Finally reaching Athens veiled in olive groves the traveller likely sought venerable Kleophrades the vase-painter whose accrued thirty-year career fed our museum troves.*17 Athenians were known as deeply religious so Pegasos climbed to the Acropolis reserved for gods and heroes. Hermes’ pensive statue graced its marble portal. Contentedly alone, he surely observed Praxiteles’ stone glories from all their perfect angles before sighting friezes and frescoes detailing battles and revealing his own mother, or let us say Medusa’s awesome mien. Amidst this vast array, trophies won by Alicibiades’ horses at Nemea were displayed. Certain sculpted horsemen on display were presumed, sons of Xenophon. A telling bronze loomed apart; the Trojan horse. Another bronze depicted Athena striking those daring a penchant for her banned flute. She was also present showing a jointed olive plant, her astute gift to Athens, and bearded Poseidon figured too, presenting the limpid wave. Athena’s sacred residence, the splendid Parthenon, stored gold guarded by griffins — often minted with Pegasos. Nearby a revered statue provoked the temple hush, Athena Parthenos sculptured by Phidias. Pressed in pale ivory as a symbol upon her breast smouldered Medusa. The goddess upheld Nike (victory) in one hand whilst the other grasped a spear inclined towards a snake entwined. Perhaps uneasy the horse turned his head. In doing so he beheld between tapered columns, a marine vista. Anxious to roam he would have left Attica and its lyrics by dark, overflying his father’s beacon temple, nostalgic Sounion, (The Temple of Poseidon) an Odyssey landmark offering sailors their final and first scene departing and returning home to the motherland.

Bypassing formal entry authorization to this harsh land banned to “corrupting” foreigners he might next have briefly stepped into Sparta to inspire a text historian and horseman Xenophon the Athenian prepared, “The Art of Horsemanship”. *25 Therein equine care and psyche would be suitably defined as far as Pegasos was concerned. Spirited Xenophon incited mirth at the Spartans expense when airing their commercial affairs dispensed by carted wagon loads hauling iron bars, oboloi, rather than using sense and silver coins as Athens and other civilized nations. Considering the numerous coins issued in his honour, Pegasos may have grinned too.