Greek Lands and LettersAllinson, Anne C. E. (Anne Crosby Emery)
History
Greek Lands and Letters
Allinson, Anne C. E. (Anne Crosby Emery)
Greece -- Description and travel; Greek literature -- History and criticism
In one of the anonymous fragments, those riderless Pegasi of Greek
literature, another comic poet combines the Piræus and the Parthenon in
an outburst of civic pride. Nor does he forget the olive groves and
radiant air:—
“Mistress of all, Queen City of Athenians,
How fair thy docks, how fair to view thy Parthenon!
And thy Piræus, too, is fair. And then again
What other city ever yet had groves like thine?
And, as they say, the very sky, thy sky, is fair.”
And Demosthenes, not deterred by any shrinking from hackneyed allusion,
refers expressly to the Propylæa and the Parthenon, when he speaks of
“those things upon which we all naturally pride ourselves.”
Aristophanes, seeking to recall his fellow-citizens to the ideals of
Marathon days, shows us in his “Knights” the Propylæa and the freshly
boiled-over and rejuvenated Demos,—the avatar of true Democracy,—seated
within the unclosing doors of the gateway, dressed in the brilliant garb
of a gentleman of the good old Marathon type: “Just such as he used to
be when he messed with Aristides and Miltiades,” his hair caught up with
the golden cicada pin, emblem of Attic autochthony.
In the “Lysistrata” the Athenian men, ignorant that at a future day
their Parliament was to be controlled by suffragettes, feel that the
limit of the legitimate boycott is over-passed when the women seize and
barricade their Acropolis. The old chorus leader says:—
“In life’s long stretch of time, are many things unlooked for—Woe is
me! For who had ever thought to hear that women whom we keep (a
mischief manifest) should get Athena’s sacred image in their hands;
should seize my citadel; the Propylæa barricade with bolts and bars?”
In this play, too, we catch a glimpse of the more intimate interweaving
of an Athenian maiden’s life with the Acropolis ritual. One of this same
_sans-culotte_ garrison looks about her and reviews her girlhood; how
she had been selected among the best-born girls to carry the mysterious
burden in the Arrephoria, had ground the meal for the sacred cakes for
Athena Archegetis; had impersonated a bear in the worship of Artemis;
and, finally, had gained the coveted privilege of being basket-bearer in
the Panathenaic procession. Explaining her personal gratitude to the
city, the woman says:—
“When seven years old an Arrephoros I;
And when I was ten
I ground the meal for our Lady-on-High;
In my next rôle then
I figured as Bear in Brauronian show,
And the saffron wore;
Then as full-grown maid—quite pretty you know—
The Basket I bore.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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