Sacred ceremonies at Athens were the most luminous that prevailed in Greece, and were most characteristic of the city of intelligence. In the great Panathenean rites, there was carried in solemn procession to the Acropolis a symbolical vessel covered with a vail upon which were figured the triumph of Pallas over the Titans, children of earth who undertook to scale Olympus and dethrone Jove. The conflict between physical and moral force was therein represented, that triumph above mere natural religion which exists in mental supremacy and the civilization of law. Moreover, Athenian coins preserve to us allusions to impressive rites which were performed three times a year in honor of Vulcan and Prometheus. The votaries assembled at night, and at the altar of the deity, upon which a fire continually burned, at a given signal lighted a torch and ran with the blazing symbol to the city's outer bound. If the lights of some became extinguished, the more fortunate still pursued with greater zeal, and he was most honored who first reached the goal with his torch a-light. But the religion of Greece was not characterized by ritual splendor only; on the contrary, their public worship was marked by the simplicity of devout fervor, as well as by the chasteness of fine taste and that unadorned solemnity which had been inherited from the patriarchal ages. They were much less inclined to pomp and finery connected with their devotion, than are the moderns. Rude emblems were sometimes borne at sacred solemnities, but they were in the hands of honorable women, and all offense to religious feeling was arrested in their being first hallowed by the dignity of the festival.