other ships, to remind one
that here was the beaten track of commerce from the Orient. Even as
they approached the Piraeus, and beat slowly and carefully up the
bay, the desolate mist continued, settling down over the long
anticipated coast-line, and putting an end to all the colour and
light of Greece. But afterwards Horace realised that the
unpropitious arrival had but served as a background for the later
revelation. The sungod did grant him a glorious epiphany on that
first day, springing, as it were, full panoplied out of a gulf of
darkness. His friend Pompeius, who had gone to Athens a month earlier,
had by some fortunate chance chosen the afternoon of his arrival to
make one of his frequent visits to the shops and taverns of the
harbour town. Drawn to the dock by the news that a ship from Italy
was approaching, he met Horace with open arms, and afterwards
accompanied him to the city along the Phaleron road.

During the hour's walk the mist had gradually lifted, and the sky
grew more luminous. By the time they reached the ancient but still
unfinished temple to Zeus, some of whose Corinthian columns they had
often seen in Rome, built into their own Capitoline temple, the
setting sun had burst through all obstructions, and was irradiating
the surrounding landscape. The hills turned violet and amethyst, the
sea lighted into a splendid, shining waterway, the sky near the
horizon cleared into a deep greenish-blue, and flared into a vast
expanse of gold above. The Corinthian pillars near them changed into
burnished gold. Purple shadows fell on the brown rock of the
Acropolis, while, above, the temple of Athena was outlined against
the golden sky, and the Sun tipped as with gleaming fire the spear
and the helmet of his sister goddess, the bronze Athena herself, as
she stood a little beyond her temple, austere guardian of her city.

On this soft autumn afternoon among the Italian hills Horace could
still remember his startled amazement when he first saw the radiance
of Greek colouring. He had not realised that the physical aspect of
mountains and sky would be so different from the landscape about Rome,
and he had never lost his delight in the fresh transparency of the
Athenian air. One of his earliest experiments in translation had been
with Euripides's choral description of the "blest children of
Erechtheus going on their way, daintily enfolded in the bright,
bright air."

His student life in the old home of learning