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THE HISTORY
OF THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
OF
ANCIENT GREECE.
BY J. A. ST. JOHN.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET,
=Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.=
1842.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. BENTLEY, WILSON, and FLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
CONTENTS
OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
-------
BOOK III.
CHAPTER PAGE
IV. Marriage Ceremonies 1
V. Condition of Married Women 28
VI. Toilette, Dress, and Ornaments 50
BOOK IV.
I. Private Dwellings 75
II. Household Furniture 97
III. Food of Homeric Times—Meat, Fish, &c. 125
IV. Poultry, Fruit, Wine, &c. 150
V. Entertainments 170
VI. Entertainments (_continued_) 197
VII. The Theatre 220
VIII. The Theatre (_continued_) 248
BOOK V.
RURAL LIFE.
I. The Villa and the Farmyard 269
II. Garden and Orchard 301
III. Vineyards, Vintage, &c. 335
IV. Studies of the Farmer 362
V. The Various Processes of Agriculture 381
VI. Pastoral Life 401
THE HISTORY
OF THE
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
OF
ANCIENT GREECE.
BOOK III.
CHAPTER IV.
MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.
When marriage was determined on, whether love or interest prompted to
it, the business part of the transaction, which in all countries is
exceedingly unromantic, was delegated, as in China, to a female
matchmaker,[1] whose professional duties appear to have been considered
important. She carried the lovers proposals to the family of his
mistress, or rather, perhaps, broke the ice and paved the way for him.
In the earlier ages men, no doubt, performed this delicate office
themselves, or entrusted it to their parents; as in Homer we find
Achilles declaring, that his father Peleus shall choose a wife for him.
Earlier still, if we may credit certain prevalent traditions, men
dispensed altogether with such preliminaries and lived “more pecudum”
with the first females who came in their way; a state of barbarism from
which it is said they were reclaimed by Cecrops.[2] But, to whomsoever
this fable may trace its origin, it is evidently unworthy of the
slightest credit. Of times sunk in such an abyss of ignorance no record
could remain, or even of many succeeding revolutions of manners touching
close upon the orbit of civilisation. If, however, the tradition arose
originally out of any real innovation in manners, it may refer to the
partial abolition of polygamy, which, whether made by Cecrops or not,
was an important step in the progress of the Greeks towards polished
life.
-----
Footnote 1:
Προμνηστρία. Aristoph. Nub. 41. et Schol. Poll. iii. 41.
Footnote 2:
Athen. xiii. 2. Mr. Mitford defers too much to “the traditions
received in the polished ages” when, upon the authority of such
traditions and of such writers as Justin (ii. 6.), he appears to
conclude that, before the time of Cecrops, the people of Attica were
in knowledge and civilisation inferior to the wildest savages. Hist,
of Greece, i. 58. Upon legends and authors of this description no
reliance can be placed. If society existed, everything “indispensable”
to society also existed; therefore, if marriage be so, it could not be
unknown. Besides, how happens it that this same Cecrops who instituted
marriage did not likewise teach them to sow corn, which, if Egypt was,
when he left it, a civilised country, must have been as familiar to
him as matrimony? This most necessary acquisition, however, they were
left to make many ages afterwards, during the reign of Erechtheus.
Justin, ii. 6.
-----
But if Cecrops ever lived, and should not be regarded as a mere
mythological creation, we must still reject the comparatively modern
tradition which fetches him from Egypt. Coming from the East, he would
more probably have instituted polygamy than the contrary. In every point
of view the tradition is absurd; for it at once represents the people of
Attica as savages, and as having made considerable advances in the
science of civil government. They have already emerged from the state of
patriarchal rule, not by any means the lowest, and have arrived at the
monarchical period in the history of society—for Cecrops marries the
daughter of king Actæos—yet have not made the first step in
refinement,[3] have not passed the barrier dividing the rudest savage
from even the barbarian,—had not made the discovery that, for the
preservation of society, children must be cared for and maintained,
which is impossible until they have other fathers than the community. We
must, therefore, reject this Cecropian legend, and acknowledge that,
from the earliest times of which any record remains, the people of
Hellas married and were given in marriage.
-----
Footnote 3:
Cf. Goguet, Origine des Lois. iv. 394, where the learned author
contends most chivalrously for the received theory. Apollodorus,
however, represents Cecrops as an Autochthon, συμφύες ἔχων σῶμα ἀνδρὸς
καὶ δράκοντος. iii. 14. 1.—The reason why he was thus said to partake
of two natures—half-man and half-snake—has been very variously and
very fantastically explained. Diodorus Siculus, (i. p. 17,) derives
his title to be considered half a man and half a beast, from his
being, by choice a Greek, by nature a barbarian. Yet he conceives that
it was the beast that civilised the man. Others explain διφυὴς
somewhat differently to mean that he was of gigantic stature and
understood two languages: διὰ μῆκος σώματος οὑτω καλούμενος, ὅς φήσιν
ὁ Φιλόχορος, ἢ ὅτι Αἰγυπτίων τὰς δύο γλώσσας ἠπίστατο.—Euseb. No.
460.—Eustathius, familiar with the fables of the mythology, turns the
tables upon Cecrops, and conceives that he may have civilised himself,
not the Athenians, by settling in Attica. He supposes him ἀπὸ ὄφεως
εἰς ἀνθρωπὸν ἐλθειν, ἐπειδὴ ἐκεῖνος ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἑλλάδα καὶ τὸν βάρβαρον
Αἰγυπτιασμὸν ἀφεις, χρηστοὺς ἀναλάβετο τρόπους πολιτικοὺς.—In Dionys.
Peneg. p. 56.
-----
Whatever the original practice of the Greeks may have been, traces of
polygamy long continued discernible in their manners. Heracles
maintained a seraglio worthy of an Ottoman sultan. His wives, indeed,
like those of a wandering Brahmin, were scattered at convenient points
over the country, that, whithersoever he roamed, he might find lodging
and entertainment; but, as rumours of his different establishments
travelled about, the jealousy of the ladies was at last excited and
proved fatal to him. Ægeus, too, and his brother Pallas, old Priam,
Agamemnon, Theseus, and nearly every public man in the heroic times, are
represented as possessing a harem. Indeed, to judge by the practice of
princes, it would seem as if polygamy were the law of every land; so
habitual is it with them to transgress, in this point, against public
opinion. A report, still current among certain writers, represents
Socrates with two wives, the gentle nature of Xantippe encouraging him,
perhaps, to venture on a second! But even that diligent retailer of
scandal, Athenæus,[4] rejects this story, which, no doubt, originated
with some sophist, who owed the philosopher a grudge. If not in the son
of Sophroniscos, however, at least in Philip of Macedon, the kings of
heroic times found an exact imitator. This Pellæan fox, though he did
not, like the Persian monarch, lead about with him an army of concubines
in his military expeditions, yet, from policy or other motives,
contracted numerous marriages, as many, perhaps, as Heracles. Satyros
has bequeathed to us a curious account of his majesty’s matrimonial
exploits. During his long reign, of from twenty to four-and-twenty
years, the dishes of one nuptial feast had scarcely time to cool before
a new one was in preparation. It was nothing but truffles and rich soup
from June till June. I am unable to furnish a list of all the ladies who
claimed, through Philip’s diffusive love, to be queens of Macedon; but
it may be proper to name a few, to show how the morals of his subjects
must have been improved by his example. The first lady whose landed
attractions won Philip’s heart was _Andatè_, an Illyrian, by whom he had
a daughter, called Cynna. To her succeeded _Phila_, sister of Derda and
Macatè. His next wives were two Thessalian women, _Pherè_ of
Nikesipolis, mother of Thessalonia, and _Philinna_ of Larissa, mother of
Aridæos. Had he sought merely the women these might have sufficed; but
Philip had other views, and, finding marriage a still more expeditious
method of extending his dominions even than conquest, he forthwith added
to the list _Olympias_, who brought him the kingdom of Molossia in
dowry, and, as every one knows, was mother of Alexander. Had the crafty
prince stopped here, posterity, overlooking his immorality, might have
applauded his prudence. But, elated by success, he proceeded to augment
the number of his queens. To Olympias succeeded _Meda_, daughter of
Cithalas, king of Thrace; and, lastly, _Cleopatra_, sister of
Hippostratos, and niece of Attalos. By this time he was somewhat
advanced in years, for Alexander, son of Olympias, approached manhood.
At the feast given in honour of this new marriage, when the wine had
circulated, as was customary among Macedonians, Attalos, who had
probably drunk deep, observed, “At length we shall have legitimate
princes, not bastards!” Alexander, who was present, in resentment of the
affront, threw his goblet in the face of Attalos, who saluted him in the
same way. Upon this, perceiving how matters were likely to proceed,
Olympias fled to Molossia, Alexander into Illyria. Philip lived to have
by Cleopatra one daughter, Europa; but, shortly afterwards, at the
instigation, it is supposed of Olympias and Alexander, was murdered by
Pausanias.[5]
-----
Footnote 4:
Deipnosoph. xiii. 2.—Compare the account in Diogenes Laertius, ii. 5.
