Pericles and Aspasia (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the letter. Well, what have you found? where is the place ? I will keep you in suspense no longer. As soon as there was any light at all, we discovered, on the hill above the city, crowds of people and busy preparations. You are come to it. IV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE. I was determined to close my letter when your curiosity was at the highest, that you might flutter and fall from the clouds like Icarus. I wanted two things: first, that you should bite your lip, an attitude in which you alone look pretty; and secondly, that you should say half-angrily, " This now is exactly like Aspasia." I will be remembered; and I will make you look just as-I would have you. How fortunate ! to have arrived at Athens at dawn" ou the twelfth of Elaphebolion. On this day begin the festivals of Bacchus, and the theatre is thrown open at sunrise. What a theatre! what an elevation ! what a prospect of city and port, of land and water, of porticos and temples, of men and heroes, of demi-gods and gods ! It was indeed my wish and intention, when I left Ionia, to be present at the first of the Dyonysiacs; but how rarely are wishes and intentions so accomplished, even when winds and waters do not interfere ! I will now tell you all. No time was to be lost: so I hastened on shore in the dress of an Athenian boy who came over with his mother from Lemnos. In the giddiness of youth he forgot to tell me that, not being yet eighteen years old, he could not be admitted; and he left me on the steps. My heart sank within me; so many young men stared and whispered; yet never was stranger treated with more civility. Crowded as the theatre was (for the tragedy had begun) every one made room for me. When they were seated, and I too, I looked toward the stage; and behold there lay before me, but afar o...