anything more than a graceful smile distorts the beauty of the features?
I suppose bright eyes would weep in Athens, should the cheeks of
Alcibiades be seen puffed out with vulgar wind-instruments."

"And can you expect the youth of Athens to be wiser than their gods?"
rejoined Aspasia. "Pallas threw away her favourite flute, because Hera
and Aphrodite laughed at her distorted countenance while she played upon
it. It was but a womanly trick in the virgin daughter of Zeus."

Tithonus looked at the speaker with a slight expression of surprise;
which Hermippus perceiving, he thus addressed him, in a cool, ironical
tone: "O Ethiopian stranger, it is evident you know little of Athens; or
you would have perceived that a belief in the gods is more vulgar than
flute-playing. Such trash is deemed fit for the imbecility of the aged,
and the ignorance of the populace. With equestrians and philosophers, it
is out of date. You must seek for it among those who sell fish at the
gates; or with the sailors at Piraeus and Phalerum."

"I have visited the Temple of Poseidon, in the Piraeus," observed
Aspasia; "and I saw there a multitude of offerings from those who had
escaped shipwreck." She paused slightly, and added, with a significant
smile, "But I perceived no paintings of those who had been wrecked,
notwithstanding their supplications to the god."

As she spoke, she observed that Pericles withdrew a rose from the
garland wherewith his cup was crowned; and though the action was so
slight as to pass unobserved by others, she instantly understood the
caution he intended to convey by that emblem sacred to the god of
silence.