At the end of the sixty days, when all the suitors had arrived, Cleisthenes asked each of them whence he came and to what family he belonged. Then, during the succeeding year, he put them to every test that could prove their powers. He had had a foot-course and a wrestling-ground made ready to test their comparative strength and agility, and took every available means to discover their courage, vigor, and skill. But this was not all that the sensible monarch demanded in his desired son-in-law. He wished to ascertain their mental and moral as well as their physical powers, and for this purpose kept them under close observation for a year, carefully noting their manliness, their temper and disposition, their accomplishments and powers of intellect. Now he conversed with each separately; now he brought them together and considered their comparative powers. At the gymnasium, in the council chamber, in all the situations of thought and activity, he tested their abilities. But he particularly considered their behavior at the banquet-table. From first to last they were sumptuously entertained, and their demeanor over the trencher-board and the wine-cup was closely observed. In this story, as told us by garrulous old Herodotus, nothing is said of Agariste herself. In a modern romance of this sort the lady would have had a voice in the decision and a place in the narrative. There would have been episodes of love, jealousy, and malice, and the one whom the lady blessed with her love would in some way--in the eternal fitness of things--have become victor in the contest and carried off the prize. But they did things differently in Greece. The preference of the maiden had little to do with the matter; the suitor exerted himself to please the father, not the daughter; maiden hands were given rather in barter and sale than in trust and affection; in truth, almost the only lovers we meet with in Grecian history are Haemon and Antigone, of whom we have spoken in the tale of the "Seven against Thebes." And thus it was in the present instance. It was the father the suitors courted, not the daughter. They proved their love over the banquet-table, not at the trysting-place. It was by speed of foot and skill in council, not by whispered words of devotion, that they contended for the maidenly prize. Or, if lovers' meetings took place and lovers' vows were passed, they were matters of the strictest secrecy, and not for Greek historians to put on paper or Greek ears to hear. But the year of probation came in due time to its end, and among all the suitors the two from Athens most won the favor of Cleisthenes. And of the two he preferred Hippoclides. It was not alone for his handsome face and person and manly bearing that this favored youth was chosen, but also because he was descended from a noble family of Corinth which Cleisthenes esteemed. Yet "there is many a slip between the cup and the lip," an adage whose truth Hippoclides was to learn.