10.—The conduct of Socrates, who married Xantippe to prove the
goodness of his temper, was imitated, we are told, by a Christian
lady, who “desired of St. Athanasius to procure for her, out of the
widows fed from the ecclesiastical corban, an old woman morose,
peevish, and impatient, that she might by the society of so ungentle a
person have often occasion to exercise her patience, her forgiveness,
and charity.”—Jeremy Taylor’s Life of Christ, i. 384.
Footnote 5:
Athen. xiii. 5.
-----
Ordinary individuals, however, were restrained from the commission of
such immoralities by the laws, more particularly at Athens, where
marriage was contemplated with all the reverence due to the great
palladium of civilisation. As a necessary consequence, celibacy could be
no other than disreputable, so that, to a man ambitious of public
honour, the possession of a wife and children was no less indispensable
than the means of living.[6] Among the Spartans, bachelors were
delivered over to the tender mercies of the women, and subjected to very
heavy penalties. During the celebration of certain festivals they were
seized by a crowd of petulant viragoes, each able to strangle an ox,[7]
and dragged in derision round the altars of the gods, receiving from the
fists of their gentle tormentors such blows as the regular practice of
boxing had taught the young ladies to inflict.[8]
“And ladies sometimes hit exceeding hard.”
-----
Footnote 6:
Dinarch. in Demosth. § 11. Cf. Poll. viii. 40. Comm. p. 644.
Footnote 7:
Aristoph. Lysistrat. 78, seq.
Footnote 8:
Athen. xiii. 2.
-----
But we shall be the less inclined to judge uncharitably of this somewhat
unfeminine custom, if we consider that, in the ancient world, no less
than in the modern, unmarried and childless women were held but in
slight esteem. And this feeling, which never for a moment slumbers in
society, teaches better than the cant of a thousand sentimentalists what
the true origin of love is.
Of the impediments to marriage arising, among ancient nations, from
relationship or consanguinity, very little is with certainty known. In
the heroic ages, all unions excepting those of parents with their
children appear to have been lawful; for, in the Odyssey, we find the
six sons of Æolos joined in marriage with their six sisters, the manners
of the olden times, abandoned on earth, still lingering among the gods.
Iphidamos has to wife his mother’s sister,[9] and Alcinoös, by no means
a profligate or immoral prince, is united with his brother’s
daughter;[10] Deiphobos, after Paris’s death, takes possession of
Helen,[11] and Helenos, the seer, is united in wedlock with Andromache,
the widow of his brother Hector.[12] But without alleging any further
examples, we may, from the practice imputed to the gods, among whom
scarcely any degree of relationship was a bar to marriage, infer that,
in very early ages, few scruples were entertained upon the subject.
Later mythologists have even imputed to Zeus an illicit amour with his
daughter Aphrodite,[13] but libellously, and in contradiction to the
best ancient authorities.[14] Nature, indeed, has so peremptorily
prohibited the union of parents with their own children, that positive
laws forbidding connexions so nefarious, have in all ages been nearly
unnecessary, though the superstition of the Magi[15] in ancient, and the
profligacy of popes and princes in modern times, have been accused of
transgressing these natural boundaries.
-----
Footnote 9:
Hom. Il. λ. 221, seq.
Footnote 10:
Hom. Odyss. η. 55, seq.
Footnote 11:
Keightley, Mythology, p. 490.
Footnote 12:
Serv. ad Virg. Æn. iii. 297.
Footnote 13:
Virg. Cir. 133.
Sed malus ille puer, quem nec sua flectere mater,
Iratum potuit, quem nec pater, atque avus idem
Jupiter.
Footnote 14:
For Valckernaer’s correction of Eurip. Hippol. 536, where for ὁ Δίος
παῖς, he reads ὄλιγος παῖς, should, I think, be adopted. Diatrib. in
Eurip. Perd. Dram. xv. p. 159, c. His whole defence of Zeus on this
_count_ is triumphant. Still the notes of Monk, Beck, Musgrave, and
the Classical Journal, vi. 80, should be compared.
Footnote 15:
Diog. Laert. Proœm. § 6. To this practice Euripides probably alludes
in the Andromache, v. 173, sqq., where Hermione describes, with scorn,
the profligate manners of the barbarians. Catullus, inveighing against
the impious depravity of a contemporary, observes—
“Nam Magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet,
Si vera est Persarum _impia religio_.”
Epig. lxxxiii. 3, seq. Pope Alexander VI. and the Emperor Shah Jehan
have, in modern times, been accused of similar crimes. Bayle, Dict.
Hist. et Crit. Art. Alexandre VI. and Bernier, Voyages, t. i. On the
prohibited degrees of consanguinity, see Sepulveda, de Ritu Nupt. et
Dispens. i. § 20, where he says, that the Pope could authorize all
unions, save those between parents and children. “Et ideo hodiè non
ligant, nisi quatenus ab ecclesia sunt assumptæ; ac propterea Papa
dispensare potest cum omnibus personis, nisi cum matre et patre, ut
matrimonium contrahant.” Card. Cajetan. ap. Sepulved. ub. sup.
-----
Could we credit the sophist of Naucratis, there was likewise one
distinguished person[16] among the Athenians who coveted the reputation
of equal guilt.
-----
Footnote 16:
Alcibiades. Athen. xii. 48. xiii. 34. Lysias, fr. p. 640.
-----
The marriage of brothers with their own sisters was, in later ages,
considered illegal; not so with respect to half sisters by the fathers’s
side, whom no law forbade men to marry.[17] Still the recorded examples
of those who availed themselves of this privilege are few; but among
them we find the great Cimon, son of Miltiades, who, from affection,
observes Cornelius Nepos, and in perfect conformity with the manners of
his country, took to wife his sister Elpinice.[18] Plutarch, too, speaks
of the union as public and legal, but Athenæus[19] characteristically
insinuates that Elpinice was merely her brother’s mistress. The Spartan
law took a different view of what constitutes sisterhood. Here the
father was everything, and therefore with an uterine sister, as no near
relation, marriage might be contracted.[20] All connexions in the direct
line of ascent or descent were prohibited; but the prohibition extended
not to the collateral branches,[21] uncles being permitted to take to
wife their nieces, and nephews their aunts.
-----
Footnote 17:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 1353.
Footnote 18:
Corn. Nep. Vit. Cim. i. Plut. Cim. § 4, where we find this lady
accused of an amour with the painter Polygnotos, who introduced her
portrait among the Trojan ladies in the Stoa Pœcile.
Footnote 19:
Deipnosophist. xiii. 56. Muretus, Var. Lect. vii. i. discusses the
question, but without throwing much new light upon it.—Andocides cont.
Alcibiad. § 9, assigns Cimon’s amour with Elpinice as the cause of his
banishment. We find, however, Archeptolis, son of Themistocles,
marrying his half-sister Mnesiptolema. Plut. Themistocl. § 32.
Footnote 20:
Meurs. Themis Attica. i. 14. Philo. De Leg. Spec. ii. Eurip. Orest.
545. sqq.
Footnote 21:
Cf. Herod. v. 39. Pausan. iii. 3, 9.
-----
The precise age at which an Athenian citizen might legally take upon him
the burden of a family, is said, without proof, though not altogether
without probability, to have been determined by Solon; for such matters
were in those ages supposed to come within the legitimate scope of
legislation.[22] They attributed to the season of youth a much greater
duration than comports with our notions. It was, in fact, thought to
extend to the age of thirty-five or thirty-seven, more or less: when
entering upon the less flowery domain of manhood, men would need the aid
and consolation of a helpmate. But if there ever existed such a law it
was often broken,[23] for early marriages, though less common perhaps
than in modern times, are constantly alluded to both by historians and
poets. Apprehensions of the too great increase of population already led
philosophers, even in those early ages, vainly to apply themselves to
the discovery of checks, which the irresistible impulses of nature
always render nugatory; and viewing in that light the regulation
attributed to Solon,[24] they, with some variation, adopt it in their
political works. Plato,[25] in accordance with Hesiod’s notion, fixes
for the male, the marriageable age at thirty; but Aristotle, who chose
on most points to differ from his master, allows his citizens seven
years more of liberty. For women the proper age, he thought, is about
eighteen. His reasons are, that the husband and wife will thus flourish
and decay together; and, their offspring inheriting the bloom and
highest vigour of their parents, be at once[26] healthy in body and
energetic in mind.
-----
Footnote 22:
Censor. de Die Natal. 14.
Footnote 23:
Thus Mantitheos, in Demosthenes, marries at the age of eighteen, in
obedience to his father’s wishes.—Contr. Bœot. ii. § 1.
Footnote 24:
Aristot. Polit. ii. 7. vii. 14. Gœttling.—Cf. Malthus on Population,
i. 9, 10.
Footnote 25:
Repub. v. t. vi. p. 237. De Legg. vi. t. vii. p. 452. Hesiod, Opp. et
Dies, 696. Gœttling.
Footnote 26:
Polit. vii. 16. Hist. Anim. vii. 5, 6. Cf. Tac. de Mor. Germ. 20.
Just. Instit. t. x. Brisson. de Jur. Nupt. p. 99.
