The brazen face still smiled on; the room was very still. Yet Democrates took comfort. Hermes was a great god and [pg 115]would help him. When the song of the Furies grew too loud, Democrates silenced it by summoning back Hermione’s face and asking one triumphant question:—
“She is Glaucon’s wife. But if not his, whose then but mine?”
CHAPTER XI
THE PANATHENÆA
Flowers on every head, flowers festooned about each pillar, and flowers under foot when one crossed the Agora. Beneath the sheltering porticos lurked bright-faced girls who pelted each passer with violets, narcissus, and hyacinths. For this was the morn of the final crowning day of the Panathenæa, greatest, gladdest of Athenian festivals.
Athletic contests had preceded it and stately Pyrrhic dances of men in full armour. There had been feasting and merry-making despite the darkening shadow of the Persian. Athens seemed awakened only to rejoice. To-day was the procession to the Acropolis, the bearing of the sacred robe to Athena, the public sacrifice for all the people. Not even the peril of Xerxes could hinder a gladsome holiday.
The sun had just risen above Hymettus, the Agora shops were closed, but the plaza itself and the lesches—the numerous little club houses about it—overran with gossipers. On the stone bench before one of these buzzed the select coterie that of wont assembled in Clearchus’s booth; only Polus the juror now and then nodded and snored. He had sat up all night hearing the priestesses chant their ceaseless litanies on the Acropolis.
“Guilty—I vote guilty,” the others heard him muttering, as his head sank lower.