g to have an
opportunity of judging for ourselves, for it seems to me that I hear the
clarions sounding in the distance, and though Nyssia is still invisible,
I can see the herald yonder approaching with palm branches in his hands,
to announce the arrival of the nuptial _cortege_, and make the crowd
fall back.'

At this news, which spread rapidly through the crowd, the strong men
elbowed their way toward the front ranks; the agile boys, embracing the
shafts of the columns, sought to climb up to the capitals and there seat
themselves; others, not without having skinned their knees against the
bark, succeeded in perching themselves comfortably enough in the Y of
some tree-branch. The women lifted their little children upon their
shoulders, warning them to hold tightly to their necks. Those who had
the good fortune to dwell on the street along which Candaules and Nyssia
were about to pass, leaned over from the summit of their roofs, or,
rising on their elbows, abandoned for a time the cushions upon which
they had been reclining.

A murmur of satisfaction and gratified expectation ran through the
crowd, which had already been waiting many long hours, for the arrows of
the midday sun were commencing to sting.

The heavy-armed warriors, with cuirasses of bull's-hide covered with
overlapping plates of metal, helmets adorned with plumes of horse-hair
dyed red, _knemides_ or greaves faced with tin, baldrics studded with
nails, emblazoned bucklers, and swords of brass, rode behind a line of
trumpeters who blew with might and main upon their long tubes, which
gleamed under the sunlight. The horses of these warriors were all white
as the feet of Thetis, and might have served, by reason of their noble
paces and purity of breeds, as models for those which Phidias at a later
day sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon.

At the head of this troop rode Gyges, the well-named, for his name
in the Lydian tongue signifies beautiful. His features, of the most
exquisite regularity, seemed chiselled in marble, owing to his intense
pallor, for he had just discovered in Nyssia, although she was veiled
with the veil of a young bride, the same woman whose face had been
betrayed to his gaze by the treachery of Boreas under the walls of
Bactria.

'Handsome Gyges looks very sad,' said the young maidens. 'What proud
beauty could have secured his love, or what forsaken one has caused some
Thessalian witch to cast a spell on him? Has that cab