A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

the gods, in a perfect harmony of human love that feared nor time, nor
pain, nor Death himself.
ARETHUSA
"We have victualled and watered," wrote Nelson from Syracuse in
1798, "and surely, watering at the fountain of Arethusa, we must have
victory. We shall sail with the first breeze; and be assured I will return
either crowned with laurel or covered with cypress." Three days later,
he won the Battle of the Nile, one of the greatest sea-fights of history.
Here in our own land the tales of the Greek gods seem very remote.
Like the colours in an old, old portrait, the humanity of the stories
seems to have faded. But in Sicily they grow vivid at once. Almost, as
we stand above Syracuse, that long yellow town by the sea--a
blue-green sea, with deep purple shadows where the clouds above it
grow dark, and little white-sailed boats, like white butterflies, wing
their way across to the far horizon--can we
"Have glimpse of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow
his wreathèd horn."
Here, to this day, one of the myths most impossible of acceptance to
the scientific modern mind lives on, and Arethusa is not yet forgotten.
"In Ortygia," says Cicero, "is a fountain of sweet water, the name of
which is Arethusa, of incredible flow, very full of fish, which would be
entirely overwhelmed by the sea, were its waters not protected from the
waves by a rampart and a wall of stone." White marble walls have
taken the place of the protecting barrier, but the spring bubbles up to
this day, and Ortygia (Quail Island) is the name still given to that part
of Syracuse. Fluffy-headed, long, green stalks of papyrus grow in the
fountain, and red and golden fish dart through its clear water. Beyond
lie the low shores of Plemmgrium, the fens of Lysimeleia, the hills
above the Anapus, and above all towers Etna, in snowy and
magnificent serenity and indifference to the changes wrought by the
centuries to gods and to men. Yet here the present is completely