Though the two youths have so similar a cast of countenance, they are quite unlike in temperament. The farther one is of a somewhat dreamy, poetic nature. He rides with bent head as if in a reverie. His companion is of a sterner, more virile type. He looks straight before him, and carries his head with a sense of the dignity of the occasion.
Both youths sit their horses as if born in the saddle. Horse and rider are one, animated by a single dominant will. The Athenian youth were trained from childhood in all sorts of manly exercise. The normal development of the body was of first importance in the Greek educational system. These young men are typical examples of the fine specimens of manhood which that training produced.
IV
BUST OF HERA (JUNO)
"The white armed queen,
Juno, the mistress of the golden throne."
It is thus that the Iliad describes Hera, the wife of Zeus, now more often called by her Roman name Juno. The marriage union between the ruler of the gods and his queen represented the Greek ideal of perfect conjugal happiness. Hera was therefore the goddess who presided over human marriages, and was the type of matronly virtue and dignity. As the queen of heaven, she had it in her power to bestow great riches, honor, and influence upon her favorites.
In the Trojan war she was, like Athena, a partisan of the Greeks, and once or twice even accompanied the war goddess to the battlefield. Usually, however, her pursuits were of a more peaceful and domestic order. She was a very beautiful goddess, "ox-eyed" in the quaint Greek phrase, that is, with large expressive eyes. She had the august and majestic bearing befitting a queen, and is usually described in classic literature as wearing a veil. A long passage in the Iliad gives an account of her toilet when arraying herself for a special occasion. After bathing in ambrosia, and anointing with oil,
"When thus her shapely form
Had been anointed, and her hands had combed
Her tresses, she arranged the lustrous curls,
Ambrosial, beautiful, that clustering hung
Round her immortal brow. And next she threw
Around her an ambrosial robe, the work
Of Pallas, all its web embroidered o'er
With forms of rare device. She fastened it
Over the breast with clasps of gold, and then
She passed about her waist a zone which bore
Fringes a hundred-fold, and in her ears
She hung her three-gemmed ear-rings, from whose gleam
She won an added grace. Around her head
The glorious goddess drew a flowing veil,
Just from the loom, and shining like the sun;
And, last, beneath her bright white feet she bound
The shapely sandals." [12]