“Mistress of all, Queen City of Athenians,
How fair thy docks, how fair to view thy Parthenon!
And thy Piræus, too, is fair. And then again
What other city ever yet had groves like thine?
And, as they say, the very sky, thy sky, is fair.”
And Demosthenes, not deterred by any shrinking from hackneyed allusion, refers expressly to the Propylæa and the Parthenon, when he speaks of “those things upon which we all naturally pride ourselves.” Aristophanes, seeking to recall his fellow-citizens to the ideals of Marathon days, shows us in his “Knights” the Propylæa and the freshly boiled-over and rejuvenated Demos,—the avatar of true Democracy,—seated within the unclosing doors of the gateway, dressed in the brilliant garb of a gentleman of the good old Marathon type: “Just such as he used to be when he messed with Aristides and Miltiades,” his hair caught up with the golden cicada pin, emblem of Attic autochthony.
In the “Lysistrata” the Athenian men, ignorant that at a future day their Parliament was to be controlled by suffragettes, feel that the limit of the legitimate boycott is over-passed when the women seize and barricade their Acropolis. The old chorus leader says:—
“In life’s long stretch of time, are many things unlooked for—Woe is me! For who had ever thought to hear that women whom we keep (a mischief manifest) should get Athena’s sacred image in their hands; should seize my citadel; the Propylæa barricade with bolts and bars?”
In this play, too, we catch a glimpse of the more intimate interweaving of an Athenian maiden’s life with the Acropolis ritual. One of this same sans-culotte garrison looks about her and reviews her girlhood; how she had been selected among the best-born girls to carry the mysterious burden in the Arrephoria, had ground the meal for the sacred cakes for Athena Archegetis; had impersonated a bear in the worship of Artemis; and, finally, had gained the coveted privilege of being basket-bearer in the Panathenaic procession. Explaining her personal gratitude to the city, the woman says:—
“When seven years old an Arrephoros I;