Phormion and his party are descending to the city to spend the evening in honest mirth and feasting, but we are fain to linger, watching the slow course of the shadows as they stretch across the Attic hills. Sea, sky, plain, mountains, and city are all before us, but we will not spend words upon them now. Only for the buildings, wrought by Pericles and his mighty peers, we will speak out our admiration. We will gladly confirm the words Plutarch shall some day say of them, “Unimpaired by time, their appearance retains the fragrance of freshness, as though they had been inspired by an eternally blooming life and a never aging soul.”[*] [*] Plutarch wrote this probably after 100 A.D., when the Parthenon had stood for about five and half centuries. Chapter XXI. The Great Festivals of Athens. 198. The Frequent Festivals at Athens.—Surely our “Day in Athens” has been spent from morn till night several times over, so much there is to see and tell. Yet he would be remiss who left the city of Athena before witnessing at least several of the great public festivals which are the city’s noble pride. There are a prodigious number of religious festivals in Athens.[*] They take the place of the later “Christian Sabbath” and probably create a somewhat equal number of rest days during the year, although at more irregular intervals. They are far from being “Scotch Sundays,” however. On them the semi-riotous “joy of life” which is part of the Greek nature finds its fullest, ofttimes its wildest, expression. They are days of merriment, athletic sports, great civic spectacles, chorals, public dances.[+] To complete our picture of Athens we must tarry for a swift cursory glance upon at least three of these fête days of the city of Pericles, Sophocles, and Phidias. [*] In Gulick (_Life of the Ancient Greeks_, pp. 304-310) there is a valuable list of Attic festivals. The Athenians had over thirty important religious festivals, several of them, _e.g._, the Thesmorphoria (celebrated by the women in honor of Demeter), extending over a number of days. [+] It is needless to point out that to the Greeks, as to many other ancient peoples,—for example, the Hebrews,—_dancing_ often had a religious significance and might be a regular part of the worship of the gods.