire, she’s the one making my voice shrill

with pain, ‘Demophoön, my darling, my child.’

She cried all this out, and the goddess heard her.

Furious that instant, mighty Demeter

took the child – their last born, scarcely hoped for –

and with her own immortal hands she brought him

out of the fire, set him gently on the floor,

then, brimming with anger, turned on Metaneira:

‘You stupid creatures, you witless and ignorant

humans, blind to the good as well as the bad

things in store for you, and no use to each other:

I swear to you here, as gods do, by the rippling

dark waters of Styx, that I would have made

this child of yours immortal, honoured, a man

untouched by age for eternity; but nothing now

can keep the years back, or keep death from him.

There is one mark of honour that will always be his:

because he once slept in my arms, and lay in my lap,

all the young men at Eleusis, at the set time

each year, as their scared duty, will gather

for the sham fight, and stage that battle forever.

For I am Demeter, proud of my own honours

as the bringer of joy to the gods, and of blessings

to mortal men. Everyone now has to build me

a spacious temple, with its altar underneath,

by the steep walls of your city, where a hill

rises just above the Maidens’ Well. The rites

will be as I instruct, when I teach you the ways

to calm my anger, and be good servants to me.’

And with that, instantly the goddess changed form –

her height, her whole appearance – shuffling away

old age, so that sheer beauty blazed and spread

in and around her; from her robes a gorgeous perfume

drifted, and from her immortal flesh there came

pure light, with the reach of moonbeams; her hair

flashed over her shoulders, and the entire house

was flooded with a sudden brilliance of lightning

as she stepped out through the hall. Metaneira’s

knees went from beneath her, and for an age

she sat there speechless, not even thinking

to pick that dear child of hers up from the floor.

When his sisters heard the boy starting to cry

they jumped straight out of their beds, and one

caught him up in her arms, and held him close,

while another stoked the fire, and a third

dashed on bare feet to take hold of her mother

and help her away. As the girls huddled round him,

trying to comfort him and dab his skin clean,

the baby wriggled and fretted, knowing full well

these nurses were hardly the kind he was used to.