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: CHAPTER III. All is prepared—the taWe and the frost— With due appurtenance of clothes and cushions. Chaplets and dainties of all kinds abound : Here rich perfumes are seen—there cakes and cates Of every fashion; cakes of honey, cakes Of sesamum, and cakes of unbound corn. What more f A troop of dancing women fair, And miustreU who may chaunt us sweet Harmodins. Aristophanes. The room in which the guests were assembled, was furnished with less of Asiatic splendour than the private apartment of Aspasia; but in its magnificent simplicity there was a more perfect manifestation of ideal beauty. It was divided in the middle by eight Ionic columns, alternately of Phrygian and Pentelic marble. Between the central pillars stood a superb statue from the hand of Phidias, representing Aphrodite guided by Love, and crowned by Peitho, goddess of Persuasion. Around the walls were Phoebus and Hermes in Parian marble, and the nine Muses in ivory. A fountain of perfumed water, from the adjoining room, diffused coolness and fragrance, as it passed through a number of concealed pipes, and finally flowed into a magnificent vase, supported by a troop of Naiades. In a recess stood the famous lion of Myron, surrounded by infant Loves, playing with his paws, climbing his back, and decorating his neck with garlands. This beautiful group seemed actually to live and move in the clear light and deep shadows derived from a silver lamp suspended above. The walls were enriched with some of the choicest paintings of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, and Polygnotus. Near a fine likeness of Pericles, by Aristola'iis, was Aspasia, represented as Chloris scattering flowers over the earth, and attended by winged Hours. It chanced that Pericles himself reclined beneath his portrait, and though...