In speaking elsewhere of the household furniture of the Greeks we necessarily anticipated much of what was to be said respecting cabinet-makers and upholsterers. Some few particulars, however, omitted in that place, shall be here introduced. With respect to the price of furniture at Athens,[[1057]] it seems much better to be silent than by a few imperfect conjectures to confine the mind of the reader. We know absolutely nothing of the matter.
Among the Egyptians, the roots of the Persea,[[1058]] a beautiful fruit-tree, said to have been poisonous in Persia,[[1059]] furnished the materials not only of statues but of bedsteads and tables, which were of a rich dark colour and received a fine polish.[[1060]] There was likewise, in Syria, a species of wood the blackness of which was interveined with ruddy streaks, so that it looked like variegated ebony. From this were manufactured bedsteads, chairs, and other expensive articles of furniture.[[1061]] The maple-tree grows both on plains and mountains. In the latter situation its wood is of a pleasant reddish colour, finely veined and solid,[[1062]] on which account it was much used in superior cabinet-work. The zygian maple, in general beautifully clouded, was so hard, that it required to be steeped in water before it could be wrought.[[1063]] Of all woods the ancients considered that of the cypress[[1064]] the most durable, and it is related in confirmation of this opinion, that the doors of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos, which were made of it, had already lasted four centuries in the time of Theophrastus.[[1065]] It took the finest polish, and was therefore employed in costly cabinet-work. The wood of the tree called thuia (a species perhaps of wild cypress), abounding in Cyrenè[Cyrenè], and the Oasis of Jupiter Ammon,[[1066]] was thought to be incorruptible; and from its roots, which were beautifully clouded, the most delicate articles of furniture were manufactured. Next to these the wood of the mulberry-tree was preferred, which exhibited a dusky grain like that of the lotos.[[1067]] Expensive bedsteads were sometimes made of oxya and citron-wood, the feet of which, among the Persians, were often turned from the wood of the doom-palm,[[1068]] as they were formed among the Greeks from amber.[[1069]] Statues,[[1070]] which ought in truth to be regarded as articles of furniture, were carved from cedar, cypress,[[1071]] lotos, box, and of a smaller size from the roots of olive-trees, because they did not crack.[[1072]] Besides these which were perhaps the more common, we find mention in ancient writers of images of ebony, oak, yew, maple, beech, palm,[[1073]] myrtle, pear, linden, and vine, to which may be added the fig-tree which was frequently preferred on account of its soft texture, lightness, shining whiteness, and close-grain. Occasionally statues of horses were carved of ebony and ivory. As during the prevalence of certain winds several of these kinds of woods were liable to sweat,[[1074]] the vulgar, who understood nothing of the cause, regarded the circumstance as a prodigy.[[1075]]
From the knotted wood of the fir-tree, tablets for painting or writing on were made, the inferior kinds of which were very common; but there was a superior and very beautiful sort used only by the opulent.[[1076]]
Another piece of furniture in all Greek houses was the chest or coffer[[1077]] in which money and plate, or costly garments, were deposited. Articles of this description were frequently manufactured of the finest and most aromatic woods, as cedar for example, and adorned on all sides, as well as on the cover, with numerous figures in relief, sometimes in gold or ivory, as in the case of the celebrated coffer of Cypselos preserved in the treasury at Olympia.[[1078]] Generally, however, they were made of humbler materials; sometimes veneered with thin planks of yew, which took a high polish. Persons of inferior means substituted for these, mallequins of fine basket-work, or plaited from the bark of cherry or linden-tree.[[1079]] We may here remark by the way, that bread-baskets were manufactured from willows and the twigs of chestnut-trees,[[1080]] cleanly peeled, and that in Egypt articles of this description were generally woven or plaited from the leaves of the date and doom-palm, and probably variegated in colour as they are at present. At the court, however, bread-baskets were at one period of gold, but fashioned so as to resemble the rush-baskets in use among the earlier Greeks.[[1081]]
Lanterns, too, in the first instance, were of basketwork,[[1082]] though afterwards manufactured, as in modern times, with thin plates of horn or ivory.[[1083]]
In some parts of Greece when individuals, not possessing costly furniture, desired to give a grand entertainment, they hired whatever articles they stood in need of, as seats, beds, vases, &c., of a broker, whose business, in the island of Samos, was once carried on by the tyrant Polycrates.[[1084]]
As ivory entered largely into the making of furniture among the ancients,[[1085]] the reader will not regret to find here an explanation of the means by which it was rendered soft and tractable. This secret appears hitherto to have escaped the modern writers on Art. Monsieur Dutens[[1086]] and the Milanese editors of Winkelmann[[1087]] observe, that the ancients possessed the art of softening ivory without, however, giving any intimation that they understood in what the secret consisted. But the whole matter was extremely simple, since they merely steeped the piece of ivory about to be worked in a fermented liquor, called zythos,[[1088]] prepared from barley, and drank commonly, with or without a mixture of honey, by all persons in Gaul. Many of these ivory ornaments were produced by the turning-lathe. They turned also from the knots of the Arcadian fir large bowls of a shining black colour.[[1089]] There was even a kind of stone which, being soft when drawn from the quarry, was turned and cut into bowls, plates, and other articles for the table, which were susceptible of a high polish, and became hard by constant exposure to the air.[[1090]]
