Sacred to Athene is all the rest of Athens, and similarly all Attica: for although they worship different gods in different townships, none the less do they honour Athene generally. And the most sacred of all is the statue of Athene in what is now called the Acropolis, but was then called the Polis (_city_), which was universally worshipped many years before the various townships formed one city: and the rumour about it is that it fell from heaven. As to this I shall not give an opinion, whether it was so or not. And Callimachus made a golden lamp for the goddess. And when they fill this lamp with oil it lasts for a whole year, although it burns continually night and day. And the wick is of a particular kind of cotton flax, the only kind imperishable by fire. And above the lamp is a palmtree of brass reaching to the roof and carrying off the smoke. And Callimachus the maker of this lamp, although he comes behind the first artificers, yet was remarkable for ingenuity, and was the first who perforated stone, and got the name of _Art-critic_, whether his own appellation or given him by others. CHAPTER XXVII. In the temple of Athene Polias is a Hermes of wood, (said to be a votive offering of Cecrops,) almost hidden by myrtle leaves. And of the antique votive offerings worthy of record, is a folding chair the work of Dædalus, and spoils taken from the Persians, as a coat of mail of Masistius, who commanded the cavalry at Platæa, and a scimetar said to have belonged to Mardonius. Masistius we know was killed by the Athenian cavalry: but as Mardonius fought against the Lacedæmonians and was killed by a Spartan, they could not have got it at first hand, nor is it likely that the Lacedæmonians would have allowed the Athenians to carry off such a trophy. And about the olive they have nothing else to tell but that the goddess used it as a proof of her right to the country when it was contested by Poseidon. And they record also that this olive was burnt when the Persians set fire to Athens, but though burnt it grew the same day two cubits. And next to the temple of Athene is the temple of Pandrosus; who was the only one of the three sisters who didn’t peep into the forbidden chest. Now the things I most marvelled at are not universally known. I will therefore write of them as they occur to me. Two maidens live not far from the temple of Athene Polias, and the Athenians call them the _carriers of the holy things_: for a certain time they live with the goddess, but when her festival comes they act in the following way by night. Putting upon their heads what the priestess of Athene gives them to carry, (neither she nor they know what these things are,) these maidens descend, by a natural underground passage, from an enclosure in the city sacred to Aphrodite of the Gardens. In the sanctuary below they deposit what they carry, and bring back something else closely wrapped up. And these maidens they henceforth dismiss, and other two