Chief among the holy places of Piraeus was a sanctuary of Saviour Zeus. Fine paintings by distinguished artists adorned the cloisters attached to it, and statues stood in the open air. The festival of the god included a regatta and a procession through the streets. The expenses of the sanctuary were partly defrayed by a small tax levied on every vessel which put into the port. Moreover, persons who had escaped from danger—for example, seafaring men who had come safe to land—commonly brought thank-offerings to the shrine. From a fragment of an ancient comedy we learn that, among the long-shore sharks who lay in wait on the quays for sailors fresh from a voyage, there were cooks with an eye to business. For in the passage in question one of the fraternity tells us how, whenever he spied a jolly tar just stepping ashore, ready for a spree, with a bulging purse in his fist and an expansive smile on his sunburnt face, he used to rush up to him, shake him warmly by the hand, drop a delicate allusion to Saviour Zeus, and proffer his services at the sacrifice. The bait took, and soon he was to be seen heading for the sanctuary with the sailor man in tow. Better known to English readers than the sanctuary of Saviour Zeus was the altar of the Unknown God which St. Paul, and after him Pausanias, saw at Phalerum, the old port of Athens. In a dialogue attributed to Lucian, a certain Critias raps out a number of oaths by the old heathen gods and goddesses, and for each of them he is gravely taken to task by his comrade Triephon, who has just been initiated into the sublime mysteries of the Christian theology by a person of a Hebrew cast of countenance, whom he describes as a bald-pated long-nosed Galilean. At last Critias swears by the Unknown God at Athens, and this oath is allowed to pass unchallenged by Triephon, who winds up the dialogue with this edifying advice: “Let us, having found out and worshipped the Unknown God at Athens, raise our hands to heaven and give him thanks that we have been found worthy to be subject unto so great a power; but let us leave other folk to babble, satisfied ourselves with applying to them the proverb 'Hippoclides doesn’t care.'”