g back
Hermione's face and asking one triumphant question:--

"She is Glaucon's wife. But if not his, whose then but mine?"

CHAPTER XI

THE PANATHENAEA

Flowers on every head, flowers festooned about each pillar, and flowers
under foot when one crossed the Agora. Beneath the sheltering porticos
lurked bright-faced girls who pelted each passer with violets, narcissus,
and hyacinths. For this was the morn of the final crowning day of the
Panathenaea, greatest, gladdest of Athenian festivals.

Athletic contests had preceded it and stately Pyrrhic dances of men in
full armour. There had been feasting and merry-making despite the
darkening shadow of the Persian. Athens seemed awakened only to rejoice.
To-day was the procession to the Acropolis, the bearing of the sacred robe
to Athena, the public sacrifice for all the people. Not even the peril of
Xerxes could hinder a gladsome holiday.

The sun had just risen above Hymettus, the Agora shops were closed, but
the plaza itself and the lesches--the numerous little club houses about
it--overran with gossipers. On the stone bench before one of these buzzed
the select coterie that of wont assembled in Clearchus's booth; only Polus
the juror now and then nodded and snored. He had sat up all night hearing
the priestesses chant their ceaseless litanies on the Acropolis.

"Guilty--I vote guilty," the others heard him muttering, as his head sank
lower.

"Wake up, friend," ordered Clearchus; "you're not condemning any poor
scoundrel now."

"_Ai!_ ah!" Polus rubbed his eyes, "I only thought I was dropping the
black bean--"

"Against whom?" quoth Crito, the fat contractor.

"Whom? Why that aristocrat Glaucon, surely,--to-night--" Polus suddenly
checked himself and began to roll his eyes.

"You've a dreadful grievance against him," remarked Clearchus; "the gods
know why."

"The wise patriot can see many things," observed Polus, complacently,
"only I repeat--wait till to-night--and then--"

"What then?" demanded all the others.

"Then you shall see," announced the juror, with an oratorical flourish of
his dirty himation, "and not you only but all of Athens."

Clearchus grinned.

"Our dear Polus has a vast sense of his own importance. And who has been
making you partner of the state secrets--Themistocles?"

"A man almost his peer, the noble patriot Democrates. Ask Phormio's wife,
Lampaxo; ask--" O