In the first place it was common in Attica to erect country-houses in the midst of a grove of silver firs,[[1077]] which in winter protect from cold, and in summer attract the breezes that imitate in their branches the sound of trickling runnels, or the distant murmur of the sea. Towards the centre of the grove, with a spacious court in front and a garden behind, stood the house,[[1078]] sometimes with flat, sometimes with pointed roof, ornamented with a picturesque porch, and surrounded with verandahs or colonnades. Occasionally opulent persons had on the south front of their houses large citron trees,[[1079]] growing in pots, on either side the door, where they were well watered and carefully covered during winter.[[1080]] In the plainer class of dwellings, numerous outhouses, as stables, sheds for cattle,[[1081]] henroosts, pigstyes, &c., extended round the court, while the back-front, generally in the East the principal, opened upon the garden or orchard.
Much pains was usually taken in selecting the site of a farmhouse,[[1082]] though opinions of course varied according to the peculiar range of experience on which they were based. In general such positions were considered most favourable as neighboured the sea, or occupied the summits or the slopes of mountains,[[1083]] more especially if looking towards the north.[[1084]] The vicinity of swamps and marshes, and as much as possible of rivers, was avoided, together with coombs, or hollow valleys, and declivities facing the south or the setting sun. If necessitated by the nature of the ground to build near the banks of a stream, the front of the dwelling was carefully turned away from it, inasmuch as its waters communicated an additional rigour to the winds in winter, and in summer filled the atmosphere with unwholesome vapours. The favourite exposure was towards the east whence the most salubrious breezes were supposed to blow, while the cheerful beams of the sun, as soon as they streamed above the horizon, dissipated the dank fogs and murkiness of the air. Notwithstanding the warmth of the climate, moreover, they loved such situations as were all day long illuminated by the sun, whilst every care was taken to fence out the sirocco, a moist and pestilential wind, blowing across the Mediterranean from the deserts of Africa. In Italy, nevertheless, the farmer often selected for the site of his mansion the southern roots of mountains, further defended from Alpine blasts by a sweep of lofty woods.
According to the fashion prevailing in antiquity, farmhouses were built high, large, and roomy, though Cato[[1085]] shrewdly advises, that their magnitude should bear some relation to that of the domain, lest the villa should have to seek for the farm, or the farm for the villa.
Much, however, would depend upon the taste of the individual; but in a plain farmhouse more attention appears to have been paid to substantial comfort, and something like rough John-Bullism, than to that cold finical elegance which certain persons are fond of associating with whatever is classical. An Attic farmer of the true old republican school was anything but a fine gentleman. He scorned none of the occupations or productions by which he lived. On entering his dwelling you found no small difficulty in steering between bags of corn,[[1086]] piles of cheeses, hurdles of dried figs[[1087]] or raisins, while the racks groaned with hams[[1088]] and bacon flitches. If they resembled their descendants,[[1089]] too, even their bedchambers were invaded by some species of provisions, for there in the present day you often behold long strings of melons suspended like festoons from the rafters. In one corner of the ground-floor stood a corbel filled with olive-dregs, recently pressed, in another a wool-sack or a pile of dressed skins.[[1090]] Yonder in the room looking into the garden, with the honey-suckle twining about the open lattice, were madam’s loom and spinning-wheel, and carding apparatus, and work-baskets; and there with the lark[[1091]] might you see her, serene and happy, suckling her young democrat, and rocking the cradle of a second with her foot, thriftily giving directions the while to Thratta, Xanthia or “the neat-handed” Phillis.[[1092]]
The kitchen must sometimes have been in fine disorder; geese and ducks waddling across the floor, picking up the spilled grain, or snatching away the piece of bread and honey which my young master had just put down on the stool to play at a game of romps with Thratta. Up in the dusky corner there, behind a huge armchair or settle, you may discern a very suspicious looking enclosure, from which, at intervals, issues a suppressed grunt; it is the pigsty.[[1093]] But be not offended; the practice is classical; and pigs, in my apprehension, are as pleasant company as geese and many other animals. Now, that geese were fed even about palaces, we have the testimony of Homer, whose Penelope, the[the] beau idéal of a good housewife, says—
“Full twenty geese have we at home, that feed
On wheat in water steeped.”[[1094]]
But the whole economy of geese-feeding[[1095]] has been transmitted to us; in the first place, the birds usually preferred were those most remarkable for their size and whiteness.[[1096]] The ancients esteemed the variegated, or spotted, as of inferior value. The same rule applied to fowls. The chenoboscion,[[1097]] or enclosure in which the geese were kept, was commonly situated near ponds or freshes,[[1098]] abounding with rich grass and aquatic plants. Geese, it was observed, are not nice in the article of food, but devour eagerly nearly all kinds of plants, though the chick-pea, and the couch-grass, the laurel and the laurel-rose,[[1099]] were by the ancients supposed to be hurtful to them. Of their eggs some were hatched by hens, but such as were designed to be sitten on by the goose herself, (who, during the period of incubation[[1100]] was fed on barley steeped in water,) were marked by writing or otherwise, to distinguish them from the eggs of their neighbours, which it was thought she would not be at the pains to hatch. For the first ten days after they had broken the shell the young goslings were kept within-doors, where they were fed on wheat steeped in water, polenta a preparation of barley-meal dried at the fire, and chopped cresses. This period over, they were driven out to feed and afterwards to water; they who tended them taking great care that they should not be stung by nettles, or pricked by thorns, or swallow the hair[[1101]] of pigs or kids, which they imagined to be fatal to them.
When full-grown geese were intended to be fattened, the custom was, to confine them in dark and extremely warm cells.[[1102]] Their food was scientifically varied and regulated, proceeding from less to more nutritious, until they were judged fit for the table. At first their diet consisted of a preparation composed of two parts polenta, and four parts bran boiled in water. Of this they were permitted to eat as much as they pleased three times a day, and once again at midnight, while water was furnished them in abundance. When they had continued on this regimen for some time, they were indulged with a more luxurious table,—nothing less than the most exquisite dried figs, which, being chopped small, and dissolved in water, were served up as a sort of jelly for twenty days, after which the pampered animal itself was ready for the spit.
Occasionally that delicate and humane device, for the practice of which Germany has, in modern times, obtained so enviable a celebrity, of enlarging preternaturally the dimensions of the liver, was resorted to by the ancients,[[1103]] whose mode of proceeding was as follows: during five-and-twenty days, being cooped up as before in a place of high temperature, the geese were fed with wheat and barley steeped in water, the former of which fattened, while the latter rendered their flesh delicately white. For the next five days certain cakes or balls, denominated collyria,[[1104]] the composition of which is not exactly known, were given them at the rate of seven per day, after which the number was gradually augmented to fifteen, which constituted their whole allowance for other twenty days. To this succeeded the most extraordinary dish of all, consisting of bolusses of leavened dough, steeped in a warm decoction of mallows, by which they were puffed up for four days. Their drink, meanwhile, was still more delicious than their food, being nothing less than hydromel,[[1105]] or water mingled with honey. During the last six days dried figs, chopped fine, were added to their leaven, and the process being thus brought to a conclusion, the gourmands for whom they were intended, feasted on the tenderest geese and the largest livers in the world. It should be added, however, that before being cooked the liver was thrown into a basin of warm water, which the artistes several times changed. Geese, adds the ingenious gastronomer to whom we are indebted for these details, are, both for flesh and liver, much inferior to ganders. The Greeks did not, however, like the Romans and the moderns, select young geese for this species of culinary apotheosis, but birds of a mature age and of the largest size, from two to four years old, which only proves the superior strength and keenness of their teeth.