Key to Easy Latin Stories for beginners/Part III/IV
IV.A MIRACLE.
121.A certain Spartan had a wife, by far the most beautiful of all the women who were at Speirta; and she indeed had become most beautiful from being most hideous. For since she was hideous to look at, her nurse, seeing the girl (to be) so ugly, who was the daughter of a rich father, because he used to grieve greatly on account of his daughter’s ugly face, formed the following plan. She used to carry her daily to the temple of Helena; moreover, as often as she had carried her thither, she used to place her before the image of the goddess, and, as a suppliant, used to address the goddess thus: ‘Goddess, free the girl from her ugliness. Do not endure so ugly a face.’ Now, one day when the nurse was leaving the temple, a woman is said to have appeared to her, asking of her, ‘What art thou carrying on your arm?’ And when she had answered her, ‘I am carrying a girl,’ the woman said, ‘Show me the girl.’ On the nurse refusing, and saying, ‘She is so ugly, that I do not choose to show her to any one,’ the woman insisted, repeating, ‘Show me the girl.’ At last the nurse showed her. But the woman, having touched the girl’s head, said, ‘This girl will surpass all Spartan women in beauty of ’ And then from that very day the girl’s face was changed.