Some two thousand years ago legend ran that a certain king of Pisa in Elis, OEnomaus by name, refused the hand of his fair daughter save to that gallant Greek youth who should beat him in a chariot-race. Suitor after suitor tried and failed, for OEnomaus was a skillful warrior--but at last and one must suspect with the help of Hymen--a young prince "from over sea", triumphed. That was Pelops.

There is another story, too. Centaurs, who were brutal creatures, partly human, partly equine, were invited to the wedding of Pirithous, King of the Lapiths. There was great feasting--but the animal would out, and the Centaurs became inflamed with wine and began to lay hands on the women. Ordinarily we might get a bit disturbed about this, but no, for there stands Apollo in the center and being with a god we have nothing to fear. For that matter there's nothing to fear anyway--it's all in sculpture.

The Vagabond loves the old myths almost as much as he loves the majesty and dignity of the Greek temples and sculpture. To have the two in one as is the case in The Temple of Zeus at Olympia makes his heart bubble and urges him to go right now and sit at the door of Fogg awaiting Professor Chase.

Perhaps no other people have had the healthy animation and the sensitive and earnest imagination of the Greeks. Nature held for them a kind of religious ecstasy: the mountain, the water, and the wood were peopled with divinities. There was Athena, queen of the air; there was Poseidon, god of the sea; Hephaestus, god of fire; Hermes, messenger and herald of the gods. Alas, that such a way of looking at nature should ever pass away!

It is this artistic feeling of the pious Greeks and a combination of the personification of natural phenomena with that of deified heroes, that led them to express the meaning and achievements of their Gods in the eloquent sculpture and temples for which they have been heralded through the ages. And it is for this, for all the glory of the Greeks, that the Vagabond goes to the Fogg Barge Room at 11 this morning to see and hear more about Greek Art, especially The Temple of Zeus at Olympia.