He has saved the best for the last. Here an arch soars a hundred feet, giving entrance to a lofty narrow cave. Where the sides of the arch meet is a small channel of chiselled smoothness, ending in an orifice through which a glimpse of the sky shows like a tiny blue gem. It is the Ear of Dionysius. In this cave, so the story runs, the Tyrant confined suspected conspirators, for this is a natural whispering gallery, and the lowest of confidential talk within it would mount the walls, each lightest word would run along that smooth channel, as through the tube of an ear, and reach the listener at the orifice. For the uneasy Dictator knows that his turbulent Greek subjects, who cannot rule themselves, are equally unable to bear placidly the rule of another, and it would have been interesting, and at times exciting, to have been permitted to watch that stern, bent face as the rebellious protests climbed in whispers to the greedy ear a hundred feet above. A wonderful echo lives in this cave. Now it is plain why the guide has such large and vibrant tones—he was chosen because of that natural gift. “Addio!” he cries gaily. “Addio,” calls the darkness, a little sadly and wistfully. The guide sings a stave, and all the dusk is full of melodious chorus. He intones a sonorous verse, and golden words roll down to them through the gloom. “Speak! speak!” the nobleman urges, and Jane and Peripatetica meekly breathe a few banalities in level American tones. Not a sound returns; their syllables are swallowed by the silence. 166“Staccato! staccato!” remonstrates the guide, and when they comply, light laughing voices vouchsafe answers. “I think,” says Peripatetica reflectively, as they leave the Latomia, “that one has to address life like that if one is to get a clear reply—to address it crisply, definitely, with quick inflections. Level, flat indefiniteness will awake no echoes.” “‘How true’! as the ladies write on the margins of circulating library books,” comments Jane with unveiled sarcasm. The guide has lots more up his gold-braided sleeve. He opens a gate and displays to them with a flourish the largest altar in the world. Six hundred feet one way, sixty feet the other; cut partly from solid rock, made in part of masonry. Hiero II. thought he knew a trick of governing worth any amount of listening at doors. Those who are fed and amused are slack conspirators. So this huge altar to Zeus is built, and here every year he sacrifices 450 oxen to the ruler of heaven. “It must have rather run into money for him,” says Jane thoughtfully, “but he probably considered it cheaper to sacrifice oxen than be sacrificed himself.”