That opinion has not survived the essay by Mr. J. L. Myres on the "Plan of the Homeric House." {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. XX, 128-150.} Quite apart from arguments that rest on the ground plans of palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns, Mr. Myres has proved, by an exact reading of the poet's words, that the descriptions in the Odyssey cannot be made intelligible on the theory that the poet has in his mind a house of the Hellenic pattern. But in his essay he hardly touches on any Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that we must take other Homeric houses into consideration. {Footnote: Homerische Paläste. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.} The prae-Mycenaean house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the Hellenic house of historic days; between these comes the Mycenaean and Homeric house; "so that the Mycenaean house stands out as an intrusive phenomenon, of comparatively late arrival and short of duration..." {Footnote: Myres, Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xx. p. 149.} Noack goes further; he draws a line between the Mycenaean houses on one hand and the houses described by Homer on the other; while he thinks that the "late Homeric house," that of the closing Books of the Odyssey, is widely sundered from the Homeric house of the Iliad and from the houses of Menelaus and Alcinous in earlier Books of the Odyssey. {Footnote: Noack, p. 73.}
In this case the Iliadic and earlier Odyssean houses are those of a single definite age, neither Mycenaean of the prime, nor Hellenic—a fact which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that the house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the later addition of an upper storey, as Noack supposes, and of women's quarters, and of separate sleeping chambers for the heads of the family.
The Iliad, save in two passages, and earlier Books of the Odyssey may not mention upper storeys because they have no occasion, or only rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleeping chambers while others of the same period had not, as we shall prove from the Icelandic parallel.
Mr. Myres's idea of the Homeric house, or, at least, of the house of Odysseus, is that the women had a meguron, or common hall, apart from that of the men, with other chambers. These did not lie to the direct rear of the men's hall, nor were they entered by a door that opened in the back wall of the men's hall. Penelope has a chamber, in which she sleeps and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber, unoccupied during her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor. The women's rooms are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in the courtyard are chambers. Telemachus has his {Greek: Thalamos}, or chamber, in the men's courtyard. All this appears plain from the poet's words; and Mr. Myres corroborates, by the ground plans of the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae, a point on which Mr. Monro had doubts, as regards Tiryns, while he accepted it for Mycenae. {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, ii. 497; Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx. 136.}
Noack {Footnote: Noack, p. 39.} does not, however, agree.
There appears to be no doubt that in the centre of the great halls of Tiryns and of Mycenae, as of the houses in Homer, was the hearth, with two tall pillars on each side, supporting a louvre higher than the rest of the roof, and permitting some, at least, of the smoke of the fire to escape. Beside the fire were the seats of the master and mistress of the house, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The place of honour was not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like the high table in college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric house the {Greek: prodomos}, or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not identical with the {Greek: aethousa}, or portico, though he admits that the two words "are used indifferently to describe the sleeping place of a guest." {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, xx. 144, 155.} This was the case at Tiryns; and in the house of the father of Phoenix, in the Iliad, the prodomos, or forehouse, and the aethousa, or portico, are certainly separate things (Iliad, IX. 473). Noack does not accept the Tiryns evidence for the Homeric house.
On Mr. Myres's showing, the women in the house of Odysseus had distinct and separate quarters into which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; and in his absence Penelope sleeps upstairs, where there are several chambers for various purposes.
Granting that all this is so, how do the pictures of the house given in the final part of the Odyssey compare with those in the {Blank space} and with the accounts of the dwellings of Menelaus and Alcinous in the Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate quarters, and the lord and lady of the house sleep in the great hall, and have no other bedroom, while there are no upper chambers in the houses of the Iliad, except in two passages dismissed as "late."
If all this be so, then the Homeric period, as regards houses and domestic life, belongs to an age apart, not truly Mycenaean, and still less later Hellenic.
It must be remembered that Noack regards the Odyssey as a composite and in parts very late mosaic (a view on which I have said what I think in Homer and the Epic). According to this theory (Kirchhoff is the exponent of a popular form thereof) the first Book of the Odyssey belongs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas, and do suit Kirchhoff's—this is the regular method of Homeric criticism. The whole cruise of Telemachus (Book IV.) is also regarded as a late addition: on this point English scholars hitherto have been of the opposite opinion. {Footnote: Cf. Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. 313-317.}