313Then indeed all, woman and man, fear the manifest anger of the deity, and all worship more zealously the great power of the goddess who bore twins, and, as happens, from the more recent event they retell earlier ones. 317One of them says: 'In the fields of fertile Lycia too, the farmers of old spurned the goddess, not unpunished. 319The story is little known indeed, through the obscurity of the men, but wonderful. 320I saw with my own eyes the pool and the place made famous by the marvel. 321For my father, by then advanced in age and unable to bear the journey, had told me to bring choice oxen from there, and as I went he himself had given me a guide from that people.
324While I travel the pastures with him, look, in the middle of a lake stood an old altar, black with the ash of sacrifices, surrounded by quivering reeds. 327My guide stopped and said in a fearful murmur, "Be gracious to me"; 328and with a similar murmur I said, "Be gracious." 329Yet I asked whether it was an altar of the Naiads or of Faunus or of a native god, when my host replied: "Not on this altar, young man, is a mountain deity: she calls it her own to whom once the royal consort forbade the world, whom wandering Delos scarcely received at her entreaty, back when it floated, a light island.
335There, leaning on a palm together with Pallas' tree, Latona bore twins against their stepmother's will. 337From here too, it is said, the new mother fled Juno, carrying in her bosom her children, two divinities. 339And now in the territory of Lycia, land of the Chimaera, when the heavy sun was scorching the fields, the goddess, weary from long toil, parched by the heat of the star, grew thirsty, and her greedy children had drained her milky breasts. 343By chance she caught sight of a lake of modest size deep in the valleys; 344country people were gathering there bushy osiers with rushes and sedge that loves the marshes. 346The Titaness approached and, kneeling, pressed the earth, to scoop up the cool water to drink.
348The rustic crowd forbids her. 348The goddess thus addressed those forbidding her: 'Why do you keep me from the water? 349the use of water is common to all. 350Nature has made neither the sun private property, nor the air, nor the slender waters: I have come to a public gift. 352Yet I ask you as a suppliant to give it. 352I was not preparing to wash my body and tired limbs here, but to relieve my thirst. 354My mouth lacks moisture as I speak, and my throat is parched, and there is scarcely a way for my voice through it. 356A draught of water will be nectar to me, and I shall confess that I have received life with it: you will have given life in the water.
358Let these too move you, who stretch out little arms from my bosom': and as it chanced the children were stretching out their arms. 360Whom could the goddess's gentle words not have moved? 361Yet they persist in forbidding her as she pleads, and add threats besides, unless she goes far away, and insults too. 363Nor is that enough; they even stirred up the lake itself with feet and hands, and from the bottom of the pool kicked the soft mud this way and that with spiteful leaping. 366Anger put off her thirst: for Coeus' daughter no longer begs the unworthy, nor can she bear any longer to speak words beneath a goddess, and raising her palms to the stars she said, 'May you live for ever in that pool.' 370The goddess's wish comes true: they love to be under the water and now to plunge their whole bodies in the hollow marsh, now to put their heads out, now to swim on the surface of the pool, often to settle on the bank of the pond, often to leap back into the cool lake.
374But even now they exercise their foul tongues in quarrels, and, shame cast off, though they are under water, under water they try to curse. 377Their voice too is now hoarse, and their puffed-out necks swell, and the very insults widen their gaping jaws. 379Their backs touch their heads, their necks seem cut away, their spine is green, their belly, the largest part of the body, is white, and they leap as new frogs in the muddy pool."'