"Like a fair virgin in her beauty's bloom," a tall and simple maiden; her armour is cast off, she does not even wear her helmet; a golden spear formerly rested by her side, and the snake, type of the native soil, coils round her arm like a delicate bracelet.
The gay procession which this bas-relief represents actually took place every fourth year at Midsummer. The festival lasted, as I have mentioned, for twelve days, during which time various games, or rather trials of strength and skill, were performed, in which the bravest and noblest of the Athenian youths eagerly competed. Each day was held a different game or contest. The procession and prize-giving terminated the proceedings. None but free-born Athenian citizens, however noble they might be held elsewhere, were allowed to take part. None others might even walk in the procession, except, as we have seen, in a servile capacity. The games consisted of chariot races, races on horseback and on foot; and musical contests, in which the flute players, and the players on the cithæra (or lyre) contended for pre-eminence.
On the last day of the festival the citizens met in the Agora, or market-place, where the procession was formed in the early morning; they wound round the city and across the plain; and by noon they were streaming up the steep hill of the Acropolis, their shining armour of bronze flashing in the bright sunlight, and their white or yellow holiday garments brilliant against the blue sky of Greece, as they paced along on the hill-top towards their temple, chanting the praise and story of their goddess as they went.
Arrived at the temple, sacrifices were offered up to Athéné and her father, Zeus. This ceremony was performed in a manner somewhat similar to that used for burnt-offerings in the Jewish Ritual, and described in Leviticus. Certain portions of the victim were burnt, another portion was set aside for the priests, and the rest was afterwards eaten by the common people. The Greeks believed that their gods were actually nourished by the fumes of the burning food.
I give a description of a Greek sacrifice from Homer's "Iliad":—
"Their prayers performed, the chiefs the rite pursue,
The barley sprinkled, and the victim slew.
The limbs they sever from the inclosing hide,
The thighs, selected to the gods, divide.
On these, in double cauls involved with art,
The choicest morsels lie from every part.
From the cleft wood the crackling flames aspire,
While the fat victims feed the sacred fire.
The thighs thus sacrificed, and entrails dress'd,
The assistants part, transfix, and roast the rest;
Then spread the tables, the repast prepare,
Each takes his seat and each receives his share."
While the priests offered up the victims on the altar in front of the temple, the people chanted hymns in honour of their goddess, while they moved round the altar with slow, rhythmic steps.
Immediately after the sacrifice of the burnt-offerings, the awards to the victors in the athletic games took place; the victors themselves and their immediate friends were alone admitted into the temple, where sat the judges, the priests, and the chief officers of state; the populace stood outside. There were no money prizes. The honour was the one thing they had striven for, and the crowns of fresh leaves of oak or parsley, olive or bay, were deemed an all-sufficient reward.
"'Tis but a crown of fading leaves
That the conqueror's hand receives."
But the prize esteemed before all others was a jar filled with the oil made from the fruit of the olive-tree which grew within the precincts of another and more ancient temple to Athéné on the Acropolis. This tree was very old, and was firmly believed by her worshippers to have been the same that Athéné had herself created, the first one known on Attic soil, from which all the fertile olive-woods had sprung that covered the plains. So highly did the victors in the games treasure these vases that they never parted with them during their lifetime, and when they died they were placed in their graves. From this custom of burying treasured objects, many curious relics have come down to us, and from it do we derive much of our knowledge of antiquity. The sketch given against our initial-letter is from a vase found in the tomb of a Greek colonist at Cyrene, on the north coast of Africa. Our colonist, who laid his bones on the parched and sandy soil of Africa, had evidently, in his youth, been the proud victor in one of the chariot-races in Athens, for we see depicted on one side of the vase a chariot-race, while a figure of Athéné, as the "warrior maid," appears on the other; the jar itself is inscribed with the words (in Greek), "I am one of the prizes from Athens," of such a year, giving the date. There are many of these interesting prize-vases from various parts of the Greek world now to be seen in the Vase Room in the British Museum—links with the dead past.