The halls and saloons on the ground-floor were paved with marble or mosaic work,[[293]] which often, if we may judge from the specimens left us by their imitators, represented pictures of the greatest elegance, containing, among other things, likenesses of the loveliest divinities of Olympos.[[294]] These mosaics were wrought with minute shards of precious marbles of various colours, interspersed with pieces of amber,[[295]] and, probably, also, of glass, as was the fashion in Italy, where whole hyaline floors have been found consisting either of one piece or of squares so finely joined together, that the sutures were invisible to the naked eye. No mention, I believe, is made in Greek authors of lining the walls of apartments with glass, or even of glass windows,[[296]] which, however, were common in the cities of Magna Græcia in the age immediately succeeding that of our Saviour. It is extremely probable, however, that as the Greeks were as well acquainted as the Romans with the properties of the lapis specularis;[[297]] they likewise made use of thin plates of this stone, or talc, or gypsum, as they still do in Egypt for window-panes. So much, indeed, seems inferable from a passage of Plutarch,[[298]] as, also, that transparent squares of horn were employed for the same purpose, as oyster-shells and oiled paper still are in China. Previously, however, the windows[[299]] (sometimes square and situated high in the wall, sometimes reaching from the ceiling to the floor) were closed with lattice-work[[300]] in iron, bronze, or wood, over which, in bad weather, blinds of hair-cloth or prepared leather were usually drawn.
The ceilings at first consisted merely of the beams, rafters, and planks, forming the roof, and supporting the layers of earth or straw that covered it; but, by degrees, the wood-work was carefully painted, and arranged so as to form a succession of coffers and deep sunken panels. Sometimes the whole ceiling consisted of chamfered, or fretted cedar work,[[301]] or of cypress wood, or was covered with paintings in blue and gold, and supported on columns[[302]] lofty and deeply fluted for the purpose, as has been ingeniously conjectured,[[303]] of receiving spears into the semi-cylindrical cavities thus formed. If this idea be well founded, we have a very satisfactory reason of the origin of fluting columns, and it appears to be perfectly consistent with Homer’s account of Odysseus’s chamber, where a number of lances are spoken of standing round a pillar.[[304]]
The principal apartments, according to the fashion still prevailing in the East, were furnished with divans,[[305]] or broad immovable seats, running along the walls, which are now stuffed soft atop with cotton, and covered with scarlet or purple, bordered by gold fringe a foot deep. In the Homeric age they would appear to have been of carved wood, inlaid with ivory and gold, and studded with silver nails.[[306]] For these divans they had a variety of coverings, sometimes skins, at others purple carpets, in addition to which they, as now, piled up, as a rest for the back or elbow, heaps of cushions, purple above, and of white linen beneath.[[307]] By degrees, these seats became movable and were converted into couches or sofas, manufactured of bronze, or silver, or precious woods, veneered with tortoiseshell.[[308]] In the palaces of oriental sultans they are sometimes made of alabaster, encrusted with jewels. Somewhere in the more retired parts of the Domos were the picture-gallery and library, of neither of which have we any exact description. The former, however, faced the north, and the latter the west. If the libraries of the Greeks at all resembled in form and dimensions those found at Pompeii, they were by no means spacious; neither, in fact, was a great deal of room necessary, as the manuscripts of the ancients stowed away much closer than our modern books,[[309]] and were sometimes kept in circular boxes, of elegant form, with covers of turned wood. The volumes consisted of rolls of parchment, sometimes purple at the back,[[310]] or papyrus, about twelve or fourteen inches in breadth, and as many feet long as the subject required. The pages formed a number of transverse compartments, commencing at the left, and proceeding in order to the other extremity, and the reader, holding in either hand one end of the manuscript, unrolled and rolled it up[[311]] as he read. Occasionally these books were placed on shelves, in piles, with the ends outwards, adorned with golden bosses,[[312]] the titles of the various treatises being written on pendant labels.
If we proceed now to the court[[313]] dividing the Domos from the Thalamos we shall perceive, on both sides of the door leading out of the Andron, flights of steps ascending to the upper chambers where, in the heroic ages, the young men and strangers of distinction usually slept. Thus, in the palace of Ithaca, Telemachos had a bed-chamber on the second story, whence the poet is careful to observe he enjoyed a good prospect.[[314]] In later times, however, there were, on the ground floor, suites of apartments, denominated Xenon, appropriated to the use of guests, who there lived freely and at ease as in their own houses.
