92. Myths of Diana. In company with her radiant brother, we find Diana subduing Tityus and the Python and assisting in the punishment of Niobe. The speedy transformation of Daphne has been attributed to this goddess, the champion of maidenhood. According to some, it was she, too, that changed Callisto into a bear, when for love of Jupiter that nymph deserted the huntress-band. Numerous are the myths that celebrate the severity of the goddess of the unerring bow toward those who offended her. How she served Agamemnon for slaying one of her hinds is told in the story of Troy;114 how she punished Œneus for omitting a sacrifice to her is narrated in the episode of the Calydonian hunt.115 Similar attributes of the goddess are exemplified in the myths of Arethusa, Actæon, and Orion. It is only when she is identified with Selene, the peaceful moonlight, that we perceive a softer side of character, such as that displayed in her relations with Endymion.

       93. The Flight of Arethusa. 116 A woodland nymph of Elis was this Arethusa; she delighted not in her comeliness, but in the joys of the chase. One day, returning from the wood heated with exercise, she descended to a stream silently flowing, so clear that you might count the pebbles on the bottom. She laid aside her garments; but while she sported in the water, she heard an indistinct murmur rising as out of the depths of the stream. She made haste to reach the nearest bank. A voice followed her, "Why flyest thou, Arethusa? Alpheüs am I, the god of this stream." The nymph ran, the god pursued. Arethusa, at last exhausted, cried for help to Diana, who, hearing, wrapped her votary in a thick cloud. Perplexed, the river-god still sought the trembling maiden. But a cold sweat came over her. In less time than it takes to tell, she had become a fountain. Alpheüs attempted then to mingle his stream with hers. But the Cynthian queen cleft the ground, and Arethusa, still endeavoring to escape, plunged into the abyss and, passing through the bowels of the earth, came out in Sicily, still followed by the passionate river-god.

      Fig 69. Arethusa

      94. Shelley's Arethusa. In the following version of the pursuit, Arethusa was already a river when Alpheüs espied her.

      Arethusa arose

      From her couch of snows

      In the Acroceraunian mountains, —

      From cloud and from crag,

      With many a jag,

      Shepherding her bright fountains,

      She leapt down the rocks,

      With her rainbow locks

      Streaming among the streams; —

      Her steps paved with green

      The downward ravine

      Which slopes to the western gleams:

      And gliding and springing

      She went, ever singing,

      In murmurs as soft as sleep;

      The Earth seemed to love her,

      And Heaven smiled above her,

      As she lingered towards the deep.

      Then Alpheüs bold

      On his glacier cold,

      With his trident the mountain strook

      And opened a chasm

      In the rocks; – with the spasm

      All Erymanthus shook.

      And the black south wind

      It concealed behind

      The urns of the silent snow,

      And earthquake and thunder

      Did rend in sunder

      The bars of the springs below;

      The beard and the hair

      Of the River-god were

      Seen through the torrent's sweep,

      As he followed the light

      Of the fleet nymph's flight

      To the brink of the Dorian deep.

      Fig. 70. A Young River-god

      "Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!

      And bid the deep hide me,

      For he grasps me now by the hair!"

      The loud Ocean heard,

      To its blue depth stirred,

      And divided at her prayer;

      And under the water

      The Earth's white daughter

      Fled like a sunny beam;

      Behind her descended

      Her billows unblended

      With the brackish Dorian stream: —

      Like a gloomy stain

      On the emerald main,

      Alpheüs rushed behind, —

      As an eagle pursuing

      A dove to its ruin

      Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

      Under the bowers

      Where the Ocean Powers

      Sit on their pearlèd thrones,

      Through the coral woods

      Of the weltering floods,

      Over heaps of unvalued stones;

      Through the dim beams

      Which amid the streams

      Weave a network of colored light;

      And under the caves,

      Where the shadowy waves

      Are as green as the forest's night:

      Outspeeding the shark,

      And the swordfish dark,

      Under the ocean foam,

      And up through the rifts

      Of the mountain clifts

      They past to their Dorian home.

      And now from their fountains

      In Enna's mountains,

      Down one vale where the morning basks,

      Like friends once parted

      Grown

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