I.—THE GREEK TOWN AND HOUSE.
Whereas modern life is very much a country life, and we see all our plains and hills studded with farmsteads and well kept houses, it was seldom so with ancient, as it is never so with modern, Greece. In old days the fear of pirates and plunderers, in later days the taste for talking and for politics, kept men from staying in the country, and brought them into the towns, where they found safety and society. The tyrants alone insisted upon country life. Thus we find in Homer that outlying farms belonging to the nobles were managed by trusty slaves, who grazed cattle, and stall-fed them for city use. In Hesiod’s time it was the poor farmer only who dwelt in the country; fashionable and idle people always came together in the towns. The very same facts meet us when we read the Greek novels of the latest age, such as the Story of Daphnis and Chloe. There the rich citizens of Mitylene only come out rarely, like many Irish landlords, to visit their tenants and their flocks. There are only two large instances of Greek gentry living from choice in the country. The first is that of the old Attic gentry, whom Thucydides and Aristophanes describe as living luxuriously on their estates, and coming seldom to Athens. The second is that of the gentry of Elis, who were often, Polybius says, complete strangers for generations to the town. This was so because Attica was protected by her forts and fleets from sudden attack in these early days, and because the Greeks by common consent respected the land of Elis as sacred on account of the Olympic games. Accordingly, Xenophon, who was a sportsman, settled in this country when he retired from his wars. But we must pay our chief attention to city life as the almost universal form of Greek society.
The older Greek towns were usually some miles from the sea, because many pirates went about the coasts. These towns grew out from a castle, or Acropolis, which at first had been the only fortified refuge for the neighboring people in times of danger. Of this we have a remarkable example in the very old ruins of Tiryns on the plain of Argos. When the population increased, they built their towns round this fort, and walled them in. But the Acropolis or hill fort, generally on some steep crag, was of course the strongest and safest part of the town. It was also the seat of the oldest temples, and of the god who took the town under his special charge. Hence it was often a sacred place altogether, and not occupied with common houses. If the town prospered, there grew up at the nearest harbor a roadstead or seaport town, where merchants and sailors carried on their trade. Thus Athens with its Acropolis is three miles from the nearest sea, and more than four miles from the Peiræus, which became its port because the harbor was so excellent. The same may be said of Argos, Megara, and other towns. Thus Corinth had even two ports, one on either sea, and both at some miles distance from the great rock on which its citadel, the Acrocorinthus, was situate. Sparta alone had no citadel, because the passes into its plain were very difficult and easily defended. It had not even walls, but looked like a few mean villages close together. This was a remarkable exception.
The citadel was defended by walls, wherever the natural rock was not steep enough, and supplied with tanks for water, except in such rare cases as that of Corinth which has a rich fountain on the top of its great rock. If you looked down from any of these great citadels upon the town beneath, the most striking objects were always the temples and other public buildings which were meant to be admired from without, whereas the private houses were externally poor and shabby. So also the public squares and markets were large and imposing, often surrounded by colonnades and porticoes where people lay in the sun, or even slept at night. These colonnades were adorned with rows of statues; but the streets were narrow and dirty. The great contrast to any modern city must have been first of all the absence of all spires and pinnacles, as all Greek architecture loved flat roofs, and never built even in many stories. Then the forest of modern chimneys was also absent—an advantage which may be held fully to make up for the absence of even splendid steeples. All private houses were flat and insignificant, for the Greek never intended his house to be admired from without, he merely meant to shut out the noise and the thoroughfare of the street, and spent all his care on inner comforts.
