"A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea, A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory, That none from the pride of her head may rend; Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary, Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame, Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend, A light upon earth as the sun's own flame, A name as his name-- Athens, a praise without end." SWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141. Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has ritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual reliefs, "votive" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises translated into stone. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.] Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little, yet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is dead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville. But the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a means of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and co-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed good influence, of "grace." Witness the "Beating of the Bounds" and the frequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands. The Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to house. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse "grace" and increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia and the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. 92-100). [Illustration: Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession.] What, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first, as its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together. Its object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens. Ritual in primitive times is always social, collective.