-----
Winter, more particularly the month of January, thence called Gamelion,
or the “Nuptial Month,” was regarded as the fittest season[27] of the
year for the celebration of marriage; and if the north wind happened to
blow, as at that time of the year it often does, the circumstance was
supposed to be peculiarly auspicious. For this notion several
physiological reasons are assigned; as that, during the prevalence of
that wind, the human frame is peculiarly nervous and full of energy;
that the spirits are consequently light, and the temper and disposition
sweet, cheerful, and flexible. Lingering sparks of ancient superstition
may also have had their share in establishing this persuasion: towards
that quarter of the heavens, as towards an universal _Kebleh_, all the
civilised nations of antiquity turned as the home of their gods; in that
direction point all the openings of the Egyptian pyramids; thither to
the present moment turn the Chinese and Brahmins when they pray, and in
the holy tabernacle of the Jews the Table of Shewbread[28] likewise
faced the north. Attention, too, was paid to the lunar influences; for,
no other circumstance preventing it, it was usual to fix on the full of
the moon, when the festival denominated _Theogamia_, or “Nuptials of the
Gods” was celebrated, in order that religion itself, by its august and
venerable ceremonies, might appear to sanctify the union of mortals
effected under its auspices.
-----
Footnote 27:
Olympiod. in Meteor. c. 6. Meurs. Grec. Fer. v. 240.
Footnote 28:
Exod. xl. 22.
-----
To this practice there are several allusions in ancient writers.
Agamemnon, in Euripides, when questioned by his wife respecting the time
of Iphigenia’s marriage, replies, that it shall take place
“When the blest moon its silvery circle fills.”[29]
And Themis, adjudging Thetis to Peleus, to terminate the contentions of
the gods, selects the same season for the solemnization of the nuptial
rites.
“But when next that solemn eve
Duly doth the moon divide,
For the chieftain let her leave
Her lovely virgin zone aside.”[30]
-----
Footnote 29:
Iphigen. in Aul. 717.
Footnote 30:
Pindar, Isth. Od. viii. 41, seq. Dissen.—Rev. H. F. Cary’s
translation, admirable for its closeness and spirit, p. 212.
-----
Most ancient nations, as the Hebrews, Indians, Thracians, Germans, and
Gauls, regarded women as a marketable commodity; and, in this respect,
the Greeks of early times perfectly agreed with them, buying and selling
their females like cattle.[31] But, by degrees, as manners grew more
polished, this barbarous custom was discontinued, though, in remembrance
of it, presents were still made both to the father and the bride, even
in the most civilised periods. We must, nevertheless, beware that we
infer not too much from these gifts; for equally primitive and prevalent
was the custom imposing upon fathers the necessity of dowrying their
daughters.[32] In the case, too, of the husband’s death this matrimonial
portion devolved to the children, so that if the widow chose,—as widows
sometimes will,[33]—to embark a second time on the connubial sea, her
father was called upon to furnish a fresh outfit. But, if the husband
grew tired of his better half, and would insist on a divorce, or if,
after his death, the sons were sufficiently unnatural to chase their
mother from the paternal roof, the right over the entire dowry reverted
to her.[34]
-----
Footnote 31:
Aristot. Polit. ii. 6. Tacit. de Mor. Germ. 18. Heracl. Pont. v.
Θρακων. Leg. Salic. Art. 46. Hist. Gen. des Voy. vi. 144. Cf. Goguet,
Orig. des Loix, i. 53.
Footnote 32:
In cases where the fathers were unable to dowry them, we find
daughters growing old in the paternal mansion. Demosth. in Steph. i. §
20. Dowries were frequently considerable, amounting sometimes to a
hundred minæ. § 18.
Footnote 33:
On their anxiety to discover the designs of the Fates in this respect,
see Schol. Aristoph. Lysist. 597.
Footnote 34:
Goguet, Orig. des Loix, iii. 127, sqq.
-----
Parties were usually betrothed before marriage by their parents. And
young women, whose parents no longer survived, were settled in marriage
by their brothers, grandfathers, or guardians. Husbands on their
deathbeds sometimes disposed of the hands of their wives, as in the case
of Demosthenes’ father, who bequeathed Cleobula to Aphobos, whom he
likewise appointed guardian of his children. In this instance, the widow
had better have chosen for herself. Aphobos possessed himself of the
dowry, and consented to fulfil the office of guardian, that he might
plunder the children; but the marriage he declined. Another example
occurs in the case of Phormio who, having been slave[35] to an opulent
citizen, and conducted himself with zeal and fidelity, received at once
his freedom and the widow of his master. In all serious matters the
Athenians were a very methodical people, and conducted everything, even
to the betrothing or marrying of a wife, with an attention to form
worthy the quaintest citizen of our own great city.
-----
Footnote 35:
Demosth. pro Phorm. § 8–10.
-----
Potter observes, with great naïveté, that, before men married, it was
customary to provide themselves with a house to live in. The custom was
a good one, and the thrifty old poet of Ascra, undertaking to enlighten
his countrymen in economics, is explicit on the point—
“First build your house and let the wife succeed:”[36]
which, no doubt, is better advice than if he had said “first marry a
wife and next consider where you shall put her.” And we find that, even
among pastoral, young ladies who, in modern poets, make their meat and
drink of love, and hang up a rag or two of it to preserve them from the
elements, in antiquity posed their lovers with interrogations about
comforts. “You are very pressing, my dear Daphnis, and swear you love
me; but that is not just now the question. Have you a house and harem to
take me to?”[37]
-----
Footnote 36:
Opera et Dies, 405.
Footnote 37:
Theocrit. Eidyll. xxvii. 36.
-----
But prudent as they may be considered, the Athenians were still more
pious than thrifty. Before the virgin quitted her childhood’s home, and
passed from the state she had tried, and in most cases, perhaps, found
happy, to enter into one altogether unknown to her, custom demanded the
performance, on the day before the marriage, of several religious
ceremonies eminently significant and beautiful. Hitherto, in the
poetical recesses of their thalamoi, they had been reckoned as so many
nymphs attached to the train of the virgin goddess of the woods. About
to become members of a noviciate more conformable to nature than that of
the Catholic church, they deemed it incumbent on them to implore their
Divinity’s permission to transfer their worship from her to Hymen; and,
the more readily to obtain it, they approached her, in the simplicity of
their hearts, with baskets full of offerings such as it became them to
present and her to receive.[38] Nor was Artemis the only deity sought,
on this occasion, to be rendered auspicious by sacrifice and prayer.
Offerings were likewise made to the Nymphs, those lovely creations with
which the fancy of the Greeks peopled the streams and fountains of their
native land.[39] These rites performed, the future bride was conducted
in pomp to the citadel, where solemn sacrifice was offered up to Athena,
the tutelar goddess of the state, with prayers for happiness, peculiarly
the gift of supreme wisdom.[40] To Hera, also, and the Fates,[41] as to
the goddesses that watched over the connubial state and rigidly punished
those who transgressed its sacred laws, were gifts presented, and vows
preferred; and on one or all of their several altars did the maiden
deposit a lock of her own hair, in remoter ages, perhaps, the whole of
it, to intimate that, having obtained a husband, she must preserve him
by other means than beauty, and the arts of the toilette.[42] At Megara
the young women devoted their severed locks to Iphinoë. Those of Delos
to Hecaerga and Ops,[43] while, like the Athenians, the maidens of Argos
performed this rite in honour of Athena.[44]
-----
Footnote 38:
Theocrit. Eidyll. ii. 66, ibique Schol.
Footnote 39:
Schol. Pind. Pyth. iv. ap. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 238.
Footnote 40:
Suid. v. προτέλεια. t. ii. p. 629. v. Æschyl. Eumen. 799. Cf. Cœl.
Rhodig. xxviii. 24.
Footnote 41:
Poll. iii. 38. Schol. Pind. Pyth. x. 31. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 982.
Kust.
Footnote 42:
Poll. iii. 38. ibique Comm. p. 529, seq. Cf. Spanh. Observ. in Callim.
149, 507. The youth usually cut off their hair on reaching the age of
puberty. Athen. xiii. 83.
Footnote 43:
Pausan. i. 43. 4. Callim. in Del. 292. Spanh. Observat. t. ii. p. 503,
sqq.
Footnote 44:
Stat. Theb. ii. 255, with the ancient commentary of Lutatius.
