Psyche cast herself before the goddess, wetting the holy feet with tears and sweeping the ground with her tresses. Amid a thicket of supplications she asked for the favor of Ceres: ‘By your right hand of Plenty, I implore you. By your joyous Ceremonies of Harvest; by your Mystery enclosed in Osier-baskets; by the winged Gig of your familiar Dragons; by the Furrows of the Sicilian Glebe, the Rape of the Chariot, the Earth that yields not up its own, the Descent into the Night of the Nuptials of Proserpine, And the Ascent into the light of the Maiden’s Restoration; by all the other Symbols which the Sanctuary of Eleusis in Attica preserves in Silences – stand by your suppliant Psyche in the hour of her deep need. Permit me, at least for a few days, to shelter myself among the layers of wheat until the passage of time mitigates the raging rancor of the mighty goddess, or until an interval of rest refreshes the body that daily stress has now exhausted.’ (Apuleius, *Metamorphoses* (*The Golden Ass*), Book VI, Chapters 1–2, in the Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by J. Arthur Hanson.)
