This inextinguishable lamp was kindled and kept burning, through reverence for that antique image of Athena in wood of olive which constituted one of the palladia of Attica. In honour, moreover, of this primitive statue the Panathenaic procession is said to have been instituted, during which, like the velabrum of the temple of Mekka, the peplos,[258] whatever this may have been, was dedicated with vast pomp and ceremony to the service of the goddess. Footnote 258: Antiquarians have formed many ingenious conjectures; but to me it appears evidently to have been a female veil, such as Helenos in the Iliad (σ. 734) commands to be offered to the same goddess of citadels, by his mother and the other matrons of Troy. The principal argument, however, against supposing the peplos to have been designed for the gold and ivory statue of the Parthenon,—that it was not needed, is of very little weight. None of the ceremonies attending its presentation were necessary. The offering was a work of devotion; and however costly in itself and elaborately adorned, may have been simply designed to protect the image from dust and the action of the air. That Pheidias represented the goddess without her peplos, is no argument that his statue needed none, but the contrary. He may have omitted it expressly that it might be supplied by the piety of the state. Besides, the sculptured metopes of the Parthenon, representing the Panathenaic procession, are themselves a strong argument for connecting the presentation of the peplos and the other ceremonies of the festival with that more splendid structure and image rather than with the Erectheion. As the Athenians supposed the Islands of the blessed and the dwelling-place of their gods to have been somewhere in the regions of the west, they were accustomed to pray with their faces turned in that direction;[259] and so also buried they their dead. For this reason, desiring to behold the countenance of their divinities during this religious service, the statues of the gods were generally set up with their faces eastward; and hence, too, the front of the temples looked in the same direction. This was the case with the olive-wood image of Athena Polias; and in the reign of Augustus the Athenians, rendered more superstitious than ever by their misfortunes, were vehemently terrified on finding that the goddess had turned her back upon them,[260] as if preparing to seek her ancient home in the Atlantic Ocean. But her real presence had forsaken the city long before the battle of Chæroneia. Footnote 259: Plut. Sol. § 10. Visconti, Mem. p. 18. Müll. Minerv. Pol. p. 27. Footnote 260: Dion. Cass. iv. 7.