“Just as in choruses not every one doth sing,
But certain two or three mere speechless dummies stand
Filling the rows, so here ’tis somehow similar:
These fill a space, while these, to whom God grants it, live!”

The precinct of the Asclepieum, adjoining the Theatre, was a Sanatorium where religion and faith-cures were combined with actual medical skill. In the “Plutus” of Aristophanes the blind god, Wealth, is restored to discriminating vision. His head was covered by “Panacea” with a purple cloth, and two expert snakes operated upon his eyes.[10] This comic scene is not, it may easily be credited, too much of a burlesque upon some of the practices at such places. Magic miracles, including the “absent treatment” of recalcitrant lovers, are not unknown in other ages. But a visit to the famous health-resort of the great school of Hippocrates, on the island of Cos, will tend to inspire a respect for Greek therapeutics. The “open-air” treatment on the mountain terrace overlooking the sea may have been modern enough, and, along with the use of the sulphur spring, suggests both technical knowledge and common sense.

Close by the Theatre to the east, hemmed in by modern houses, the beautiful little circular shrine, the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, reminds us of the cost and rivalry attendant upon bringing out the dramas. The weathered sculpture around the top speaks once again of the inseparable connection of Athenian life and literature. It carries us back to the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. The pirates who kidnapped the god are here undergoing punishment; some, already half changed into dolphins, are diving into the sea. In the hymn the pirates, who have carried off the youth in his purple robe, deem him a rich prize for ransom. But the vine with clustering grapes that presently entwines sail and yards proclaims the god. He transformed himself into a bear, then a lion, and they at the sight,—

“All of them shunning the doom that was on them, together out-springing,
Leaped to the water divine and, leaping, were turned into dolphins.”

The combination at Athens of natural beauty and material splendour with moral and intellectual worth called forth praise from both guests and citizens. To Bacchylides of Ceos the city is “spacious Athens,” “splendour-loving.” The Graces “wreath-winning and violet-eyed” are to dower his songs with honour when he addresses himself to its specific praise:—

“Brooding thought of the Cean isle
Poet’s care men praised erst-while,
Weave me now a web of song
Resplendent, fit for Athens strong
Where love and loveliness belong.”

And Pindar, fresh from the gardens of Thebes, was impressed by the beauty of Athens at the vernal Dionysia:—

“The portals of the chamber of the Hours open wide, and growing plants, now nectar sweet, perceive the advent of the fragrant Spring; then, then on earth immortal shower the lovely tufts of violets, then in the hair the roses are entwined.”

A guest-present most highly prized by the Athenians is preserved in another fragment from Pindar:—

“Radiant, violet-crowned, by minstrels sung,
Bulwark of Hellas, Athens illustrious.”

But Aristides the Just might have as easily escaped ostracism as could this overworked epithet, “violet-crowned,” escape the irreverence of Aristophanes. Whenever foreign envoys, he says, wish to cheat us Athenians, they call us “violet-crowned,” and forthwith we are all attention.

Among all the native poets no one has given freer expression to his feeling for the beauty of Athens than Euripides, unhappy in his personal life and iconoclastic in his attitude towards old traditions. He breathes the air, stainless and of a more ethereal violet than the sea, and sings of the concord of Wisdom and the Heavenly Aphrodite:—

“Blest are the children of Erechtheus of the olden time, the children of the happy gods, who from a land inviolate and sacred feed on wisdom famed afar, and go upon their way forever, daintily enfolded by that bright, bright air.

“And Cypris, drawing water from Cephīsus flowing fair, breathes down upon the land the gentle breath of winds with sweetness laden and ever with her hair encompassed with blown roses’ fragrant coronals keeps sending down the Loves who have their seat by side of Wisdom, coadjutors they of Virtue manifold.”

Through the transparent candour of the philosopher’s robe the soul of the poet Plato is ever shining. But like Æschylus he is a poet militant. If he walks by the Ilissus he interprets in terms of the spiritual the physical charm of tree and water and the chirping insect; if he goes down to Phaleron, the Ægean does not bring in for him “the eternal note of sadness,” but his soul has “sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither”; and in the heaven’s vault, overarching Attica, he sees “many ways to and fro” where drive the chariots of the gods whom “he who will and can” may follow, “for from the choir divine all grudging stands aloof!” If to Plato the Athens of the fourth century seemed imperfect, if he was even embittered by the judicial murder of his master, it was with the truest patriotism that he turned to construct an ideal state. His sense of law and order was deep-rooted. It was with lofty optimism that he urged his hearers not to rest content with politics as they are, but to look to “the pattern that is laid up in heaven for him who wills to see and, seeing, so to plant his dwelling.”