CHARICLEA.
Then I will sing an old Ionian hymn, which is chanted every spring at the feast of Venus, near Miletus. I used to sing it in my own country when I was a child; and—Ah, Alcibiades!
ALCIBIADES.
Dear Chariclea, you shall sing something else. This distresses you.
CHARICLEA.
No: hand me the lyre:—no matter. You will hear the song to disadvantage. But if it were sung as I have heard it sung;—if this were a beautiful morning
(1) The mother of Euripides was a herb-woman. This was a
favourite topic of Aristophanes.
(2) The hero of one of the lost plays of Euripides, who
appears to have been brought upon the stage in the garb of a
beggar. See Aristophanes; Acham. 430; and in other places.
in spring, and if we were standing on a woody promontory, with the sea, and the white sails, and the blue Cyclades beneath us,—and the portico of a temple peeping through the trees on a huge peak above our heads,—and thousands of people, with myrtles in their hands, thronging up the winding path, their gay dresses and garlands disappearing and emerging by turns as they passed round the angles of the rock,—then perhaps—
ALCIBIADES.
Now, by Venus herself, sweet lady, where you are we shall lack neither sun, nor flowers, nor spring, nor temple, nor goddess.