Dedicating himself thus, he has the
sense also that he becomes more entirely than ever the chevalier of
his mortal mother, of her sad cause. The devout, diligent hands
clear away carefully the dust, the faded relics of her former
worship; a worship renewed once more as the sacred spring, set free
from encumbrance, in answer to his willing ministries murmurs again
under the dim vault in its marble basin, work of primitive Titanic
fingers--flows out through its rocky channel, filling the whole
township with chaste thoughts of her.
Through much labour at length he comes to the veritable story of her
birth, like a gift direct from the goddess herself to this loyal
soul. There were those in later times who, like Aeschylus, knew
Artemis as the daughter not of Leto but of Demeter, according to the
version of her history now conveyed to the young Hippolytus, together
with some deepened insight into her character. The goddess of
Eleusis, on a journey, in the old days when, as Plato says, [170] men
lived nearer the gods, finding herself with child by some starry
inmate of those high places, had lain down in the rock-hewn cubicle
of the inner chamber, and, certainly in sorrow, brought forth a
daughter.
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