It was, probably, to the turner’s art that the Greeks owed many of those straight and elegant kinds of walkingsticks,[[1091]] particularly affected by the opulent, and called Persian, doubtless because the use of them came originally from Asia. Others preferred the Laconian scytale,[[1092]] fashioned usually from a piece of whitethorn, and philosophers, sticks of olive-wood.[[1093]] Rustics then, as now, were in the habit of carrying twisted and uncouth walkingstaves, bent sometimes atop, and of heavy materials. The straight light stem of the malachè,[[1094]] and birch, and elder,[[1095]] were likewise in use; while some carried sticks made from the agnus castus or the laurel, which were believed to possess the virtue of preserving those who bore them from accident or injury.[[1096]] The making of umbrellas or parasols, which opened and closed like our own,[[1097]] no doubt constituted a separate branch of industry. These articles, it may be observed, were manufactured with great elegance, with handles gracefully ornamented, and furnished at the periphery[[1098]] with numerous elongated drops. It was, probably, the same tradesmen in whose shops were found those folding-seats, or camp-stools, invented by Dædalos, the use of which seems to have been very common at Athens.[[1099]]
Respecting the manufacture of musical instruments, we have but a few particulars to communicate, though it formed a profitable branch of industry in every part of Greece. Musical instruments were divided by the ancients into three kinds:[[1100]] those which were played by means of the breath,—the pipe, the trumpet, and the flute; those whose harmony resided in their strings, as the lyre and the cithara; and those which produced sound by beating or clashing against each other, as cymbals and the drum. The best trumpets, supposed to have been an invention of the Tyrrhenians,[[1101]] were obtained from Italy, though on many occasions great sea-shells were substituted for those larger instruments. In the East, trumpets were sometimes manufactured of cow-hide, though the usual materials were brass and iron, with a little bone for the mouth-piece.[[1102]] There were two kinds,—the straight and the crooked.
Of the pipe of barley-straw,[[1103]] invented by Osiris, nothing need be said except, that its use and manufacture formed the amusement of shepherds. The fashioning of the common pipe constituted an important branch of industry, particularly in Bœotia, where the reed[[1104]] from which it was made abounded in the Orchomenian marshes,[[1105]] between the Cephisos and the Melas, in the place called Pelecania.[[1106]] The season for cutting, which prevailed up to the age of Antigones, was the month Boedromion; but, for the improvement of the instrument, that musician altered the time, which thenceforward was in the months Scirophorion and Hecatombion.[[1107]] The reeds were prepared in the following manner: being cut, they were piled in a heap with their leaves on, and left in the open air during the whole winter. Having in spring been cleared of their outer integuments, well rubbed and exposed to the sun, they were, during the summer, cut into lengths at the knots, and left a little longer in the open air.[[1108]] The internodial spaces did not fall short of two palms in length, and the best portions of the reed used for making the double pipe[[1109]] was about the middle.[[1110]] Pipes and flutes[[1111]] were likewise manufactured of the leg-bones of stags, at least in Bœotia. The lotos-wood[[1112]] transverse flute was an invention of the Africans. The elymœan flute made of boxwood owed its origin to the Phrygians, and was played during the worship of Cybelè. That called hippophorbos was invented by the last dwellers of Libya, who habitually played on it while pasturing their great droves of horses in the desert.[[1113]] It appears to have been a very simple instrument, fashioned of a piece of laurel-wood, by removing the bark and scooping out the pith. Its sharp shrill sound which could be heard far and near, delighted the ears of the horses, who probably, like the Turks, estimate the merit of music by its loudness. The monaulos, a favourite invention of the Egyptians, spoken of by Sophocles in his Thamyris, was usually played in marriage concerts.[[1114]] The lugubrious funeral-pipe of the Carians was a Phrygian invention. There existed among the Thebans a curious instrument of this kind, probably used in hunting, made from the bones of fawns, with a coating of bronze.[[1115]] The Tyrrhenians, like the rude sportsmen of Europe, drew music from the horn. Among the Phœnicians was a small flute made of goose-bones, not exceeding a span in length, called gingras[[1116]] in honour of Adonis, so named in their language, which emitting a plaintive and melancholy note, was doubtless much used in the wailing orgies of that divinity. Its character being exceedingly simple, it was habitually put into the hands of beginners,[[1117]] and seems to have been very common at Athens. The most extraordinary pipes, however, enumerated by ancient writers, were the ones in which those Scythian tribes denominated by the Greeks, Cannibals, Black Cloaks, and Arimaspians, delighted; and manufactured from the leg-bones of eagles and vultures.[[1118]] The Celts and the islanders of the ocean, our own forefathers, doubtless eschewed the music of vultures’ legs, and contented themselves with the notes of the syrinx.[[1119]]