blades; and that although Socrates was certainly in the house he could not identify him among a batch of ugly fellows, with whom, he was told, the celebrated street-preacher was sitting.
The gallery in which foreigners sat is perhaps the most interesting feature of the audience to English readers—interesting, because it represented the various members of the Athenian empire, as well as of the Hellenic race. A merchant whose warehouse was near the Pillars of Hercules, would find himself seated beside one who had brought a cargo of wheat from Sinope, on the Euxine Sea. A hybrid—half-Greek, half-Egyptian—of Canopus, would have on his right hand a tent-maker from Tarsus, on his left a Thessalian bullock-drover. The "broad Scotch" of the Greeks—the Dorian patois—would be spoken by a group of spectators in front of him; while a softer dialect than even the Attic, pure Ionic, was used by a party of islanders behind him. "What gorgeously-attired personage is that on your left?" "A Tyrian merchant, rich enough to buy up any street in Athens—a prince in his own city, a suitor here. He has come on law business; and although at home he struts like any peacock, here he is obliged to salute any ragged rascal in the streets who may be a juror when his cause is heard. To my certain knowledge, the great emerald column in the temple of Melcarth, at Tyre, is mortgaged to him." "And who is that queerly-dressed man a little beyond the Tyrian? By his garb and short petticoat I should take him for a Scythian policeman,[1] but he has not the
- ↑ Scythian bowmen were the gendarmes of Athens.
