At Chasia, the farming village of the foothills whence the path ascends to Phyle, women, standing in their doorways with busy distaff in hand, or energetic but courteous men, ready to discuss politics or crops, recall the simplicity and charm of country life of hill and plain known to us from Aristophanes and Menander. Acharnæ itself must have occupied the district between Epano-Liossia, the nearest railway station to Chasia, and the charming modern village of Menidi whose unspoiled peasants, close to the outskirts of Athens, retain many a reminder of the country demesmen. The charcoal-burners of Aristophanes or Menander would now be compelled to go further up the mountain slopes to obtain the tree-stumps for their “Parnesian coals.” Nor is the famous ivy of Acharnæ now in evidence. The Acharnians, as Pausanias tells us, called Dionysus =“Ivy”= because the ivy plant first appeared on their soil. In the Greek Anthology we learn that Sophocles often wore a wreath of Acharnian ivy, and in an epigram of Simmias the ivy climbs over his tomb which, as it was alleged, had its place in the burying ground of the Sophocles family beside the neighbouring road to Decelea:— “Gently, ivy, gently twine, With pale tresses creep and seize On the tomb of Sophocles; Where the soft and clustering vine Droops its tendrils to the ground. Petals of the rose, around Spread your fragrant anodyne For his gracious speech profound, Muses and the Graces blending, Honeyed charm to wisdom lending.” In the “Acharnians” of Aristophanes the demesman Dicæopolis, shut up in the city by the war, grows tired of hearing: “Buy, buy!” when he would have “coals, vinegar or oil,” commodities to be had for nothing at home in the country. He therefore makes a private and personal treaty of peace, goes back to Acharnæ and proceeds to celebrate the rural Dinoysia. The revel is on and the wife and mother warns the daughter, who is to officiate as basket-bearer, to take precautions,— “Lest some one ere you know it nibble off your gold.” To-day the peasant girls of Menidi without fear display on their persons at the Easter dances their abundant dowries of gold and silver. As the Phallic procession moves off, Dicæopolis wisely sends his pretty wife to a place of safety:— “You, wife, up with you to the roof and watch from there; And _you_, lead on!”