Lesbos was then the centre of the world. On the main road between beautiful Attica and magnificent Lydia, it had for its capital a city more elegant than Athens and more corrupt than Sardis: Mytilene, built upon a peninsula overlooking the shores of Asia. The blue sea encompassed the city. From the height of the temples one could distinguish on the horizon the white line of Atarnea which was the port of Pergamos. The narrow streets were always encumbered by a throng resplendent in many-colored stuffs, tunics of purple and of hyacinth, cyclas of transparent silks, mantles trailing in the dust of the yellow shoes. The women carried in their ears great rings of gold set with raw pearls, and on their arms massive bracelets of silver roughly chiseled in relief. The men themselves wore their hair brilliantly perfumed with rare oils. The Greeks wore sandals with the ends fastened to their bare ankles by large serpents of bright metal, while the Asiatics wore soft, tinted boots. The passers-by stood in groups before the façades of the shops where the goods for sale were on display: rugs of sombre colors, cloths worked with threads of gold, jewels of amber and of ivory, according to the quarter. The animation of Mytilene did not end with the day; there was no hour so late that one could not hear, through the open doors, the joyous sounds of instruments, the cries of women, the noise of dances. Pittakos himself, who wished to give a little order to this perpetual debauch, made a law in defense of players of the flute too young to be employed in the nocturnal festivals; but this law, like all laws that pretend to change the course of natural morals, determined the secrecy but not the observance. In a society where the husbands were occupied at night with wine and dancing-girls, the women could not fail to unite and find, among themselves, consolation for their solitude. Thus it was that they softened to those delicate loves to which antiquity has given their name, and which have, whatever men may think, more of true passion than invoked viciousness.