“And oh! gracious, sovran Athena, blast my enemy Xenon, who strove to trip me foully in the foot race. May his wife be childless or bear him only monsters; may his whole house perish; may all his wealth take flight; may his friends forsake him; may war soon cut him off, or may he die amid impoverished, dishonored old age. If this my sacrifice has found favor in thy sight, may all these evils come upon him unceasingly. And so will I adore thee and sacrifice unto thee all my life.”[*] [*] Often a curse would become a real substitute for a prayer; _e.g._ at Athens, against a rascally and traitorous general, a solemn public curse would be pronounced at evening by all the priests and priestesses of the city, each shaking in the air a red cloth in token of the bloody death to which the offender was devoted. The curse then is a most proper part of a Greek prayer! Phormion is not conscious of blasphemy. He merely follows invariable custom. It is useless to expect “Christian sentiments” in the fourth century B.C., yet perhaps an age should be judged not by its average, but by its best. Athenians can utter nobler prayers than those of the type of Phormion. Xenophon makes his model young householder Ishomenus pray nobly “that I may enjoy health and strength of body, the respect of my fellow citizens, honorable safety in times of war, and wealth honestly increased.”[*] [*] Xenophon, _The Economist_, xi, p. 8. There is a simple little prayer also which seems to be a favorite with the farmers. Its honest directness carries its own message. “Rain, rain, dear Zeus, upon the fields of the Athenians and the plains.”[*] [*] It was quoted later to us by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who adds, “In truth, we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion.” Higher still ascends the prayer of Socrates, when he begs for “the good” merely, leaving it to the wise gods to determine what “the good” for him may be; and in one prayer, which Plato puts in Socrates’s mouth, almost all the best of Greek ideals and morality seems uttered. It is spoken not on the Acropolis, but beside the Ilissus at the close of the delightful walk and chat related in the _Phædrus_. “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me the beauty of the inward soul, and may the outward and the inward man be joined in perfect harmony. May I reckon the wise to be wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. Anything more?—That prayer, I think, is enough for me.”