At the further extremity of the interior court a steep flight of steps led to an elevated basement and doorway, which formed the entrance into the thalamos.[[315]] This part of the house would appear to have been laid out in a peculiar manner, consisting, first, of a lofty and spacious apartment,[[316]] where all the females of the family usually sat while engaged in embroidery or other needlework.[[317]] It likewise formed the nursery, and, at its inner extremity, in a deep recess, the bed of the mistress of the family appears to have stood, on either side of which were doors leading to flights of steps into the garden, set apart for the use of the women.
It has by many been supposed, that the Thalamos was a chamber particularly appropriated to the use of young unmarried ladies; but, since we find Helen and Penelope inhabiting the Thalamos, it may be presumed that it was common to all the females of the house. Hector, in his visit to Paris, finds him in the Thalamos, turning about and polishing his arms, as if he meant to use them, while, close at hand, are Helen and her maids engaged in weaving or embroidery. The word was often used in the same signification as Gynæconitis,[[318]] or “the harem;” and, therefore, when Theocritus[[319]] speaks of a “maiden from the Thalamus,” and Phocylides, with the suspicious caution of a more vicious age, advises that young women be kept in “well-locked Thalamoi,” it is clear that the female apartments generally are meant. These were, in Sparta, called οα̈ (which, as is well known, in the common language of Greece, signifies[signifies] eggs), whence, according to Clearchos,[[320]] the fable which describes Helen proceeding from an egg, because born and educated in the chambers so called. Throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey we find the poet speaking of this part of the house as inhabited by women. Here lived Penelope,[[321]] far from the brawls of the suitors who crowded the halls of the Domos; and here Ares pressed his suit with success to Astyoche and Polymela, who both became the mothers of valiant sons.[[322]] From which, among many other circumstances, it is manifest that, in those ages, the sexes met easily, even the entrance to the harem not being impracticable to a lover.
The bedchambers of the young unmarried women appear to have flanked the great central hall of the Thalamos, and here the female slaves likewise slept, apparently in recesses, near the chamber-doors of their mistresses, as we find particularly remarked in the case of Nausicaa and her maids. At Athens, the door of communication between the Andron[[323]] and the Gynæconitis was kept carefully barred and locked to prevent all intercourse between the male and female slaves, the keys being entrusted solely to the mistress of the house.
As these apartments were less exposed than any other portion of the building, and far more carefully guarded, it became customary, as in the East it still is, to lay up in the Thalamos, more especially in the dark basement story, much valuable property, such as arms, gold, silver, the wardrobe of both sexes, and even oil and wine. Among the Romans, or, indeed, among the Greeks, of a later age,[[324]] this step would scarcely have been taken, lest the ladies should have grown too assiduous in their attention to the skins. But in remoter ages these sordid fears had no existence. Accordingly, we find the prudent Odysseus, who apprehended, perhaps, the tricks of his domestics, stowing away his casks of choice old wine in the Thalamos, doubtless, considering it safer there, under the keeping of Euryclea, than it would have been anywhere else in the palace.[[325]]
In later and more civilized ages, the Thalamos was still used for the same purposes; for, in the establishment of Ischomachos, a pattern of Attic economy, we find that the more valuable portion of the family wardrobe, with the plate and other costly utensils, was there deposited. Corn, according to the suggestions of common sense, they laid up in the driest rooms, wine in the coolest. The apartments into which most sunshine found its way were appropriated to such employments and to the display of such furniture as required much light.[[326]] Their dining-rooms, where, also, the men usually sat when at home, they carefully contrived so as to be cool in summer and warm in winter, though, in severe weather, a good fire was often found necessary.[[327]] The same judicious principle commonly regulated the erection of their habitations, which were divided into two sets of apartments, suited to the two great divisions of the year. As we have already remarked, the principal front looked towards the south, that it might catch the rays of the wintry sun, whose more vertical summer beams were excluded by broad verandahs, or colonnades.
In what part of the edifice stood the bathing-room (βαλανεῖον, so called from its having, in remoter ages, been heated with acorns, βάλανοι)[[328]] I have been unable to discover, though it appears certain that, even so far back as the heroic ages, a chamber was always set apart for the bath. At first, doubtless, they were content with cold water; but that this was soon succeeded by warm water[[329]] may be conjectured from the tradition ascribing the first use of it to Heracles, whence warm baths were ever afterwards called the Baths of Heracles.