-----
Having, by the performance of the above rites and others of similar
significance, discharged their instant duties to the gods, and impressed
on their own minds a deep sense of the sacred engagements they were
about to contract, they proceeded to perform the nuptial ceremonies
themselves, still intermingling the offices of religion with every
portion of the transaction. An auspicious day having been fixed upon,
the relations and friends of both parties assembled in magnificent
apparel, at the house of the bride’s father, where all the ladies of the
family were busily engaged in the recitation of prayers and presentation
of offerings. These domestic ceremonies concluded, the bride,
accompanied by her paranymph or bridesmaid, was led forth into the
street by the bridegroom and one of his most intimate friends,[45] who
placed her between them in an open carriage.[46] Their dresses, as was
fitting, were of the richest and most splendid kind. Those of the
bridegroom full, flowing, and of the gayest and brightest colours,[47]
glittered with golden ornaments, and diffused around, as he moved, a
cloud of perfume. The bride herself, gifted with that unerring taste
which distinguished her nation, appeared in a costume at once simple and
magnificent—simple in its contour, its masses, its folds, magnificent
from the brilliance of its hues and the superb and costly style of its
ornaments. She was not, like some modern court dame, a blaze of precious
stones tastelessly heaped upon each other; but through the snowy gauze
of her veil flashed the jewelled fillet and coronet-like sphendone
which, with a chaplet of flowers,[48] adorned her dark tresses; and
between the folds of her robe of gold-embroidered purple, appeared her
gloveless fingers, with many rings glittering with gems. Strings of Red
Sea pearls encircled her neck and arms; pendants, variously wrought and
dropped with Indian jewels, twinkled in her ears; and her feet, partly
concealed by the falling robe, displayed a portion of the golden thonged
sandal, crusted with emeralds, rubies, or pearls. But all these
ornaments often failed to distract the eye from those which she owed to
nature. Her luxuriant hair, which in Eastern women often reaches the
ground:
Her hair in hyacinthine flow,
When left to roll its folds below,
As ’midst her maidens in the ball
She stood superior to them all,
Hath swept the marble, where her feet
Gleamed whiter than the mountain sleet,
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth
It fell and caught one stain of earth;
her hair, I say, perfumed with delicate unguents,[49] such as nard from
Tarsos, œranthe from Cypros, essence of roses from Cyrene, of lilies
from Ægina or Cilicia, fell loosely in a profusion of ringlets over her
shoulders, while in front it was confined by the fillet and grasshoppers
of gold.[50] More perishable ornaments, in the shape of crowns of
myrtle, wild thyme,[51] poppy, white sesame, with other flowers and
plants sacred to Aphrodite, adorned the heads of both bride and
bridegroom.[52]
-----
Footnote 45:
Πάροχος. Suid. v. Ζεῦγος ἡμιονικὸν. t. i. p. 1123, b. Eurip. Helen.
722, sqq.
Footnote 46:
This was the usual practice. When the bride was led home on foot she
was called χαμαίπους a term of disrespect not far removed in meaning
from our word _tramper_. Poll. iii. 40.
Footnote 47:
Aristoph. Plut. 529, et Schol. Suid. v. βαπτά. t. i. p. 533, b.
Footnote 48:
Eurip. Iphig. in Aul. 905. This chaplet was placed on the bride’s head
by her mother. Hopfn. in loc.—In Locrensibus usu erat, ut matronæ ex
lectis floribus nectant coronas. Nam emptagestare serta, vitio
dabatur. Alex. ab Alexand. p. 58. b.
Footnote 49:
Aristoph. Plut. 529. id. Pac. 862.
Footnote 50:
Thucyd. i. 60.
Footnote 51:
Σισυμβρία. Dioscor. ii. 155.
Footnote 52:
Schol. Aristoph. Av. 160. In Bœotia the bride was crowned with a reed
of wild asparagus, a prickly but sweet plant. Plut. Conjug. Præcept.
2. Bion. Epitaph. Adon. 88. On Nuptial Crowns vide Paschal. De
Coronis, lib. ii. c. 16. p. 126, sqq.
-----
The relations and friends followed, forming, in most cases, a long and
stately procession, which, in the midst of crowds of spectators, moved
slowly towards the temple, thousands strewing flowers or scattering
perfume in their path, and in loud exclamations comparing the happy pair
to the most impassioned and beautiful of their nymphs and gods.[53]
Meanwhile, a number of the bride’s friends, scattered among the
multitude, were looking out anxiously for favourable omens, and
desirous, in conjunction with every person present, to avert all such as
superstition taught them to consider inauspicious. A crow appearing
singly was supposed to betoken sorrow or separation, whereas, a couple
of crows,[54] issuing from the proper quarter of the heavens, presaged
perfect union and happiness. A pair of turtle doves, of all omens, was
esteemed the best.[55]
-----
Footnote 53:
Charit. Char. et Callir. Amor. iii. 44.
Footnote 54:
Orus Apollo Hieroglyph. viii. p. 6. b.
Footnote 55:
Meziriac sur les Epitres d’Ovide, p. 190, sqq. Ælian de Animal. Nat.
iii. 9. Alex. ab Alexand. ii. 5, p. 57, b.
-----
On reaching the temple, the bride and bridegroom were received at the
door by a priest, who presented them with a small branch of ivy, as an
emblem of the close ties by which they were about to be united for ever.
They were then conducted to the altar,[56] where the ceremonies
commenced with the sacrifice of a heifer,[57] after which Artemis,
Athena, and other virgin goddesses, were solemnly invoked. Prayers were
then addressed to Zeus and his consort, the supreme divinities of
Olympos;[58] nor, on this occasion, would they overlook the ancient
gods, Ouranos and Gaia, whose union produces fertility and
abundance,[59]—the Graces, whose smile shed upon life its sweetest
charm, and the Fates, who shorten or extend it at their pleasure, were
next in order adored; and, lastly, Aphrodite, the mother of Love, and of
all the host of Heaven, the most beautiful and beneficent to
mortals.[60] The victim having been opened, the gall was taken out and
significantly cast behind the altar.[61] Soothsayers skilled in
divination then inspected the entrails, and if their appearance was
alarming the nuptials were broken off, or deferred. When favourable, the
rites proceeded as if hallowed by the smile of the gods. The bride now
cut off one of her tresses, which, twisting round a spindle, she placed
as an offering on the altar of Athena, while, in imitation of Theseus,
the bridegroom made a similar oblation to Apollo, bound, as an emblem of
his out-door life, round a handful of grass or herbs.[62] All the other
gods, protectors of marriage, were then, by the parents or friends,
invoked in succession, and the rites thus completed, the virgin’s
father, placing the hand of the bridegroom in that of the bride, said,
“I bestow on thee my daughter, that thine eyes may be gladdened by
legitimate offspring.”[63] The oath of inviolable fidelity was now taken
by both, and the ceremony concluded with fresh sacrifices.
-----
Footnote 56:
Theod. Prodrom. de Rhodanth. et Dosicl. Amor. ix.
Footnote 57:
Eurip. Iphig. in Aul. 1113.
Footnote 58:
Poll. iii. 38.
Footnote 59:
Procl. in Tim. t. v, Meziriac. p. 155.
Footnote 60:
Etym. Mag. 220, 53. sqq. Cf. Plut. Conj. Præcept. proœm. t. i. p. 321.
Tauchnitz.
Footnote 61:
Plut. Conj. Precept. 27. Cœl. Rhodig. xxviii. 21.
Footnote 62:
Meurs. Lect. Att. iii. 6, 106, sqq. Herod. iv. 34.
Footnote 63:
Menand. ap. Clem. Alexand. Stromat. ii. p. 421, a. Heins.
-----
The performance of rites so numerous generally consumed the whole day,
so that the shades of evening were falling before the bride could be
conducted to her future home. This hour, indeed, according to some, was
chosen to conceal the blushes of the youthful wife.[64] And now
commenced the secular portion of the ceremony. Numerous attendants,
bearing lighted torches,[65] ran in front of the procession, while bands
of merry youths dancing, singing, or playing on musical instruments,
surrounded the nuptial car. Similar in this respect was the practice
throughout Greece, even so early as the time of Homer, who thus, in his
description of the Shield, calls up before our imagination the lively
picture of an heroic nuptial procession:
“Here sacred pomp and genial feasts delight,
And solemn dance and Hymeneal rite.
Along the streets the new-made brides are led,
With torches flaming, to the nuptial bed.
The youthful dancers in a circle bound
To the soft flute and cittern’s silver sound.[66]
Through the fair streets the matrons, in a row,
Stand in their porches and enjoy the show.”[67]
-----
Footnote 64:
Potter, Arch. Græc. ii. 281.
Footnote 65:
Eurip. Helen. 722. Hesiod, Scut. Heracl. 275, seq. where the torches
are said to be borne by Dmoës.
Footnote 66:
In Hesiod a troop of blooming virgins, playing on the phorminx, lead
the procession. αἱ δ᾽ ὑπὸ φορμίγγων ἄναγον χορὸν ἱμερόεντα. A band of
youths follow, playing on the syrinx. See the note of Gœttling on
Scut. Heracl. 274, p. 117, sqq.
Footnote 67:
Iliad, σ. 490, sqq. Pope’s Translation.
The song on this occasion sung received the name of the “Carriage
Melody,” from the carriage in which the married pair rode while it was
chaunted.[68]
Footnote 68:
Ἁρμάτειον μέλος. Leisner, in his notes on Bos (Antiq. Græc. Pars. iv.
c. ii. § 4.), observes, that in Suidas, Hesychius, and Eustathius (ad
Il. χ. p. 1380. 5), these words have a different meaning from that
which, with Bos and Potter (Antiq. Græc. ii. 282), I have adopted. But
in the passage quoted by Henri de Valois (ad Harpocrat. p. 222), they
would seem to bear the signification above given them.
