Despite the disintegration of their politics and economy, the Greeks can still muster a crew of vestal virgins to light and nurture the Olympic flame.
The ceremony had a bogus feel but, dressed in that clinging material
the Athenian sculptors rendered so miraculously in marble, the virgins
of Vesta the goddess of fire really did look as though they had served
as caryatids or just stepped from an ancient frieze.
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