METAMORPHOSES BOOK VI the twin gods' mother. And, as usual, stirred by the later, they tell over former tales. Then one of them begins: "So also in the fertile fields of Lycia, peasants of olden time scorned the goddess and suffered for it. The storv is little known because of the humble estate of the men concerned but it is remarkable. I myself saw the pool and the place made famous by the wonder. For my father, who at that time was getting on in years and too weak to travel far, had bidden me go and drive down from that country some choice steers which were grazing there, and had given me a man of that nation to serve as guide. While I fared through the grassy glades with him, there, in the midst of a lake an ancient altar was standing, black with the fires of many sacrifices, surrounded with shivering reeds. My uide halted and said with awe-struck whisper: 'Be merciful to me!and in like whisper said: Be merciful!'Th en I asked my guide whether this was an altar to the Naiads, or Faunus, or some deity of the place, and he replied: ' No, young man; no mountain deity dwells in this altar. She claims its worship, whom the queen of heaven once shut out from all the world, whom wandering Delos would scarce accept at her prayer, when it was an island, lightly floating on the sea. There, reclinin on the palm and Pallas' tree,1 in spite of their step- mother, she brought forth her twin babes. Even thence the new-made mother is said to have fled from Juno, carrying in her bosom her infant children, both divine. And now, having reached the borders of Lycia, home of the Chimaera, when the hot sun beat fiercely upon the fields, the goddess, weary of her long stiggle, was faint by reason of the 1 i.e. the olive. 811
