nectared sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

There are no remains above ground of the buildings which made the
Attic gymnasia splendid. Nor are there in Athens itself many statues
of the noble human beings who paced their porches and reclined
beneath their shade. The galleries of Italy and the verses of the
poets can alone help us to repeople the Academy with its mixed
multitude of athletes and of sages. The language of Simaetha, in
Theocritus, brings the younger men before us: their cheeks are
yellower than helichrysus with the down of youth, and their breasts
shine brighter far than the moon, as though they had but lately left
the 'fair toils of the wrestling-ground.' Upon some of the
monumental tablets exposed in the burying-ground of Cerameicus and
in the Theseum may be seen portraits of Athenian citizens. A young
man holding a bird, with a boy beside him who carries a lamp or
strigil; a youth, naked, and scraping himself after the games; a boy
taking leave with clasped hands of his mother, while a dog leaps up
to fawn upon his knee; a wine-party; a soul in Charon's boat; a
husband parting from his wife: such are the simple subjects of these
monuments; and under each is written [Greek: CHRESTE
CHAIRE]--Friend, farewell! The tombs of the women are equally plain
in character: a nurse brings a baby to its mother, or a slave helps
her mistress at the toilette table. There is nothing to suggest
either the gloom of the grave or the hope of heaven in any of these
sculptures. Their symbolism, if it at all exist, is of the least
mysterious kind. Our attention is rather fixed upon the commonest
affairs of life than on the secrets of death.

As we wander through the ruins of Athens, among temples which are
all but perfect, and gardens which still keep their ancient
greenery, we must perforce reflect how all true knowledge of Greek
life has passed away. To picture to ourselves its details, so as to
become quite familiar with the way in which an Athenian thought and
felt and occupied his time, is impossible. Such books as the
'Charicles' of Becker or Wieland's 'Agathon' only increase our sense
of hopelessness, by showing that neither a scholar's learning nor a
poet's fancy can pierce the mists of antiquity. We know that it was
a strange and fascinating life, passed for the most part beneath the
public eye, at leisure, without the society of free women, without
what we call a home, in constant exercise of body and mind, i