mis began to slay her daughters. In vain did the mother strive to
protect them, and one by one they fell, never to rise again. Then the
gods, touched by her woe, changed her into stone just as she stood, with
upturned face, streaming eyes, and quivering lips.

Three other heroines of mythology deserve to be enrolled within this
brief chronicle: Andromeda, Ariadne, and Atalanta. The Princess
Andromeda, a lovely maiden, was being offered as a sacrifice to a
terrible sea monster who was devastating the coast. She was chained fast
to an overhanging rock, above the foaming billows that continually
dashed their spray over her fair limbs. As the monster was about to
carry her off as his prey, the hero Perseus, returning from his conquest
of Medusa, suddenly appeared as a deliverer, slew the monster, freed
Andromeda from her chains, restored her to the arms of her overjoyed
parent, and thus won the princess as his bride.

Far more pathetic is the story of the Princess Ariadne, daughter of King
Minos of Crete, who fell in love with the Athenian hero Theseus when he
came to rescue the Athenian youths and maidens from the terrible
Minotaur. She provided him with a sword and with a ball of twine,
enabling him to slay the monster and to thread his way out of the
inextricable mazes of the labyrinth. Theseus in gratitude carried her
off as his bride; but on the island of Naxos he basely deserted her,
and Ariadne was left disconsolate. Violent was her grief; but in the
place of a fickle mortal lover, she became the fair bride of an
immortal, the genial god Dionysus, who discovered her on the island and
wooed and won her.

Atalanta, the third of this illustrious group, the daughter of Iasius,
King of Arcadia, was a famous runner and sportswoman. She took part with
Meleager in the grand hunt for the Calydonian boar, and it was she who
at last brought the boar to bay and gave him a mortal wound. When
Atalanta returned to her father's court, she had numberless suitors for
her hand; but, anxious to preserve her freedom, she imposed the
condition that every suitor should engage with her in a footrace: if he
were beaten, his life was forfeited; if successful, she would become his
bride. Many had thus lost their lives. Finally, Hippomenes, a youth
under the protection of Aphrodite, who had bestowed on him three golden
apples, desired to race with the princess. Atalanta soon passed her
antagonist, but, as she did so, a golden apple fell at he