409There is, between Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa, a stretch of sea that meets, enclosed by narrow horns of land. 411Here lived Cyane, most famous among the Sicilian nymphs, from whose name the pool too is called. 413She rose from the middle of the flood as far as her waist and recognised the goddess. 414'You shall go no further!' 414she says; 'you cannot be Ceres' son-in-law against her will: she should have been asked, not snatched. 416But if I may compare small things with great, Anapis too loved me: yet I married him won over by entreaty, not, like her, terrified.' 419She spoke, and, stretching her arms out in opposite directions, she blocked the way.
420No longer did Saturn's son hold back his anger, and, urging on his fearsome horses, he whirled the royal sceptre with his strong arm and buried it in the depths of the pool. 423The earth, struck, made a road to Tartarus and received the plunging chariot in the middle of the crater. 425But Cyane, grieving for the goddess carried off and for the scorned rights of her spring, bears an inconsolable wound in her silent mind and is wholly consumed by tears, and into those waters whose great divinity she had lately been, her bones yielding to bending, her nails losing their hardness; 430she wastes away. 430You could have seen her limbs soften, and first of all the most slender parts of all melt away: her dark-blue hair and fingers and legs and feet; for from slender limbs the passage into cold waters is brief: after these, her shoulders and back and side and breast vanish away into thin streams.
436At last, in place of living blood, water enters her weakened veins, and nothing remains that you could grasp. 438Meanwhile the daughter is sought in vain by her terrified mother in all lands and in all the deep. 440Neither Dawn, coming with dewy hair, saw her resting, nor the Evening Star. 441With both hands she lit flame-bearing pine-torches from Etna and carried them, restless, through the frosty darkness. 444Again, when kindly day had dimmed the stars, she sought her daughter from the setting of the sun to its rising. 446Weary with toil, she had grown thirsty, and no springs had bathed her lips; 447when by chance she saw a cottage thatched with straw and knocked at its little door: and out of it comes an old woman, and sees the goddess, and, when she asked for water, gave her a sweet drink, over which she had earlier sprinkled parched barley.
451While she drinks what was given, a boy with a hard face and bold stood before the goddess and laughed and called her greedy. 453The goddess was offended and, as he was speaking, drenched him with the part not yet drunk, barley mixed with liquid. 455His face soaks up spots, and the limbs that just now were arms are legs; 456a tail is added to his changed limbs; 457and he is shrunk into a small form, so that he may have no great power to harm, and is smaller in size than a little lizard. 459From the old woman, who wonders and weeps and makes to touch the creature, he flees and seeks a hiding-place; 460and he has a name suited to his colour, his body starred with varied spots.
462Through what lands and what waters the goddess wandered it would take long to tell: the world ran short for her searching. 464She returns to Sicania; 464and while she surveys everything as she goes, she comes to Cyane too. 465Had she not been changed, she would have told everything: but mouth and tongue were not there for her though she wished to speak, nor had she anything with which to speak. 468Yet she gave a clear sign, and showed on the surface of the waters Persephone's girdle, well known to her mother, which had by chance fallen in that place into the sacred pool. 471As soon as she recognised it, as if only then she knew her daughter had been carried off, the goddess tore her unkempt hair and beat her breast again and again with her palms.
474She does not yet know where she is: yet she reproaches all lands and calls them ungrateful and unworthy of the gift of corn, Trinacria above all others, where she found the traces of her loss. 477So there with savage hand she broke the ploughs that turn the clods, and in equal anger gave farmers and plough-oxen alike to death, and ordered the fields to betray what was entrusted to them, and spoiled the seeds. 481The fertility of the land, famed throughout the wide world, lies proved false: the crops die in their first blades, and now too much sun, now too much rain ruins them, and stars and winds do harm, and greedy birds pick up the scattered seeds; 485darnel and thistles and unconquerable grass wear down the wheat harvests.