_Poly_. This was no earthly vision, Lycinus; surely she must have dropped from the clouds.—And what was she doing? _Ly_. In her hands was an open scroll; half read (so I surmised) and half to be read. As she passed, she was making some remark to one of her company; what it was I did not catch. But when she smiled, ah! then, Polystratus, I beheld teeth whose whiteness, whose unbroken regularity, who shall describe? Imagine a lovely necklace of gleaming pearls, all of a size; and imagine those dazzling rows set off by ruby lips. In that glimpse, I realized what Homer meant by his ‘carven ivory.’ Other women’s teeth differ in size; or they project; or there are gaps: here, all was equality and evenness; pearl joined to pearl in unbroken line. Oh, ’twas a wondrous sight, of beauty more than human. _Poly_. Stay. I know now whom you mean, as well from your description as from her nationality. You said that there were eunuchs in her train? _Ly_. Yes; and soldiers too. _Poly_. My simple friend, the lady you have been describing is a celebrity, and possesses the affections of an Emperor. _Ly_. And her name? _Poly_. Adds one more to the list of her charms; for it is the same as that of Abradatas’s wife. [Footnote: See _Panthea_ in Notes.] You know Xenophon’s enthusiastic account of that beautiful and virtuous woman?—you have read it a dozen times. _Ly_. Yes; and every time I read it, it is as if she stood before me. I almost hear her uttering the words the historian has put into her mouth, and see her arming her husband and sending him forth to battle. _Poly_. Ah, my dear Lycinus, _this_ lady has passed you but once, like a lightning flash; and your praises, I perceive, are all for those external charms that strike the eye. You are yet a stranger to her nobility of soul; you know not that higher, more god-like beauty. _I_ am her fellow-countryman, I know her, and have conversed with her many times. You are aware that gentleness, humanity, magnanimity, modesty, culture, are things that I prize more than beauty-and rightly; to do otherwise would be as absurd as to value raiment above the body. Where physical perfection goes hand-in-hand with spiritual excellence, there alone (as I maintain) is true beauty. I could show you many a woman whose outward loveliness is marred by what is within; who has but to open her lips, and beauty stands confessed a faded, withered thing, the mean, unlovely handmaid of that odious mistress, her soul. Such women are like Egyptian temples: the shrine is fair and stately, wrought of costly marble, decked out with gilding and painting: but seek the God within, and you find an ape—an ibis—a goat—a cat. Of how many women is the same thing true! Beauty unadorned is not enough: and her true adornments are not purple and jewels, but those others that I have mentioned, modesty, courtesy, humanity, virtue and all that waits on virtue.