Ceres took the great horn which Hercules had torn from Achelous' head and heaped it full to overflowing with the treasures of the year's harvest. Ripe grain, purple grapes, rosy apples, plums, nuts, pomegranates, olives and figs filled the horn and spilled over the edge. The wood-nymphs and the water-nymphs came and twined the horn with vines and crimson leaves and the last bright flowers of the year. Then they carried this first horn of plenty high above their heads and gave it to Hercules and the beautiful Dejanira as a wedding present. It was the richest gift the gods could make, that of the year's harvest.
And ever since that long-ago story time of the Greeks, the horn of plenty has stood for the year's blessing of us.
THE WONDER THE FROGS MISSED
Latona had very wonderful twin babies and the queen of the gods, Juno, was jealous of her on account of these little ones. Perhaps Juno had the power to look ahead through the years to the time when Latona's children should be grown up and take their places with the family of the gods on Mount Olympus.
Who were these twins? Oh, that is the end of the story.
So Juno, who could work almost any good or evil which she desired, decreed that this mother should never have any fixed home in which to bring up her babies. If Latona found a shelter and a cradle for the twins in the cottage of some hospitable farmer, a drought would descend at once upon his fields and dry up the harvest, or a hailstorm would destroy his fruit crop so that there would be no food for the family. If Latona stopped with the vine dressers, laying her babies in the cool shade of an arbor while she helped to pick the grapes, a gale might arise and sweep down upon the vineyard and all would have to flee for their lives.
She was obliged to wander up and down the land with her little ones, wrapping her cloak about them to shield them from the weather, and she grew very weary and despaired of ever raising her little boy and girl to be the fine man and woman she longed to have them.
One day in the heat of the summer Latona came to the country of Lycia in Greece and it really seemed as if she could not walk a single step farther. The babies were heavy and she had found no water for refreshing herself for a long time. By chance, though, she saw a pool of clear water just beyond in the hollow of a valley. Some of the country people of Lycia were there on the edge of the water gathering reeds and fine willows with which they were weaving baskets for holding fruits. Latona summoned all her strength and dragged herself to the pool, kneeling down on the bank to drink and dip up water for cooling the babies' heads.