-----
The house of the bridegroom, diligently prepared for their reception,
was decorated profusely with garlands, and brilliantly lighted up. When,
among the Bœotians, the lady, accompanied by her husband, had descended
from the carriage, its axletree was burnt, to intimate that having found
a home she would have no further use for it.[69] The celebration of
nuptial rites generally puts people in good temper, at least for the
first day; and new-married women at Athens stood in full need of all
they could muster to assist them through the crowd of ceremonies which
beset the entrances to the houses of their husbands. Symbols of domestic
labours, pestles, sieves,[70] and so on, met the young wife’s eye on all
sides. She herself, in all her pomp of dress, bore in her hands an
earthen barley-parcher.[71] But, to comfort her, very nice cakes of
sesamum,[72] with wine and fruit and other dainties innumerable,
accompanied by gleeful and welcoming faces, appeared in the background
beyond the sieves and pestles. The hymeneal lay,[73] with sundry other
songs, all redolent of “joy and youth,” resounded through halls now her
own. Mirth and delight ushered her into the banqueting-room, where
appeared a boy covered with thorn branches, and oaken boughs laden with
acorns, who, when the epithalamium chaunters had ceased, recited an
ancient hymn beginning with the words, “I have escaped the worse and
found the better.”[74] This hymn, constituting a portion of the divine
service performed by the Athenians during a festival instituted in
commemoration of the discovery of corn, by which men were delivered from
acorn-eating, they introduced among the nuptial ceremonies to intimate,
that wedlock is as much superior to celibacy as wheat is to mast. At the
close of the recitation, there entered a troop of dancing girls crowned
with myrtle-wreaths, and habited in light tunics reaching very little
below the knee, just as we still behold them on antique gems and vases,
who, by their varied, free, and somewhat wanton, movements, vividly
represented all the warmth and energy of passion.
-----
Footnote 69:
Plut. Quæst. Roman. xx. 19. Valckenaer ad Herodot. iv. 114.
Footnote 70:
Poll. iii. 37.
Footnote 71:
Poll. i. 246.
Footnote 72:
Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 834.
Footnote 73:
Athen. xiv. 10. Anac. Od. xviii. Schol. Hom. Il. σ. 493. Pind. Pyth.
iii. 17. Dissen. Schol. ad v. 27.
Footnote 74:
Suid. v. ἔφυγον κακὸν. t. i. p. 1113, d.
-----
The feast which now ensued was, at Athens, to prevent useless
extravagance, made liable to the inspection of certain magistrates. Both
sexes partook of it; but, in conformity with the general spirit of their
manners and institutions, the ladies, as in Egypt, sat at separate
tables.[75] At these entertainments we may infer that, among other good
things, great quantities of sweetmeats were consumed, since the woman
employed in kneading and preparing them, and in officiating at the
nuptial sacrifices, was deemed of sufficient importance to possess a
distinct appellation, (δημιουργὸς,)[76] while the bride-cake, which
doubtless was the crowning achievement of her art, received the name of
Gamelios. The general arrangement of the banquet, however, they
entrusted to the care of a sort of major-domo, who received the
appellation of Trapezopoios.[77]
-----
Footnote 75:
Luc. Conviv. § 8. In the sepulchral grottoes of Eilithyia, in the
Thebaid, we find a rough fresco representing a marriage-feast, at
which the men and women sit as described in the text.
Footnote 76:
Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 421. Poll. iii. 41. The water of the bath used
on this occasion by the bride was, according to ancient custom,
brought from the fountain of Enneakrounos. Etym. Mag. 568, 57, seq.
Footnote 77:
Poll. iv. 41.
-----
Among the princes and grandees of Macedonia the nuptial banquet differed
very widely, as might be expected, from the frugal entertainments of the
Athenians; but as it may assist us in comprehending the changes
introduced into Hellenic manners by the conquests of Alexander and his
successors, I shall crave the reader’s permission to lay before him a
description, bequeathed to us by antiquity, of the magnificent
banquet[78] given at the marriage of Caranos.
-----
Footnote 78:
Athen. iv. 2, seq.
-----
The guests, twenty in number, immediately on entering the mansion of the
bridegroom, were crowned by his order with golden stlengides,[79] each
valued at five pieces of gold. They were then introduced into the
banqueting-hall, where the first article set before them on taking their
places at the board was, no doubt, exceedingly agreeable, consisting of
a silver beaker presented to each as a gift, which, when they had
drained off, they delivered to their attendant slaves, who, according to
the custom of the country, stood behind their seats with large baskets
intended to contain the presents to be bestowed on them by the master of
the feast.[80] There was then placed before every member of the company
a bronze salver, of Corinthian workmanship, completely covered by a
cake, on which were piled roast fowls and ducks and woodcocks, and a
goose, together with other dainties in great abundance. These, likewise,
followed the beakers into the corbels of the slaves, and were succeeded
by numerous dishes, of which the guests were expected to partake on the
spot. Next was brought in a capacious silver tray, also covered by a
cake, whereon were heaped up geese, hares, kids, other cakes curiously
wrought, pigeons, turtle-doves, partridges, with a variety of similar
game, which, likewise, after they had been tasted, I presume, were
handed to the servants.[81]
-----
Footnote 79:
Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 578. Ἔστι τι στλεγγὶς, δέρμα κεχρυσωμένον, ὁ
περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν φοροῦσι.—Poll. vii. 179.
Footnote 80:
When the host happened to be less rich or generous, people sometimes,
in the corruption of later ages, endeavoured to steal what they could
not obtain as a gift. Thus the sophist Dionysodoros is detected in
Lucian with a cup stuffed into the breast of his mantle.—Conviv. seu
Lapith. § 46.
Footnote 81:
This singular kind of liberality continued in fashion down to a very
late period:—καὶ ἃμα εἰς ἐκικόμιστο ἡμῖν τὸ ἐντελὲς ὀνομαζόμενον
δεῖπνον, μία ὄρνις ἑκάστω, καὶ κρέας ὑὸς, καὶ λαγῶα, καὶ ἰχθὺς ἐν
ταγήνου, καὶ σησαμοῦντες, καὶ ὅσα ἐν τραγεῖν, καὶ ἐζῆν ἀποφέρεσθαι
ταῦτα. Luc. Conviv. § 38.
-----
When the rage of hunger had been appeased, as it must soon have been,
they washed their hands, after which crowns, wreathed from every kind of
flower, were brought in, and along with them other golden stlengides,
equal in weight to the former, were placed, for form’s sake, on the
heads of the company, before they found their way to the baskets in the
rear.
While they were still in a sort of delirium of joy, occasioned by the
munificence of the bridegroom, there entered to them a troop of female
flute players, singers, and Rhodian performers on the Sambukè,[82] naked
in the opinion of some, though others reported them to have worn a
slight tunic. When these performers had given them a sufficient taste of
their art, they retired to make way for other female slaves, bearing
each a pair of perfume vases, containing the measure of a cotyla, the
one of gold, the other of silver, and bound together by a golden thong.
Of these every guest received a pair. In fact, the princely bridegroom,
in order, as we suppose, that his friends might share with him the joy
of his nuptials, bestowed upon every one of them a fortune instead of a
supper; for immediately upon the heels of the gift above described came
a number of silver dishes, each of sufficient dimensions to contain a
large roast pig, laid upon its back, with its paunch thrown open, and
stuffed with all sorts of delicacies which had been roasted with it,
such as thrushes, metræ, and becaficoes, with the yolk of eggs poured
around them, and oysters and cockles. Of these dishes every person
present received one, with its contents, and, immediately afterwards,
such another dish containing a kid hissing hot. Upon this, Caranos
observing that their corbils were crammed, caused to be presented to
them wicker panniers, and elegant bread-baskets, plaited with slips of
ivory.[83] Delighted by his generosity, the company loudly applauded the
bridegroom, testifying their approbation by clapping their hands. Then
followed other gifts, and perfume vases of gold and silver, presented to
the company in pairs as before. The bustle having subsided, there
suddenly rushed in a troop of performers worthy to have figured in the
feast of the Chytræ,[84] at Athens, and along with them ithyphalli,
jugglers, and naked female wonder-workers, who danced upon their heads
in circles of swords, and spouted fire from their mouths. These
performances ended, they set themselves more earnestly and hotly to
drink, from capacious golden goblets, their wines, now less mixed than
before, being the Thasian, the Mendian, and the Lesbian. A glass dish,
three feet in diameter, was next brought in upon a silver stand, on
which were piled all kinds of fried fish. This was accompanied by silver
bread-baskets, filled with Cappadocian rolls, some of which they ate,
and delivered the rest to their slaves. They then washed their hands,
and were crowned with golden crowns, double the weight of the former,
and presented with a third pair of gold and silver vases filled with
perfume. They by this time had become quite delirious with wine, and
began a truly Macedonian contest, in which the winner was he who
swallowed most; Proteas, grandson of him who was boon companion to
Alexander the Great, drinking upwards of a gallon at a draught, and
exclaiming—
“Most joy is in his soul
Who drains the largest bowl.”
