distinctions within its embracing unity, that are set forth in their
interdependence as functions of a spiritual life. In this great national
fete, held every four years, all the higher activities of Athenian life
were ideally displayed--contests of song, of lyre and of flute, foot and
horse races, wrestling, boxing, and the like, military evolutions of
infantry and horse, pyrrhic dances symbolic of attack and defence in
war, mystic chants of women and choruses of youths--the whole
concentring and discharging itself in that great processional act in
which, as it were, the material forms of society became transparent, and
the Whole moved on, illumined and visibly sustained by the spiritual
soul of which it was the complete and harmonious embodiment. Of this
procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble
transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone,
from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the
slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and
trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of
Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of
men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and
oxen destined for sacrifice, to where, on turning the corner that leads
to the eastern front, we find ourselves in the presence of the Olympian
gods themselves, enthroned to receive the offering of a people's life.
And if to this marble representation we add the colour it lacks, the
gold and silver of the vessels, the purple and saffron robes; if we set
the music playing and bid the oxen low; if we gird our living picture
with the blaze of an August noon and crown it with the Acropolis of
Athens, we may form a conception, better perhaps than could otherwise be
obtained, of what religion really meant to the citizen of a state whose
activities were thus habitually symbolised in the cult of its patron
deity. Religion to him, clearly, could hardly be a thing apart, dwelling
in the internal region of the soul and leaving outside, untouched by the