Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with
her yellow tresses veiled in a dark mourning mantle, sought her over
land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter's fate she
withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods and took up her abode at
Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters in the
guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive
tree beside the Maiden's Well, to which the damsels had come to draw
water in bronze pitchers for their father's house. In her wrath at
her bereavement the goddess suffered not the seed to grow in the
earth but kept it hidden under ground, and she vowed that never
would she set foot on Olympus and never would she let the corn
sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her. Vainly the
oxen dragged the ploughs to and fro in the fields; vainly the sower
dropped the barley seed in the brown furrows; nothing came up from
the parched and crumbling soil. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis,
which was wont to wave with yellow harvests, lay bare and fallow.
Mankind would have perished of hunger and the gods would have been
robbed of the sacrifices which were their due, if Zeus in alarm had
not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore his bride
Persephone to her mother Demeter.
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