Athens is a bustling capital, but to the on-looker every Easter lamb becomes a Golden Fleece, and—
“A story lingereth yet,
A voice of the mountains old.”[[12]]
The Easter feast is of great importance in Greece because the Lenten fast is so scrupulously observed. At all times the working people are temperate enough to have pleased Aristophanes, who liked to dwell on the simple living of a generation before his own, when from the country districts men trooped in to the assembly,—
“Each with his own little
Goatskin of wine,
Each with three olives, two
Onions, one loaf in his
Wallet, to dine.”[[13]]
But during parts of Lent even vegetables are forbidden, and a man who has guided you up Pentelicus will accept from your lunch-basket only a few olives and an orange to supplement his own piece of coarse bread.