Cleopatra would have tantalized and left your
heart to eat itself out in hopeless longing. But Cleopatra was only a
queen; Venus was a goddess.
Names which were but names to you before become living realities now.
We are crossing the Attic plain, and from that we find ourselves in
the Thracian plain. What girl has not heard her brother spout
concerning these names, famous in Greek history? Then we are in
Megara, on the lovely blue Bay of Salamis. From Megara the Bay of
Salamis becomes Saronic Gulf, and after an hour or two of its
unspeakable beauty we cross over to Corinth and find, if possible,
that the blues of the Gulf of Corinth are even more sapphire, that its
purples are even more amethyst, that its greens are more emerald than
the blues and purples and greens of Salamis.
From Corinth the road skirts the sea, and all these white plains are
devoted to the drying of currants. At Sikyon, called "cucumber town,"
but originally, with the mystic beauty of the ancient Greeks, called
"poppy town," the American school at Athens has made some wonderful
excavations.
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