-----
Footnote 82:
The Sambukè was a stringed instrument of triangular form, invented by
the poet Ibycos. It was sometimes called Iambukè, because used by
chaunters of Iambic verse.—Suid. in v. t. ii. p. 709, c. d. Poll. iv.
59.
Footnote 83:
Casaubon is particular in his explanation of this passage, lest any
one should fall into the singular mistake of supposing these nuptial
bread-baskets to have been made with plaited thongs of elephant’s
hide: “_Lora elephantina_ fortasse aliquis capiat de _corio
elephanti_: sed ἱμάντας arbitror appellare Hippolochum _virgas
subtiles ex ebore_, quibus ceu vimine utebantur in contexendis
panariis istis.”—Animadv. in Athen. t. vii. p. 392.
Footnote 84:
Vid. Animadv. in Athen. t. vii. p. 393. Meurs. Græcia Feriata. i. p.
30, seq.
-----
The immense goblet was then given him by Caranos, who declared, that
every man should reckon as his own property the bowl whose contents he
could despatch. Upon this, nine valiant bacchanals started up at once,
and sought each to empty the goblet before the others, while one unhappy
wight among the company, envying them their good fortune, sat down and
burst into tears because he should go cupless away. The master of the
house, however, unwilling that any should be dissatisfied, presented him
with an empty bowl.[85]
-----
Footnote 85:
In like manner, Alexander, son of Philip, when he entertained nine
thousand persons at a marriage feast at Susa, presented each of them
with a golden goblet, and paid all their debts, amounting to nearly
ten thousand talents.—Plut. Alexand. § 70.
-----
A chorus of a hundred men now entered to chaunt the epithalamium; and
after them dancing girls, dressed in the character of nymphs and
nereids.
The drinking still proceeding, and the darkness of evening coming on,
the circle of the hall appeared suddenly to dilate, a succession of
white curtains, which had extended all round, and disguised its
dimensions, being drawn up, while from numerous recesses in the wall,
thrown open by concealed machinery, a blaze of torches flashed upon the
guests, seeming to be borne by a troop of gods and goddesses, Hermes,
Pan, Artemis, and the Loves, with numerous other divinities, each
holding a flambeau and administering light to the assembled mortals.
While every person was expressing his admiration of this contrivance,
wild boars of true Erymanthean dimensions, transfixed with silver
javelins, were brought in on square trays with golden rims, one of which
was presented to each of the company. To the _bon vivants_ themselves
nothing appeared so worthy of commendation, as that, when anything
wonderful was exhibited, they should all have been able to get upon
their legs, and preserve the perpendicular, notwithstanding they were so
top-heavy with wine.
“Our slaves,” says one of the guests, “piled all the gifts we had
received in our baskets; and the trumpet, according to the custom of the
Macedonians, at length announced the termination of the repast.” Caranos
next began that part of the potations in which small cups alone figured,
and commanded the slaves to circulate the wine briskly; what they drank
in this second bout being regarded as an antidote against that which
they had swallowed before.
They were now, as might be supposed, in the right trim to be amused, and
there entered to them the buffoon Mandrogenes, a descendant, it was
said, of Strato the Athenian. This professional gentleman for a long
time shook their sides with laughter, and terminated his performances by
dancing with his wife, an old woman, upwards of eighty.[86] This fit of
merriment would appear to have restored the edge of their appetites, and
made them ready for those supplementary dainties which closed the
achievements of the day. These consisted of a variety of sweetmeats,
rendered more tempting by the little ivory-plaited corbels in which they
nestled, delicate cakes from Crete, and Samos, and Attica, in the boxes
in which they were imported.
-----
Footnote 86:
If octogenarian dancers were held in admiration in England, it would,
according to Lord Bacon, be easy to form an army of them; since “there
is, he says, scarce a village with us, if it be any whit populous, but
it affords some man or woman of fourscore years of age; nay, a few
years since there was, in the county of Hereford, a May-game, or
morrice-dance, consisting of eight men, whose age computed together,
made up eight hundred years, inasmuch as what some of them wanted of
an hundred, others exceeded as much.” History of Life and Death, p.
20.
-----
Hippolochos, to whose enthusiasm for descriptions of good cheer, the
reader is indebted for the above picturesque details, concludes his
important narrative by observing, that, when they rose to depart, their
anxiety respecting the wealth they had acquired sobered them completely.
He then adds, addressing himself to his correspondent Lynceus,
“Meanwhile you, my friend, remaining all alone at Athens, enjoy the
lectures of Theophrastus with your thyme, rocket and delicate twists,
mingling in the revels of the Linnean and Chytrean festivals. For our
own part we are looking out, some for houses, others for estates, others
for slaves, to be purchased by the riches which dropped into our baskets
at the supper of Caranos.”
The marriage feast having been thus concluded, the bride was conducted
to the harem by the light of flambeaux, round one of which,
pre-eminently denominated the “Hymeneal Torch,” her mother, who was
principal among the torch-bearers, twisted her hair-lace,[87] unbound at
the moment from her head. On retiring to the nuptial chamber the bride,
in obedience to the laws, ate a quince, together with the bridegroom, to
signify, we are told, that their first conversation should be full of
sweetness and harmony.[88] The guests continued their revels with music,
dancing, and song, until far in the night.[89]
-----
Footnote 87:
Senec. Thebais, Act. iv. 2, 505.
Footnote 88:
Plut. Conjug. Præcept. i. t. i. p. 321. Meurs. Them. Att. i. 14, p.
39. Petit. Legg. Att. vi. i. p. 449.
Footnote 89:
See Douglas, Essay on certain points of resemblance between the
ancient and modern Greeks, p. 114, and Chandler, Travels, ii. 152.
-----
At daybreak on the following morning their friends re-assembled and
saluted them with a new epithalamium, exhorting them to descend from
their bower to enjoy the beauties of the dawn,[90] which in that warm
and genial climate are even in January equal to those of a May morning
with us. On appearing in the presence of their congratulators, the wife,
as a mark of affection, presented her husband with a rich woollen
cloak,[91] in part, at least, the production of her own fair hands. On
the same occasion the father of the bride sent a number of costly gifts
to the house of his son-in-law, consisting of cups, goblets, or vases of
alabaster or gold, beds, couches, candelabra, or boxes for perfumes or
cosmetics, combs, jewel-cases, costly sandals, or other articles of use
or luxury. And, that so striking an instance of his wealth and
generosity might not escape public observation, the whole was conveyed
to the bridegroom’s house in great pomp by female slaves, before whom
marched a boy clothed in white, and bearing a torch in his hand,
accompanied by a youthful basket-bearer habited like a canephora in the
sacred processions.[92] Customs in spirit exactly similar still survive
among the primitive mountaineers of Wales, where the newly-married
couple, in the middle and lower ranks of life, have their houses
completely furnished by the free-will offerings, not only of their
parents but of their friends. It is, however, incumbent on the
recipients to make proof in their turn of equal generosity when any
member of the donor’s family ventures on the hazards of housekeeping.
-----
Footnote 90:
Theocrit, Eidyll. xviii. 9.
Footnote 91:
Ἀπαυλιστηρία. Poll. iii. 40.
Footnote 92:
Etymol. Mag. 354. 1. sqq. Suid. v. ἐπαυλία, t. i. p. 964, e. sqq.
-----
CHAPTER V.
CONDITION OF MARRIED WOMEN.
From the spirit pervading the foregoing ceremonies it will be seen, that
married women enjoyed at Athens numerous external tokens of respect. We
must now enter the harem, and observe how they lived there. Most,
perhaps, of the misapprehensions which prevail on this subject arise out
of one very obvious omission,—a neglect to distinguish between the
exaggeration and satire of the comic poets, much of which, in all
countries, has been levelled at women, and the sober truth of history,
less startling, and therefore, less palatable. To comprehend the
Athenians, however, we must be content to view them as they were, with
many virtues and many vices, often sinning against their women, but
never as a general rule treating them harshly. Indeed, according to no
despicable testimony, their errors when they erred would appear to have
lain in the contrary direction.[93]
-----
Footnote 93:
For example, public opinion regarded it as more atrocious to kill a
woman than a man.—Arist. Prob. xxix. 11.
-----
Certainly the mistress of a family at Athens was not placed above the
necessity of extending her solicitude to the government of her
household, though too many even there neglected it, degenerating into
the resemblance of those mawkish, insipid, useless things, without heart
or head, who often in our times fill fashionable drawing-rooms, and have
their reputations translated to Doctors’ Commons. Of female education I
have already spoken, together with the several acts and ceremonies,
which conducted an Athenian woman to the highest and most honourable
station her sex can fill on earth. In this new relation she shares with
her husband that domestic patriarchal sovereignty, pictures of which
abound in the Scriptures. How great soever might be the establishment,
she was queen of every thing within doors. All the slaves, male and
female, came under her control.[94] To every one she distributed his
task, and issued her commands; and when there were no children who
required her care, she might often be seen sitting in the recesses of
the harem, at the loom, encircled, like an Homeric princess, by her
maids,[95] laughing, chatting, or, along with them, exercising her sweet
voice in songs,[96] those natural bursts of melody which came
spontaneously to the lips of a people whose every-day speech resembled
the music of the nightingale.
