ut it is a brief and simple epoch which Artemis represents. After early girlhood comes the maturity of virgin womanhood, touched by meditation, but not yet by passion. This the Greek mythology symbolizes in PALLAS ATHENA. She is the riper Artemis, passing beyond her early nymph-like years, and reaching the highest consummation that woman can attain alone. And so fascinating is this moment of serene self-poise, that the virgin Athena ranks in some respects at the head of all the goddesses. Beside her Artemis is undeveloped, while all the rest have passed in a manner out of themselves, have shared the being of others and the responsibilities of love or home. Of all conceptions of woman ever framed, Athena most combines strength and loveliness. She has no feeble aspect, no relation of dependence; her purity is the height of power. No compliment ever paid to woman was so high as that paid by the Greeks, when incarnating the highest wisdom in this maiden's form, and making this attribute only increase her virtue and her charms. Hence at Athens -- "the Greece of Greece," [1] as the epigram of Thucydides calls it -- she is reverenced above all deities, chief guardian of the most wondrous community of the world. Above the most magnificent gallery of aft which the world has ever seen, because comprising the whole city, her colossal image stands pre-eminent, carved by Phidias in ivory and gold. The approaching sailor's first glimpse of Athens is the gleaming of the sun's rays from her spear and shield. For her sacred olive-plant sprang from the earth when the first stone of the infant settlement was laid, and now the city and its name and its glory must be hers.

And such renown is indeed her birthright. Born without a mother, directly from the brain of Zeus, -- to bring her as near as possible to the creative intellect, -- she inherits, beyond all others, that attribute. She retains the privilege of that sublime cradle, and, whenever she bows her head, it is as if Zeus had nodded, -- a privilege which he has given to her alone. That is ratified to which Pallas bath bowed assent, says Callimachus. [2] Yet while thus falling but one degree below omnipotence, she possesses a beauty which is beyond that of Aphrodite. If the cowherd Alexander (Paris) judges otherwise, it is merely the taste of a cowherd, as the epigram of Hermodorus fearlessly declares.

The busts of Athena seem always grave and sweet; never domineering, like those of Artemis, nor languishing, like those of Aphrodite. They are known from all others by the length of the hair, whence the Greek oath, "by the tresses of Athena." In the descriptions, she alone is blue-eyed, to show that she dwells above all clouds, while even the auburn-haired Aphrodite, in the Iliad, has large black eyes. She is more heavily armed than the fleet-footed Artemis, and sometimes, for added protection, there are serpents clinging to her robe, while a dragon watches at her feet. This is the Greek Athena, transformed in Rome to a prosaic Minerva, infinitely useful and practical, teaching the mechanic arts, and the unwearied patroness of schoolmasters.

But Athena's maiden meditation is simply one stage in a woman's life, not its completion. It is the intellectual blossoming of existence, for man or woman, this earlier epoch, "unvowed as yet to family or state." But a career that seeks completeness pauses not here. When love touches and transforms the destiny, what then?

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[1] [Gk. transliteration]: Hellados hellas
[2] [Gk. transliteration]: To d' entelis ôi k' epineusê Pallas, Callim. Hymn V, 131, 132