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Then the music, so loud and harmonious! It seemed as if all Athens joined in the mighty sound. I distinguished you in the procession; and I almost envied you the privilege of embroidering the sacred peplus, and being six long months in the service of Pallas Athenae.

It is curious that minute division has always in drapery, more or less, been understood as an expression of spiritual life, from the delicate folds of Athena's peplus down to the rippled edges of modern priests' white robes; Titian's breadth of fold, on the other hand, meaning for the most part bodily power.

His thoughts grew disturbed; he felt a flame in his veins which he tried in vain to quench with wine. Not wine, but her marvellous face, her bare arms, her maiden breast heaving under the golden tunic, and her form hidden in the white folds of the peplus, intoxicated him more and more.

The crowd fired with enthusiasm by the brilliant procession, acclaimed Sónnica. Surrounded by her slave women, she gazed down from the terrace of her great building in the ward of the merchants where she stored her merchandise. She was the organizer, the one who bore the cost of the peplus of Minerva, she it was who had transplanted to Saguntum the beautiful festival of Athens.

But her breathing grew quicker from emotion, and louder. Acte collected feverishly such jewels as she could, and, fastening them in a corner of Lygia's peplus, implored her not to reject that gift and means of escape. At moments came a deep silence full of deceptions for the ear.

Behind the peplus in less careful array went thousands of citizens of every age and station, all in festival dress, all crowned with flowers. They followed the car up the Dromos Street, across the cheering Agora, and around the southern side of the Acropolis, making a full circuit of the citadel.

Now the peplus was wafted on a wave of song toward the temple’s dawn-facing portal, when from beneath the columns, as the tall valves turned and the sun leaped into the cella, hidden voices returned the former strainsmournful at first.

And nextbut here the people leaned from parapet, house-roof, portico, and shouted louder than ever: “The car and the robe of Athena! Hail, Io, pæan! hail!” Up the street on a car shaped like a galley moved the peplus, the great robe of the sovran goddess. From afar one could see the wide folds spread on a shipyard and rippling in the breeze. But what a sail!

Behind the clamor, which set the streets in a commotion, causing the populace to roar with enthusiasm excited by the warlike display, came a group of girls holding a peplus of finest texture on which the principal Grecian women of the city had embroidered the combat of Minerva with the Titans.

"Array a rotten olive trunk in the peplus of a woman, and Vinicius will declare it beautiful. But on thy countenance, incomparable judge, I read her sentence already. Thou hast no need to pronounce it! The sentence is true: she is too dry, thin, a mere blossom on a slender stalk; and thou, O divine æsthete, esteemest the stalk in a woman. Thrice and four times art thou right!