-----
Footnote 94:
She wakes them in the morning.—Aristoph. Lysist. 18. This comic poet
gives a concise sketch of an Athenian woman’s morning work, which
rendered their going out difficult at such an hour:—Χαλεπή τε γυναικῶν
ἔξοδος· ἠ μὲν γὰρ ἡμῶν περὶ τὸν ἀνδρ’ ἐκύπτασεν· ἠ δ᾽ οἰκέτην ἤγειρεν·
ἡ δὲ παιδίον κατέκλινεν· ἡ δ᾽ ἐλουσεν· ἠ δ᾽ ἐψώμισεν.—Lysist. 16, sqq.
Footnote 95:
Precisely the same picture is presented in the interior of Jason’s
palace at Pheræ, where we find the tyrant’s mother at work in the
midst of her handmaidens.—Polyæn. Stratag. vi. i. 5.
Footnote 96:
Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 36.—Among the Thracians, and many other
people, women were employed in agriculture, as they are in England and
France, as herdswomen and shepherds, and every other laborious
employment, like men.—Id. ib.
-----
Xenophon, in that interesting work, the Œconomics, introduces an
Athenian gentleman laying open to Socrates the internal regulations of
his family. In this picture, the wife occupies an important position in
the foreground. She is, indeed, the principal figure around which the
various circumstances of the composition are grouped with infinite
delicacy and effect. Young and beautiful she comes forth hesitating and
blushing at being detected in some slight economical blunders. The
husband takes her by the hand; they converse in our presence, and while
the interior arrangements of a Greek house are unreservedly laid open,
we discover the exact footing on which husband and wife lived at Athens,
and a state of more complete confidence, of greater mutual affection, of
more considerate tenderness on the one side, or feminine reliance and
love on the other, it would be difficult to conceive.
Ischomachos, I admit, is to be regarded as a favourable specimen; he
unites in his character the qualities of an enterprising and enlightened
country gentleman, with those of a politician and orator of no mean
order, and his probity as a citizen infuses an air of mingled grandeur
and sweetness into his domestic manners. Describing a conversation
which, soon after their marriage, took place between him and his
youthful wife, he observes:—“When we had together taken a view of our
possessions I remarked to her that, without her constant care and
superintendence, nothing of all she had seen would greatly profit us.
And taking my illustration from the science of politics, I showed that,
in well-regulated states, it is not deemed sufficient that good laws are
enacted, but that proper persons are chosen to be guardians of those
laws, who not only reward with praise such as yield them due obedience,
but visit also their infraction with punishment. Now, my love,” said I,
“you must consider yourself the guardian of our domestic commonwealth,
and dispose of all its resources as the commander of a garrison disposes
of the soldiers under his orders. With you it entirely rests to
determine respecting the conduct of every individual in the household,
and, like a queen, to bestow praise and reward on the dutiful and
obedient, while you keep in check the refractory by punishment and
reproof. Nor should this high charge appear burdensome to you; for
though the duties of your station may seem to involve deeper solicitude
and necessity for greater exertion than we require even from a domestic,
these greater cares are rewarded by greater enjoyments; since, whatever
ability they may display in the improving or protecting of their
master’s property, the measure of their advantages still depends upon
his will, while you, as its joint owner, enjoy the right of applying it
to whatever use you please. It follows, therefore, that as the person
most interested in its preservation you should cheerfully encounter
superior difficulties.”
Having listened attentively to the somewhat quaint discourse of the
Economist, Socrates felt anxious, as well he might, to learn the result;
for the lady, expected thus wisely “to queen it,” was as yet but
fifteen. His faith, however, in womanhood was great; and Xenophon, who
but reflects from a less brilliant mirror the Socratic wisdom, delivers,
under the mask of Ischomachos, the mingled convictions both of the
master and the pupil. The moral beauty of the dialogue, and its truth to
nature, would have been lost had the lady at all shrunk from the duties
of her high office. But her ambition was at once awakened. The obscurity
to which, in the time of Pericles, women were, by the manners of the
country, condemned, now no longer seemed desirable, and the love of fame
was urged upon her as a motive to extraordinary exertions.[97] Her reply
is highly characteristic. Running, with the unerring tact of her sex,
even in advance of her husband, she desired him to believe that he would
have formed an extremely erroneous opinion of her character, had he for
a moment supposed that the care of their common property could ever have
proved burdensome to her: on the contrary, the really grievous thing
would have been to require her to be neglectful of it!
-----
Footnote 97:
That this passion led women to interfere too frequently with politics
may be inferred from the remark of Theophrastus, that to be versed in
the science of domestic economy was more honourable to them.—Stob. 85.
7. Gaisf.
-----
Men always conceive they are complimenting a woman when they attribute
to her a masculine understanding, and they thus, in fact, do place her
on the highest intellectual level known to them. Socrates adopted this
style of compliment in speaking of the wife of Ischomachos. And I may
here remark, that we need no other proof of how differently the
Athenians felt on the subject of women from the Orientals with whom they
have been compared, than the mere circumstance of their conversing
openly with strangers respecting their wives. In the East, a greater
affront could scarcely be offered a man than to inquire about his female
establishment. The most an old friend does is to say, “Is your house
well?”—whereas at Athens, women formed a never-failing theme in all
companies; which proves them to have been there contemplated in a
different light. In fact, the sentiments of Ischomachos, every way
worthy the most chivalrous people of antiquity, could only have sprung
up in a society where just and exalted notions of female virtue
prevailed; for, under the word “high-mindedness,” we find him grouping
every refined and estimable quality which a gentlewoman can possess.
But, perhaps, the reader will not be displeased if we introduce
dramatically upon the scene an Athenian married pair discussing in his
presence a question closely connected with domestic happiness. There is
little risk of exaggeration. The picture is by Xenophon, a writer whose
subdued and sober colouring is calculated rather to diminish than
otherwise the poetical features of his subject.
By Heaven! exclaimed Socrates, according to this account, your wife’s
understanding must be of a highly masculine character.
Nay, but suffer me, answered the husband, to place before you a
convincing proof of her high-mindedness, by showing how, on a single
representation, she yielded to me on a subject extremely important.
Proceed, cried the philosopher, (who had not found Xantippe thus
manageable,) proceed; for, believe me, friend, I experience much greater
delight in contemplating the active virtues of a living woman, than the
most exquisite female form by the pencil of Zeuxis would afford me.
Observing, said Ischomachos, that my wife sought by cosmetics[98] and
other arts of the toilette to render herself fairer and ruddier than she
had issued from the hands of Nature, and that she wore high-heeled shoes
in order to add to her stature,—Tell me, wife,[99] I began, would you
now esteem me to be a worthy participator of your fortunes if,
concealing the true state of my affairs, I aimed at appearing richer
than I am, by exhibiting to you heaps of false money, necklaces of
gilded wood for gold, and wardrobes of spurious for genuine purple?
-----
Footnote 98:
Xen. Œcon. x. ii. 60. Among the Orientals we find there existed a
peculiar collyrium for the white of the eye. Bochart, Hieroz, Pt. ii.
p. 120.
Footnote 99:
Γύναι, a term of greatest endearment among the Greeks, as with the
French “ma femme.” On this point our language is more sophisticated.
The practice reprehended by Ischomachos, in the text, was generally
prevalent in Greece, where certain classes of the community, who could
afford nothing better, used, when they had painted the rest of their
skin white, to dye the cheeks with mulberry-juice, and paint the
eyelids black at the edge. In hot weather, therefore, dusky streamlets
sometimes flowed from the corners of their eyes; and the roses melted
from their cheeks, and dropped into their bosoms. They imitated old
age, too, by covering their hair with white powder. (Athen. xiii. 6.)
It was likewise, at one time, the fashion to bring forward their curls
so as to conceal the forehead, as was the practice in France and
England during a part of the eighteenth century.—Lucian, Dial. Meret.
i. t. iv. p. 123.
-----
Nay, exclaimed my wife, interrupting me, put not the injurious
supposition: it is what you could not be guilty of. For, were such your
character I could never love you from my soul.
Well, by entering together into the bonds of marriage are we not
mutually invested with a property in each other’s persons?
People say so.
They say truly: and since this is the case shall I not more sincerely
evince my esteem for you by watching sedulously over my own health and
well-being, and displaying to your gaze the natural hues of a manly
complexion, than if, neglecting these, I presented myself with rouged
cheeks, eyes encircled by paint, and my whole exterior false and hollow?
Indeed, she replied, I prefer the native colour of your cheeks to any
artificial bloom, and could never gaze with so much delight into any
eyes as into yours—bright and sparkling with health.
Then believe no less of me, said I; but be well persuaded that, in my
judgment, there are no tints so beautiful as those with which nature has
adorned your cheeks. The same rule indeed holds universally. For, even
in the inferior creation, every living thing delights most in
individuals of its own species. And so it is with man whom nothing so
truly pleases as to behold the image of his own nature mirrored in
another and a fairer form of humanity. Besides, false beauties, though
they may deceive the incurious glance of strangers,[100] must inevitably
be detected by persons living always together. Women necessarily appear
undisguised when first rising in the morning, before they have undergone
the renovation of the toilette; and perspiration, or tears, or the
waters of the bath, will even at other times float away their artificial
complexions.
