They entered under a long and dark covered gallery. Between rows of columns ran other galleries laid out for the exercise of athletes. The spaces in their midst were now widths of grass instead of sand. The two friends penetrated a large inner portico. Julian's curiosity became keener at every step, the mysterious Publius leading him on by the hand without a word. Doors of _exedræ_, or academic halls where orators used to meet, opened into the second portico, and the grasshoppers were humming now where eloquent discourses of Athenian sages had in old time resounded. Above the deep grass bees were whirling: silence and melancholy pervaded all. Suddenly, a woman's voice was heard, and the noise of a disk striking the marble, followed by a merry burst of laughter. Stealing in like robbers, the pair hid themselves in the outer shadow of the columns of the _elaiothesion_, or place where the ancient wrestlers used to rub themselves over with oil. From behind these columns could be seen the _ephebeion_, a quadrangular space open to the sky, originally laid out for disk-throwing, and now newly strown with fresh sand. Julian looked in, and started back. At twenty paces from him stood a young girl entirely naked. His eyes swept over her wonderful body. She was holding a discus in her hand. Julian longed instinctively to beat a retreat; but turning, he saw in the eyes of Publius and upon the whole of that lean tawny face such a look of admiration, that he understood that the adorer of Hellas, in bringing him to the place, had been moved by no shameful thought; that enthusiasm was wholly sacred. Publius, seizing the hand of Julian, murmured: "Look! We are now nine centuries back, in ancient Laconia. Do you remember the verses of Propertius-- "Multa tuæ, Sparte, miramur jura palæstræ, Sed mage virginei, tot bona gymnasii, Quod non infames exercet corpore ludos Inter luctantes nuda puella viros?" "Who is she?" asked Julian. "I don't know. I never wanted to know." "That is well! Hush!" Now he gazed eagerly and without shame at the girl hurling the disk. Blushes were unworthy of a philosopher. She retreated some steps, inclined her body forward, and advancing the left leg made a swift bounding movement, and shot the metal circle so high that it shone in the rising sun, and in falling struck the farthest pillar. It was like watching the motions of a statue by Phidias. "That shot was the best," said a little twelve-year-old damsel, clad in a rich tunic and standing near the column. "Myrrha, give me the disk," replied the player. "I can throw it higher than that, as you shall see. Meroë, get farther out of the way. I might hurt you, as Apollo hurt Hyacinthus."