The tombs of the fallen
Amazons, the spot where they had breathed their last, he piously
visited, informed himself of every circumstance of the event with
devout care, and, thinking on them amid the dainties of the royal
table, boldly brought them too their share of the offerings to the
heroic dead. Aphrodite, indeed--Aphrodite, of whom he had scarcely
so much as heard--was just then the best-served deity in Athens, with
all its new wealth of colour and form, its gold and ivory, the
acting, the music, the fantastic women, beneath the shadow of the
great walls still rising steadily. Hippolytus would have no part in
her worship; instead did what was in him to revive the neglected
service of his own goddess, stirring an old jealousy. For Aphrodite
too had looked with delight upon the youth, already the centre of a
hundred less dangerous human rivalries among the maidens of Greece,
and was by no means indifferent to his indifference, his instinctive
distaste; while the sterner, almost forgotten Artemis found once more
her great moon-shaped cake, set about with starry tapers, at the
appointed seasons.
They know him now from afar, by his emphatic, shooting, arrowy
movements; and on [178] the day of the great chariot races "he goes
in and wins.
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