Sir John Chardin says that “The Khan of Persia caused a tent to be made which cost two millions: they called it the house of gold;” and it was resplendent with embroideries.[445] These are comparatively modern works, and sound commonplace and vulgar compared to those of Greece and Egypt.
The Greeks imitated the tents and temporary buildings of the Eastern monarchs. This phase of Oriental luxury was imported by Alexander the Great, and we have the description of two of his gorgeous creations at Alexandria, where he outrivalled the ancient traditional glories of Assyria and Persia. His own tent was supported by fifty golden pillars, carrying a roof of woven gold, embroidered in shimmering colours, and divided from the surrounding court, filled with guards and retainers, by scarlet and white curtains of splendid material and design.
But more gorgeous is the account of the tent in which he entertained ninety-one of his companions-in-arms on the occasion of his marriage. This tent was supported by columns twenty cubits high, plated with silver and gold, and inlaid with precious stones. The walls of the court were formed by curtains adorned with figures worked in gold, and were hung from beams plated with the precious metals, to match the columns. The outer court was half a mile in circumference.[446]
Yet Alexander’s wedding-tent was exceeded in splendour by that erected by Ptolemy Philadelphus for his great pomp at Alexandria, described by Kallixenos, as cited by Athenæus.[447] This tent, crowned with golden eagles, was supported by pillars fifty cubits high. They upheld an architrave with cross-beams covered with linen, on which were painted coffers, to imitate the structure of a solid roof. From the centre was suspended a veil of scarlet bordered with white. The pillars in the four angles represented palm-trees of gold, and the intermediate columns were fashioned as thursi, and were probably wreathed with golden vines and bunches of grapes made of amethysts, as we know of a Persian tent so adorned, and the whole idea of the erection was evidently fresh from the East.[448] A frieze eight cubits high was composed of niches containing groups of tragic, comic, and Satyric figures “in their natural garb;” and nymphs and golden tripods from Delphi. The tent was separated from the outer peristyle by scarlet hangings, covered with choice skins of wild beasts. Upon these were hung the celebrated Sikyonian pictures, the heritage of the Ptolemaic dynasty, alternating with portraits and rich hangings, on which were embroidered the likenesses of kings, and likewise mythological subjects. Between these and the frieze hung gold and silver shields. Opposite the entrance, vessels of the most costly materials and workmanship, valued at 10,000 talents of silver, were ranged, so as to strike the eye of all who entered there. Golden couches supported by Sphinxes were placed along the sides of the tent, furnished with soft purple woollen mattresses, and coverings gaily and exquisitely embroidered. The floor was strewn with fresh blossoms, except where a most costly Persian carpet covered the centre. In the doorways and against the pillars stood a hundred precious statues by the greatest artists.
This description dazzles the imagination! To be an upholsterer (a vestiarius) in those days was to be an engineer, architect, and artist! Semper, from whose translation we are quoting, remarks that the luxurious “motive” of such an erection naturally arose from the desire to make use of the mass of artistic materials acquired by conquest, and the effort to reduce them to certain architectural principles already accepted.[449]
That Alexander did not purposely destroy the Persian embroideries is evident from the fact that Lucullus speaks of them 200 years later.
Rome accepted and adopted all the Oriental uses of hangings, in the Temple and the house for temporary festive occasions.
By both Greeks and Romans hangings were used in triumphal processions, covering immense moving cars or draping the temporary buildings which lined the avenues of their progress. Also the funeral pyres which Greece and Rome copied from Assyria were hung with splendid materials and embroideries. Without describing one of these awful erections, it is impossible to give any idea of how much artistic treasure was thrown into the flames which consumed the remains of a great man. The funeral pyre dedicated by Alexander to his friend Hephæstion recalls that erected by Sardanapalus in one of the courts of his own palace, on which he perished, surrounded by his wives and his treasures. Hephæstion’s catafalque was built of inflammable materials, 250 feet high, raised in many stories, and hung with pictorial tapestries, painted and embroidered. Each story was adorned with images of ivory and gold. In the upper story were enormous hollow figures of Sirens, filled with singers, who chanted the funeral odes.[450] It is to be hoped that they were released before the conflagration.
The records of such extravagant funeral ceremonies teach us how much of human thought, how much of art and beauty which had helped to civilize the world, were torn from the places they were intelligently designed to decorate, heaped up by the conquerors, and as ruthlessly spent and destroyed for the boast of a day.[451]
Christian Rome adopted the traditions of Pagan decoration, and introduced them in her worship, processions, and shows. A great religious procession like that of the “Corpus Domini” in our own times, has reminded us of a Roman triumph. The baldachini and the banners; the torches; the streets, festooned with draperies; even the Pagan emblems, which have been converted into Christian symbolism—all these were the echoes of classical days; but they are fast disappearing. Two thousand years will have worn out and effaced these customs, and our children will not see them.