The Acropolis, crowned with perfect art, crowded with the loftier phantoms of our elder kin, is a light-house for all time. Liberty and Law are its keepers. “Knowledge comes but Wisdom lingers,” and this citadel is to every thoughtful man in some sense a symbol of his goal. Its stately Propylæa welcomes all. No sincere pilgrim of Truth is an alien in the long Pancosmic procession of statesman and scientist, inventor and poet, artisan and artist that winds up the steep ascent to lay an ever freshly woven peplus at the feet of Wisdom. CHAPTER V ATHENS: FROM THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS TO MENANDER “Know that our city has the greatest name amongst all men because she never yields to her misfortunes. And even should we ever be compelled to yield a little—for it is nature’s way that all things bloom to suffer loss—there will abide a memory that we made our dwelling-place to be a city dowered with all things, and the mightiest of all.” THUCYDIDES, _Oration of Pericles in the Assembly_. After the battles of Salamis and Platæa the Athenians brought back their families to Attica. Athens was a scene of desolation: the walls destroyed, the dwelling-houses ruined heaps, the sanctuaries burnt, the statues and other dedicatory offerings broken or carried off by the Persians. But the invaders had not carried off Athena Nike. Æschylus puts his own triumphant feeling into the mouth of the Persian messenger who brings the news of the defeat of Xerxes to Queen Atossa:— “The city of the goddess Pallas gods preserve. (QUEEN) What say’st? The city? Athens? Is it still unsacked? (MESSENGER) Yes, in its living men its bulwark stands secure.”