urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
Forthwith she said to well-girded Metaneira: “Witless are you mortals and dull to foresee your lot, whether of good or evil, that comes upon you. For now in your heedlessness you have wrought folly past healing; for —be witness the oath of the gods, the relentless water of Styx —
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
I would have made your dear son deathless and unaging all his days and would have bestowed on him everlasting honor, but now he can in no way escape death and the fates. Yet shall unfailing honor always rest upon him, because he lay upon my knees and slept in my arms.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
But, as the years move round and when he is in his prime, the sons of the Eleusinians shall ever wage war and dread strife with one another continually. Lo! I am that Demeter who has share of honor and is the greatest help and cause of joy to the undying gods and mortal men.
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
But now, let all the people build me a great temple and an altar below it and beneath the city and its sheer wall upon a rising hillock above Callichorus. And I myself will teach my rites, that hereafter you may reverently perform them and so win the favour of my heart.”
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
When she had so said, the goddess changed her stature and her looks, thrusting old age away from her: beauty spread round about her and a lovely fragrance was wafted from her sweet-smelling robes, and from the divine body of the goddess a light shone afar, while golden tresses spread down over her shoulders,
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
so that the strong house was filled with brightness as with lightning. And so she went out from the palace. And straightway Metaneira's knees were loosed and she remained speechless for a long while and did not remember to take up her late-born son from the ground. But his sisters heard his pitiful wailing and sprang down from their well-spread beds:
urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0013.tlg002.perseus-eng2
one of them took up the child in her arms and laid him in her bosom, while another revived the fire, and a third rushed with soft feet to bring their mother from her fragrant chamber. And they gathered about the struggling child and washed him,
