'Saints preserve us! I don't wonder.'
'Neither do I. But Demeter was extremely peeved at having her project interfered with. In a rage, she told Metaneira that she had ruined everything, and that it would no longer be possible for her to make the boy an Immortal. Then she scared the pants off all those present by suddenly appearing to them in all her glory. While their knees were still knocking, she ordered them to build a big temple, and worship her in it; but, still in a huff, she said that she meant to resume her travels.
'However, before she left, she calmed down a bit and sent for the King's eldest son, Triptoiemus. Out of gratitude for the years that his family had given her a home, she gave him some grains of corn and taught him to plough and sow. Previous to this, the Greeks had lived on milk, honey, vegetables and, when they could get them, meat and fish. She told Triptoiemus that he must share this secret with people in other parts of the world; so he spent years making demonstration tours, even as far away as Sicily, Scythia and Asia Minor. It was owing to his efforts that bread became the main item in everyone's diet.
'As she had said she would, Demeter went off on her wanderings again, but after some years she returned to Eleusis. By then, her bitterness about losing Persephone had become so acute that she decided to stage a sit-down strike. The job Zeus had given her was to look after agriculture, and now she announced that she would take her misery out on mankind by not letting any crops grow at all.
'You can imagine how alarmed everyone became when February, March and April passed without a single blade of anything showing above ground. The gods became pretty worried, too. Zeus sent a messenger to tell her that she must stop this nonsense, or the whole human race would perish; but she ignored him. Then all the gods and goddesses came down one after the other, and pleaded with her to let up. But she said she couldn't care less if everyone starved to death. The only terms on which she would allow things to grow were that she should be given back her daughter.
'Zeus realized that he had no option but to climb down, so he sent Hermes down to Pluto to tell him that he must give up his young mistress. Pluto didn't feel that he could say "To hell with you" to his powerful younger brother; but he had enjoyed having Persephone to stay with him, and he thought up a cunning ruse for ensuring that she should not leave him for good. Before she left for the upper world, he persuaded her to eat a pomegranate with him.
'When Persephone got back to her mother's arms and they had wept over one another for a bit, Demeter said: "While you were with that awful man, you didn't eat anything with him, did you, dearest?"
4 "Oh no, I didn't need to, Mummy," replied the ravished maiden. "But he wasn't quite as hateful as you seem to think, and he was very anxious that I shouldn't be hungry on my way home; so we had a glass of wine and a pomegranate together."
4 "You bloody young fool!"' Robbie stopped abruptly, and with a contrite glance at Stephanie, muttered: 'Sorry, but I was getting a bit carried away. Anyhow, that is more or less what Demeter must have said. Then she explained to her daughter that the pomegranate was Hera's fruit. To share one with a man was standard practice as a formality by which one publicly accepted him as one's husband.
'Pluto, of course, claimed the girl back as his legally wedded wife, but Demeter threatened to go on strike again; so Zeus had to arbitrate between them. He proposed that Persephone should spend one-third of the year underground with her husband and two-thirds of it above ground with her mother. To everyone's relief, not least the still starving inhabitants of the earth, the compromise was agreed to.
'So, from then onwards, every year at Eleusis a great feast was held in October, when the leaves started to fall off the trees, and Persephone had to return to Hades, with entreaties that she would not get to like the place and stay there for good. And in February another was held with tremendous rejoicings, when the buds sprouted and blades of this and that appeared, showing that she was on her way back and there would be crops and a harvest to keep the human race going for another year.'
Seeing that Robbie had concluded his narrative, Stephanie said: 'As you are so interested in these things, I suppose you have been to see the ruins of Eleusis?'
'Oh yes,' he assured her, 'and those at Corinth and Sounion and the battlefield of Marathon, too. I've been to all the interesting places that I could get to in a day, but this is my first chance to go further afield.'
By this time, they were actually on the isthmus of Corinth and approaching the canal that enables ships to pass from the Ionian to the Aegean Sea, and saves them a two hundred mile journey round the rocky capes of the Peloponnesus. When they came to the bridge, Stephanie stopped the car and they got out to look over the parapet. The cut is nearly four miles long, and in places over two hundred feet deep, so from that height the strip of water below looked no wider than a broad pavement.
'You wouldn't think it's as broad as the Suez Canal, would you?' Robbie remarked. 'Or that the ancients would not have been afraid to take on the colossal task of cutting it?'
They didn't,' replied Stephanie promptly. 'It wasn't open till the 'nineties.'
T know, but the Romans planned it. The Emperor Nero dug out the first spadeful of earth himself, with a golden spade, and
Vespasian sent him six thousand Jewish captives from Judaea to work on it.'
'Shades of Hitler!'
'Yes, the poor Jews have had a pretty raw deal all through history. Anyhow, the Romans were not the boys to give up lightly anything that set their hands to. They shifted thousands of tons of soil. Later, modern engineers adopted their original plan; so I've no doubt the Romans would have completed it if the job hadn't had to be called off, owing to the great insurrection of Vindex.'
Ten minutes later, they pulled up in Corinth at the Ivy restaurant on the quay, and had welcome drinks, then lunched at a table outside from which they could admire the bay. After the meal, Stephanie suggested a walk round the town but Robbie shook his head.
'There's nothing to see here; only straight streets and second-rate shops. It was built barely a hundred years ago, after the old town up on the hill was destroyed by an earthquake. In fact not much of this one is even that old, as it was wrecked by another earthquake in 1928.'
As the great heats had not yet come, they decided to push on with the longer part of their journey, for which the road lay nearly the whole way along the south shore of the Gulf of Corinth. For a while they were almost silent, then Stephanie asked: 'Why have you selected Patras as our first stop? It's a rather dirty, modern port, and as far as I know there is nothing of archaeological interest within miles.'
For a moment Robbie was as completely floored as if someone had tripped him up without warning. It had never occurred to him that he should provide an explanation of his choice, to make his cover stick.
'Oh, well . . . you see . . .' he floundered. 'It's like this, er . . .' Then, suddenly, his visit to Luke's office came back to him, and he hurried on: 'This isn't altogether a pleasure trip. I am associated with a business firm, and they have given me a few odd jobs to do in various places.'
'What sort of business are you in?'
'Er . . . oil,' Robbie admitted a shade reluctantly.
'Do you mean that you sell petrol to garages, and that sort of thing?'
'No, oh no. It's just that I have to show my company's flag here and there, and make a few enquiries. There's another reason for my going to Patras, though,' he added, memory having suddenly come to his aid. 'Just across the head of the gulf lie the ruins of Calydon and Pleuron, and I'd very much like to see them.'