Stealing in like robbers, the pair hid themselves in the outer shadow of the columns of the _elaiothesion_, or place where the ancient wrestlers used to rub themselves over with oil.
From behind these columns could be seen the _ephebeion_, a quadrangular space open to the sky, originally laid out for disk-throwing, and now newly strown with fresh sand.
At twenty paces from him stood a young girl entirely naked. His eyes swept over her wonderful body. She was holding a discus in her hand.
Julian longed instinctively to beat a retreat; but turning, he saw in the eyes of Publius and upon the whole of that lean tawny face such a look of admiration, that he understood that the adorer of Hellas, in bringing him to the place, had been moved by no shameful thought; that enthusiasm was wholly sacred.
Publius, seizing the hand of Julian, murmured:
"Look! We are now nine centuries back, in ancient Laconia. Do you remember the verses of Propertius--
"Multa tuæ, Sparte, miramur jura palæstræ, Sed mage virginei, tot bona gymnasii, Quod non infames exercet corpore ludos Inter luctantes nuda puella viros?"
Now he gazed eagerly and without shame at the girl hurling the disk. Blushes were unworthy of a philosopher.
She retreated some steps, inclined her body forward, and advancing the left leg made a swift bounding movement, and shot the metal circle so high that it shone in the rising sun, and in falling struck the farthest pillar. It was like watching the motions of a statue by Phidias.
"That shot was the best," said a little twelve-year-old damsel, clad in a rich tunic and standing near the column.
"Myrrha, give me the disk," replied the player. "I can throw it higher than that, as you shall see. Meroë, get farther out of the way. I might hurt you, as Apollo hurt Hyacinthus."
Meroë, an old Egyptian, to judge by her multi-coloured vestments and tanned visage, was preparing in alabaster jars perfumes for a bath. Julian understood that the mute slave of the gate and the white-horsed chariot outside must belong to these two votaries of the Laconian games.
After the disk-throwing the young girl took from Myrrha a bow and a quiver, and drew thence a long arrow. She aimed at a black circle at the opposite end of the _ephebeion_; the string hummed, the arrow flew whistling and stuck in the target: then a second, then a third.