Marriages are said to be celebrated in Abyssinia at the church door–the wedding covenant being thus made before the threshold altar.[[385]]
And so in the earlier temples of Egypt, of Carthage, and of Abyssinia, and in Christian and Muhammadan places of worship, the doorway is held sacred, and, most of all, the threshold, or “floor of the door.”
5. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN EUROPE.
Traces of the primitive sacredness of the doorway and the threshold, in places of worship, are to be found in Europe, ancient and modern, as in Asia and Africa.
The term “threshold” occurs in such prominence in connection with temples, in the earliest Greek literature, as to show that its primitive meaning included the idea of altar, or of sanctuary foundation. Thus the House of Zeus on Olympus is repeatedly spoken of as the “House of the Bronze Threshold.”[[386]] In these references, “the nature of the occurrences, the uniformity of the phrase, the position of the words in the verse, all point to this as an old hieratic phrase, and the meaning evidently is, ‘the house that is stablished forever.’”[[387]]
This term “bronze threshold” occurs more than once in reference to the temple-palace of Alcinoüs.[[388]] Tartarus is described as having gates of iron and a “bronze threshold.”[[389]] Night and day meet as they cross the “great threshold of bronze;” and Atlas upholds heaven at the threshold of the under-world.[[390]]
The treasures of Delphi are described as “within the stone threshold of the archer god, Phoebus Apollo, in Rocky Pytho.”[[391]] And he who seeks counsel at that oracle is spoken of as one who crosses “the stone threshold.”[[392]]
In Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” the Athenian warns the stranger Oedipus that he is on holy ground, in the realm of Poseidon, and that the spot where he now treads is “called the brazen threshold of the land, the stay of Athens.”[[393]] In other words, the bronze threshold is an archaic synonym for the enduring border, or outer limit, of spiritual domain.
This prominence given to the threshold in earlier Greek literature is not, it is true, continued in later writings; yet there are traces of it still in occasional poetic references to the “threshold of life,” and the “threshold of the year,” and the “threshold of old age.” When Homer refers “to houses, to rooms in houses, or to courtyards, the ‘threshold’ is constantly spoken of: a man steps over a threshold, stands at a threshold, sits at a threshold, etc. And so important is the threshold that its material is almost regularly mentioned; it is ash, oak, stone, bronze, etc. In later times all these locutions disappear; men go through doorways, enter, stand in porches, etc., instead.”[[394]] Yet it is the archaic use that points to the primitive prominence of the threshold.
In historic times, however, as in earlier, the altar of sacrifice was to be found, in Grecian and Roman temples, near the threshold of the door. While there were smaller altars, for the offering of incense and bloodless sacrifices, in the interior of temples, the larger and more important altars, for the offering of animal sacrifices, whether of beasts or of men, were before the temple, in front of the threshold,–bomoi pronaoi.[[395]]