One can imagine the flutter of pleasure with which the young girls of the golden age of Athens donned their white draperies and gold-embroidered mantles to march in the Panathenaic procession to the Acropolis. Their snowy veils floated airily in the breeze, as they went up the marble steps of the propylæa chanting choral hymns and carrying in their hands the branches of silvery olive to lay at the feet of the stately goddess. How bright the sky! how blue the sparkling sea! How beautiful the white temples and colonnades, alive with sculptured heroes! Before them rose Hymettus in its robe of violet haze, and the cone of Lycabettus, sharply outlined in the clear air. Sheltered behind the low hills on the other side of the vast olive-groves, the magnificent temple of Eleusis, with its heart of mystery, towered in its peerless majesty, and the restless waves of Salamis lapped the shore at its side. This world of beauty was young then and fresh, with no age-old tragedies to sadden the brilliant crowd that wound in dazzling array through the forest of columns and statues. The flower of Athens was there--brave, handsome, and clever men, poets, artists, and philosophers, warriors on prancing horses, beautiful women and laughing children. If the uncaged maidens were tempted to flirt a little with their soft, dark eyes, who can blame them? They were young and human, companionship was sweet, and they too had tender hearts, though small account was made of them. But the day ends. The sacred Athena is resplendent in her new robe. The gay crowd moves back past the exquisite little Ionic temple of Victory and down the massive steps into the agora, where life goes on as before. Men throng the porticos and talk of the new play of Sophocles, or the last statue of Phidias, or the prospects of war, or any of the thousand and one things that come uppermost in the affairs of a great city. When the shadows fall and the stars come out bright and shining in that crystal air, they gather at banquets or symposia, where flute-players and dancing-girls are brought in to amuse them, or some Lais or Phryne of the hour enthralls them by her beauty and dazzles them with her wit. But the wives and daughters of these men, who do not see fit to educate them for companions, go back to their lonely homes and to an isolation from all social and intellectual interests as deep as if they were asleep in the sculptured tombs of the Via Sacra.