Pericles, continued to be accounted virtues—Athens held, and deserved to hold, her supremacy. Proud, and justly so, were her sons of their beautiful city. The tribute paid to her by the allies for protecting them from the Persian was fairly expended upon the maintenance of the fleet and the encouragement of art. Her citizens were, and felt themselves to be, in the van of Greek cultivation. They hailed with applause the praises addressed to them by the dramatic poets—and the praises were no idle flattery. Was it not a truth that, had it not been for the Athenians, northern Greece would have given earth and water to the Persian envoys, and Peloponnesus have selfishly abandoned the sea to the Phœnician galleys? True also, that but for the Athenians, "dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed" might have been seen in the citadels of Corinth and Thebes? Of a city that had so well deserved of every state, insular or on the mainland, where Greek was spoken, the most appropriate ornaments were the triumphs of the artist. Rightfully proud were the Athenians of their beautiful city; as rightfully employed were the pens of poets in giving these monuments perpetual fame.
With history, direct or indirect, before us, it may be possible to describe, or at least divine, the spectacle presented at the Dionysiac theatre when Sophocles or Euripides brought out a new play. The audience consisted of nearly as many elements as, centuries later, were to crowd and elbow one another in the vast space of the Roman Colosseum. The lowest and best seats, those nearest the orchestra, were reserved for
