ish with those necessary everyday cares which no
festival can wholly disregard.

The road along which the procession was to pass had been strewn with
fine yellow sand. Brazen tripods, disposed along the way at regular
intervals, sent up to heaven the odorous smoke of cinnamon and
spikenard. These vapours, moreover, alone clouded the purity of the
azure above. The clouds of a hymeneal day ought, indeed, to be formed
only by the burning of perfumes. Myrtle and rose-laurel branches were
strewn upon the ground, and from the walls of the palaces were suspended
by little rings of bronze rich tapestries, whereon the needles of
industrious captives--intermingling wool, silver, and gold--had
represented various scenes in the history of the gods and heroes:
Ixion embracing the cloud; Diana surprised in the bath by Actaeon; the
shepherd Paris as judge in the contest of beauty held upon Mount
Ida between Hera, the snowy-armed, Athena of the sea-green eyes, and
Aphrodite, girded with her magic cestus; the old men of Troy rising to
honour Helena as she passed through the Skaian gate, a subject taken
from one of the poems of the blind man of Meles. Others exhibited in
preference scenes taken from the life of Heracles, the Theban, through
flattery to Candaules, himself a Heracleid, being descended from the
hero through Alcaeus. Others contented themselves by decorating the
entrances of their dwellings with garlands and wreaths in token of
rejoicing.

Among the multitudes marshalled along the way from the royal house even
as far as the gates of the city, through which the young queen would
pass on her arrival, conversation naturally turned upon the beauty of
the bride, whereof the renown had spread throughout all Asia; and
upon the character of the bridegroom, who, although not altogether an
eccentric, seemed nevertheless one not readily appreciated from the
common standpoint of observation.

Nyssia, daughter of the Satrap Megabazus, was gifted with marvellous
purity of feature and perfection of form; at least such was the rumour
spread abroad by the female slaves who attended her, and a few female
friends who had accompanied her to the bath; for no man could boast
of knowing aught of Nyssia save the colour of her veil and the elegant
folds that she involuntarily impressed upon the soft materials which
robed her statuesque body.

The barbarians did not share the ideas of the Greeks in regard to
modesty. While the youths of Achaia m