“What do you mean?” exclaimed Xenocles, who was always too impatient to like riddles.
“You know,” Acestor continued, “that some faces, to appear beautiful, should be seen from the front, others from the side. That is the way with cities—some should be seen from the sea, others from the land....”
“And whence shall Athens be seen?” asked Xenocles, to whom this introduction seemed too long.
“By Zeus, from this spot.”
Lamon smiled.
“Why yes,” he said, “Pythocleides from Ceos, Pericles’ first teacher in the arts of the Muses, came here in his old age. He was perfectly bewitched by the view of the city, and used to say afterwards: ‘No one has seen Athens save he who has beheld it from Lamon’s house on the Museium.’”
“Well then, show us Athens!” cried Sthenelus. “By Pan, you have made me very curious though, having been born in the Street of the Sculptors, I thought I knew the city.”
Lamon made a sign to Acestor and the two men, each from his own side, drew the green curtain apart between the pillars.
The first impression was so overpowering that no one found words to praise it. Beyond the dark frame formed by the roof, pillars, and floor of the apartment the whole space was filled with a subdued light, like a bluish mist. The moon itself was not visible; it was obliquely behind the house. The transition from the lamp-light had been so sudden that at first the group could see nothing; but scarcely had the tripods with the lamps been moved farther back ere the outlines of stately houses and the dark tops of trees began to appear.
In front of the house, towards the brow of the hill, was a stone balustrade, on which stood vases containing large-leaved plants. Behind these, far down in the valley, were seen like a forest the wide-stretching kēpoi or gardens, amid whose dark poplars and cypresses shone here and there a curve of the Ilissus, glittering like molten silver. Not far from the foot of the hill spread the low Limnae with its labyrinth of buildings, and the ancient sanctuary of Dionysus, which seemed buried in the shadows of the night. Farther away red specks of light gleamed through the dusk; they moved very slowly, meeting, crossing, and moving away from each other—they were the torches carried by pedestrians along the way leading from the citadel to the market. Beyond this tract the ground rose in three or four lofty undulations, on whose crests appeared houses and trees, among the latter single palms, but distant and small, like delicately carved toys. Between the largest of these hills the flat top and steep sides of the Acropolis towered dark and frowning into the air. Close against the cliff, as if comparing itself with it, stood the vast Theatre of Dionysus, over whose encircling wall the eye pierced the dark gulf formed by the steeply-rising seats. But on the summit, towering over the low Limnae, glimmered the white marble temple, with its delicate, shadowy rows of columns, above which again rose the colossal statue of the patron goddess of Athens, visible for miles away, as in motionless grandeur it seemed to both rule and watch.