A strangely sublime impress rested upon this whole landscape, where the gods had once wandered and where, so to speak, each spot was sacred. Upon the height Pallas Athene had planted the olive-tree sacred to her, and yonder, by the shore of the Ilissus, almost on the very spot where his altar stood, Boreas had borne away the Princess Oreithyia. Sometimes a cool evening breeze, following the course of the stream, swept through the valley. A distant, confused sound, the breathing of the half slumbering city, then reached the ear; but when the wind died away everything was still, and houses, trees, and mountains, steeped in the melancholy lustre of the moonbeams, once more rose before the eyes in majestic silence.
“Magnificent! Marvellous!” exclaimed little Xenocles, extending his arms towards the city as though he would fain embrace it.
“Friends,” said Acestor, but paused while his glance wandered around the room as though in search of something.
Sthenelus’ eyes twinkled; he knew all Acestor’s tricks of art.
“Why,” he said, “Acestor wants the bema.[L] But if you are willing, Lamon, surely he can speak from the marble counter.”
[L] Orator’s stage.
Lamon, who was again drawing the green curtain between the pillars, made a sign of assent.
Sthenelus, spite of his lameness, dragged a bench up to the counter.
“The bema is ready,” he said, offering Acestor his hand.
The latter took it, and stepped clumsily upon the bench and from the bench to the counter. He was apparently no adept in physical exercises and, when he visited the gymnasia, doubtless did so only to meet orators and poets in the arcades.