While we build our houses facing the street, with most of their ornament intended to be seen by those who pass by, the Greek did all he could to shut out completely all connection with the street. He never had ground floor windows facing the street, and his house looked like a dead wall with a strong door in it, furnished with a knocker and a handle. This door opened outward, which made it safer for those within, but when they were coming out they used to knock inside lest passers-by might be thrown down when the door was pushed open. Richer houses did not open directly on the street, but on a porch which was not regarded as part of the house. Directly inside the hall door was a narrow hall with a porter’s lodge opening off it, in which a slave sat, who was put to that work or to that of attending boys, when not useful for anything else. You passed through the hall or passage into an open square court, which was the center of the house, and was surrounded by a covered colonnade or cloister. The various men’s rooms and the dining room opened upon this cloister. The same general plan was adopted by the Romans, and inherited by the modern Italians, so that most Italian palaces in Genoa, Florence, and elsewhere are built in this way. Opposite the entrance was a second door, which led from the court into the women’s apartments, and here was situated the bed chamber of the master and mistress of the house. In richer houses the women’s rooms were built round a second court like the first. But more commonly they did not occupy so much room, and were often placed on a second story, raised over the first at the back part of the building, with a staircase going up from the court. The Greeks preferred living on the ground floor, and their houses were not lofty blocks, like those of our streets. The bed rooms and sitting rooms round the court were usually small and dark, being mostly lighted only through their door into the cloister. The upper story had windows. The roof, which was tiled, like ours, was so flat as to allow people to walk upon it. The pantries and store rooms were generally at the back of the house, and near them the kitchen, which alone was supplied with a chimney. The other rooms seldom required a fire, and, if necessary, were heated with braziers of hot coke, or charcoal. The covered way upon which they opened made them cool in summer. Of course the palaces of early kings and the country houses of the rich Attic nobles had larger rooms and courtyards than ordinary city houses, but their plan was not different. Homer describes their halls as ornamented by plates of bright metal on the walls—a fashion preserved in the house of Phocion at Athens, and of which we still have traces in the so-called treasure house of Atreus, near Mycenæ. Fresco painting and rich coloring on the walls did not come into fashion till the fourth century B. C., and then became so common that we find almost all the houses in Pompeii, which was really a Greek town, though in Italy, ornamented in this way. There are large panels of black, scarlet, or yellow, surrounded with the borders of flowers, and in the center of the panel there are figures painted, when the owner could afford it. The same style of ornament, with far better execution, may be seen in the chambers of the palace now excavated on the Palatine at Rome.
As the Greek citizen lived chiefly in the open air, and in public, and regarded his house merely as a safe and convenient place to keep his family and store his goods, it was not to be expected that his furniture should be expensive or elaborate. The small size of the rooms and the dislike of the Greeks for large entertainments also tended to the same economy. Besides, the low valuations of furniture alluded to in several speeches made in the law courts of Athens prove it clearly as a general rule in earlier days, though some cities, such as the rich Sybaris, may have formed exceptions. In later days, with the decay of public spirit, greater luxury prevailed in private life.
We must therefore consider early Greek household furniture to have been cheap and simple, but remarkable for a grace of design and beauty of form which have never since been rivalled. And these were combined with a diligent attention to comfort and to practical use. Thus the Greek chair which is often drawn on vases, and which is reproduced in marble in the front row of the theater at Athens, as we still see it, is the most comfortable and practical chair yet designed. So also the pots and pitchers and vases which have been discovered in endless variety, are equally beautiful and convenient. The chief articles of which we hear are chairs, stools and couches made in ornamental wood work, with loose cushions (unlike our modern upholstery); there were also high-backed arm-chairs, and folding stools often carried after their masters by slaves. Though men of ruder ages and poorer classes were content to sleep between rugs and skins on the ground, and a shake down for a sudden guest was always such (and is so still); yet the Greeks had beds of woolen mattresses stretched on girths. Tables were only used for eating, and were then brought in, and laid loosely upon their legs. In early days each guest had a separate table for himself. This absence of solid tables must have been the most marked contrast between a Greek room and ours. People wrote either on their knees (as they now do in the East) or upon the arm of a couch. Whatever ornaments they kept in their rooms seem to have been placed on tripods, which often carried a vase of precious metal and of elegant workmanship. The wonderful variety and beauty of their lamps must also have been a remarkable feature. They possessed all manner of cups, bowls, jars, and flasks for wine, and water, and oil, and we have long lists of names for kitchen utensils, probably not very different from those found at Pompeii. They used plates and dishes, and sometimes knives and spoons at meals, but never forks.
II.—THE GREEK—HIS DAY AND HIS DRESS.
The Greeks learned the division of the day into twelve hours from Babylon, and Plato is said to have invented a water clock marking the hours of the night in the same way. But in ordinary life, according to the old fashion, a night and the following day were regarded as one whole and divided into seven parts. There were three for the night, one when the lamps were lit, the next the dead hours of the night, and then the dawn, when the cocks begin to crow. The day was divided into four: early morning, the forenoon, when the market place began to fill, the midday heat, and the late afternoon. As in all southern countries now-a-days, where midday is a time of sleep or idleness, so in old times the Greek rose very early, generally at the dawn of day. His ablutions were but scanty, and there is no trace of any bath in the morning. Indeed the general cleanliness of the Greeks must rather be compared with that of other modern nations than with ours. In older days the hair was worn long, and elaborately dressed, as we can see from coins, so that this must have cost some trouble. But shaving the beard did not come in as a general fashion till Alexander’s time, and even then shaving often and having very white teeth are mentioned as rather foppish.