THE VERDICT


Apollo and Hermes once met toward evening on the rocks of Pnyx and
were looking on Athens.

The evening was charming; the sun was already rolled from the
Archipelago toward the Ionian Sea and had begun to slowly sink its
radiant head in the water which shone turquoise-like. But the summits
of Hymettus and Pentelicus were yet beaming as if melted gold had been
poured over them, and the evening twilight was in the sky. In its
light the whole Acropolis was drowned. The white walls of Propyleos,
Parthenon, and Erechtheum seemed pink and as light as though the
marble had lost all its weight, or as if they were apparitions of a
dream. The point of the spear of the gigantic Athena Promathos shone
in the twilight like a lighted torch over Attica.

In the space hawks were flying toward their nests in the rocks, to
pass the night.

The people returned in crowds from work in the fields. On the road
to Piraeus, mules and donkeys carried baskets full of olives and
wine-grapes; behind them, in the red cloud of dust, marched herds of
nannygoats, before each herd there was a white-bearded buck; on the
sides, watchdogs; in the rear, shepherds, playing flutes of thin
oat-stems.

Among the herds chariots slowly passed, carrying holly barlet, pulled
by slow, heavy oxen; here and there passed a detachment of Hoplites or
heavy armed troops, corseleted in copper, going to guard Piraeus and