prevent the application of the law in his individual case. But Alcibiades, for reasons unknown to the public, united his influence with that of Aspasia; and their partizans were active and powerful. When the case was tried in the court of illegitimacy at Cynosarges, Philæmon was declared a sojourner in Athens, incapable of holding any office, and dispossessed of his paternal inheritance.

Eudora was a mere infant when Phidias bought her of a poor goatherd in Phelle. The child was sitting upon a rock, caressing a kid, when the sculptor first saw her, and the gracefulness of her attitude attracted his attention, while her innocent beauty touched his heart. She and her nurse had been stolen from the Ionian coast, by Greek pirates. The nurse was sold into slavery, and the babe delivered by one of the pirates to the care of his mother. The little creature, in her lisping way, called herself baby Minta; and this appellation she retained, until Phidias gave her the name of Eudora.

Philothea, the orphan daughter of Alcimenes, son of Anaxagoras, was a year or two older than Eudora. She was brought to Athens, at about the same period; and as they resided very near each other, the habitual intercourse of childhood naturally ripened into mature friendship. No interruption of this constant intimacy occurred, until Philothea was appointed one of the Canephoræ, whose duty it was to embroider the sacred peplus, and to carry baskets in the grand procession of the Panathenæa. Six months of complete seclusion within the walls of the Acropolis, were required of the Canephoræ. During this protracted absence, Aspasia persuaded Phidias to bring Eudora frequently to her house; and her influence insensibly produced a great change in that young person, whose character was even more flexile than her form.

Chapter II.

"With grace divine her soul is blest,
And heavenly Pallas breathes within her breast;
In wonderous arts than woman more renowned,
And more than woman with deep wisdom crowned.

HOMER.


It was the last market hour of Athens, when Anaxagoras, Philothea, and Eudora, accompanied by Geta, the favourite slave of Phidias, stepped forth into the street, on their way to Aspasia's residence.

Loud shouts of laughter came from the agoras, and the whole air was filled with the hum of a busy multitude. Groups of citizens lingered about the porticos; Egyptians, Medians, Sicilians, and strangers from all the neighbouring States of Greece, thronged the broad avenue of the Piræus; women, carrying upon their heads olive jars, baskets of grapes, and vases of water, glided among the crowd,