ater in it. I feel wretchedly
stupid to-day."

He spent the rest of the feast drinking deeply, and with much forced
laughter. The dinner ended toward evening. The whole company escorted the
victor toward Athens. At Daphni, the pass over the hills, the archons and
strategi--highest officials of the state--met them with cavalry and torches
and half of the city trailing at their heels. Twenty cubits of the city
wall were pulled down to make a gate for the triumphal entry. There was
another great feast at the government house. The purse of an hundred
drachmae, due by law to Isthmian victors, was presented. A street was named
for Glaucon in the new port-town of Peiraeus. Simonides recited a triumphal
ode. All Athens, in short, made merry for days. Only one man found it hard
to join the mirth whole-heartedly. And this was the victor's bosom
friend,--Democrates.

CHAPTER VI

ATHENS

In Athens! Shall one mount the Acropolis or enter the market place?
Worship in the temple of the Virgin Athena, or descend to the Agora and
the roar of its getters and spenders? For Athens has two faces--toward the
ideal, toward the commonplace. Who can regard both at once? Let the
Acropolis, its sculptures, its landscape, wait. It has waited for men
three thousand years. And so to the Agora.

"Full market time." The Agora was a beehive. From the round Tholus at the
south to the long portico at the north all was babel and traffic. Donkeys
raised their wheezing protest against too heavy loads of farm produce.
Megarian swine squealed and tugged at their leg-cords. An Asiatic sailor
clamoured at the money-changer's stall for another obol in change for a
Persian daric. "Buy my oil!" bawled the huckster from his wicker booth
beside the line of Hermes-busts in the midst of the square. "Buy my
charcoal!" roared back a companion, whilst past both was haled a grinning
negro with a crier who bade every gentleman to "mark his chance" for a
fashionable servant. Phocian the quack was hawking his toothache salve
from the steps of the Temple of Apollo. Deira, the comely flower girl,
held out crowns of rose, violet, and narcissus to the dozen young dandies
who pressed about her. Around the Hermes-busts idle crowds were reading
the legal notices plastered on the base of each statue. A file of mules
and wagons was ploughing through the multitude with marble for some new
building. Ev