-----
Footnote 100:
Cf. Lucian, Amor. § 42. Aristoph. Nub. 49.
-----
And what, in the name of all the gods, did she say to that? inquired
Socrates.
What? replied the husband. Why, that for the future she would abjure all
meretricious ornaments, and consent to appear decked with that simple
grace and beauty which she owed to nature.
At Sparta married persons, as in France, occupied separate beds; but
among the Athenians and in other parts of Greece a different custom
prevailed. The same remark may be applied to the Heroic Ages. Odysseus
and Penelope, Alcinoös and Arete, Paris and Helen, occupy the same
chamber and the same couch. The women in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes
appealed to this circumstance in justification of their late appearance
at the female assembly held before day, and Euphiletos in the oration of
Lysias on Eratosthenes’ murder, who admits us freely into the recesses
of the harem, confirms this fact, except, that when the mother suckled
her own child she usually slept with it in a separate bed. At Byzantium
also the same practice prevailed, as we learn from a very amusing
anecdote. Python an orator of that city who, like Falstaff, seems to
have been somewhere about two yards in the waist, once quelled an
insurrection by a jocular allusion to this part of domestic economy. “My
dear fellow-citizens,” cried he to the enraged multitude, “you see how
fat I am. Well! my wife is still fatter than I, yet when we agree one
small bed will contain us both; but, if we once begin to quarrel, the
whole house is too little to hold us.”[101]
-----
Footnote 101:
Athen. xii. 74.
-----
We have seen above how absolute was the authority of women over their
household, and this authority likewise extended to their children. The
father no doubt could exercise, when he chose, considerable influence;
but as most of his time was spent abroad, in business or politics, the
chief charge of their early education, the first training of their
intellect, the first rooting of their morals and shaping of their
principles devolved upon the mother.[102] There have been writers,
indeed, to whom this has seemed a circumstance to be lamented. But their
judgment probably was warped by theory. In the original discipline of
the mind, great attainments and experience of the world are less needed
than tact to discern, and patience to apply, those minute incentives to
action which women discover with a truer sagacity than we do. In this
task, ever pleasing to a true mother, the aid of nurses, however, was
usually obtained; nor are we, as Cramer observes, on this account to
blame the Athenian ladies, so long as they did not, as in after times
was too much the fashion, consider their whole duty performed when they
had delivered their children to the nurse.
-----
Footnote 102:
Xenoph. Œcon. vii. 12. 24. Cf. A. Cramer. de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. 9.
This writer acutely remarks, (p. 13,) that the words καὶ αὐτος ὁ πατὴρ
in Plat. Protag. p. 325. d. show that it was seldom the father meddled
with the matter. The mother, therefore, from early habit, was held in
greater love and reverence than the father. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char.
p. 187.
-----
It will be evident from what has been said, that an Athenian lady who
conscientiously discharged her duties was very little exposed to ennui.
She arose in the morning with the lark, roused her slaves, distributed
to all their tasks,[103] superintended the operations of the nursery,
and, on days frequently recurring, went abroad in the performance of
rites specially allotted to her sex. But, one effect of democracy is to
confer undue influence upon women.[104] And this influence, where by
education or otherwise they happen to be luxurious or vain, must
infallibly prove pernicious to the state. At Athens, the number of this
class of women, extremely limited in the beginning, augmented rapidly
during the decline of the republic, and the comic poets substituting a
part for the whole, invest their countrywomen generally with the
qualities belonging exclusively to these.—But, the success of such
writers depending generally on ingenious extravagance and exaggeration,
we must be on our guard against their insinuations. Their faith in the
existence of virtue, male or female, has, in all ages, if we are to
judge by their works, been very lanksided. In their view, if there has
been one good woman since the world began, it is as much as there has.
Accordingly when these lively caricaturists describe the female _demos_
as addicted extravagantly to wine[105] and pawning their wardrobe to
purchase it—as compelling the men by their intemperance to keep their
cellars under lock and key, and still defeating them by manufacturing
false ones—as forming illicit connexions, and having recourse to the
boldest stratagems in furtherance of their intrigues, we must
necessarily suppose them to have amused themselves at the expense of
truth; though that, among the Athenians, there were examples enough of
women of whom all this might be said, it would be absurd to deny.
-----
Footnote 103:
Aristoph. Lysist. 18. Plato, who admired the practice, requires his
airy female citizens to go and do likewise. Καὶ δὴ καὶ δέσποιναν ἐν
οἰκίᾳ ὑπὸ θεραπαινίδων ἐγείρεσθαί τινων καὶ μὴ πρώτην αὐτὴν ἐγείρειν
τὰς ἄλλας, αἰσχρὸν λέγειν χρὴ πρὸς αὑτοὺς δοῦλον τε καὶ δούλην καὶ
παῖδα, καὶ εἴ πως ἦν οἷον τε, ὅλην καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκίαν. De Legg. vii.
t. viii. p. 40. Bekk.
Footnote 104:
Cf. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 102.
Footnote 105:
Arist. Lysist. 113, seq. 205.
-----
We know that where the minds of married dames are fixed chiefly upon
dress and show their anxiety has often very little reference to their
husbands. And if it be their object to excite admiration out of doors,
it is simply as a means to an end, which end, in too many cases, is
intrigue. Proofs exist that among the Athenian ladies there were numbers
whose idle lives and luxurious habits produced their natural
results—loose principles and dissolute manners. The beauty of Alcibiades
drew them after him in crowds,[106] though we do not read that, like
another very handsome personage in a modern republic, the son of
Cleinias found it necessary to carry about a club to defend himself from
their importunities. They went abroad elaborately habited and adorned
merely to attract the gaze of men,[107] and having thus sown the first
seeds of intrigue, they took care to cultivate and bring them to
maturity. The felicitous invention of Falstaff’s friends, which got him
safe out of Ford’s house in a buck-basket, was not so new as Shakspeare,
perhaps, imagined. His predecessors on the Athenian stage had already
discovered stratagems equally happy among their countrywomen, whose
lovers we find made their way into the harem wrapped up in straw, like
carp—or crept through holes made purposely by fair hands in the eaves—or
scaled the envious walls by the help of those vulgar contrivances called
ladders.[108]
-----
Footnote 106:
Xenoph. Memor. i. 2. 24. Ἀλκιβιάδης δ᾽ αὖ διὰ μὲν κάλλος ὑπὸ πολλῶν
καὶ σεμνῶν γυναικῶν θηρώμενος. κ. τ. λ.
Footnote 107:
Aristoph. Nub. 60. Married ladies occasionally rode out in carriages
with their husbands. Demosth. cont. Mid. § 44. Even at Sparta we find
young ladies possessed of their carriages called Canathra, resembling
in form griffins, or goat-stags, in which they rode abroad during
religious processions. Plut. Ages. § 19. Cf. Xenoph. Ages. p. 73.
Hutchin. cum not. et add. p. 89. Athen. iv. 16, cum annot. p. 449.
Scheffer, de Re Vehic. i. 7. p. 68. The same custom prevailed in
Thessaly and elsewhere. Athen. xii. 37. Luxurious ladies at Athens
used to perfume even the soles of their feet. Their lapdogs lived in
great state, and slept on carpets of Miletos. Athen. xii. 78.
Footnote 108:
Xenarch. ap. Athen. xiii. 24.
-----
The laws of Athens, however, were more modest than its women. For, from
the very interference of the laws, it is evident, that the example of
the Spartan ladies, who enjoyed the privilege of exposing themselves
indecently, found numerous imitators among the female democracy. To
repress this unbecoming taste, it was enacted, that any woman detected
in the streets in indecorous deshabille[109] should be fined a thousand
drachmæ, and, to add disgrace to pecuniary considerations, the name of
the offender, with the amount of the fine, was inscribed on a tablet and
suspended on a certain platane tree in the Cerameicos. However, what
constituted _indecorous deshabille_ in the opinion of Philippides, who
procured the enactment of the law, it might be difficult to determine.
Possibly it may have consisted in the too great exposure of the bosom,
for the covering of which ladies in remoter ages appear to have depended
very much on their veils. Thus in the interview of Helen with Aphrodite
she saw, says the poet, her beautiful neck, desire-inflaming bosom, and
eyes bright with liquid splendour. Her garments concealed the rest.[110]
Now, as it was customary for ladies to appear veiled in public, the
object of the law of Philippides may simply have been to enforce the
observance of this ancient practice. The magistrates who presided over
this very delicate part of Athenian police were denominated “Regulators
of the women,”[111] an office which Sultan Mahmood in our day took upon
himself. They were chosen by the twenty from among the wealthiest and
most virtuous of the citizens, and in their office resembled the Roman
Censors and similar magistrates in several other states.[112]
-----
Footnote 109:
Ἀκοσμοῦσαι. Harpocrat. v. ὅτι χίλιας. κ. τ. λ. Potter, Arch. Græc. ii.
309, understands his law to have meant, women who literally appeared
_laconically_ in the streets. “Undressed,” is his word. But will
ἀκοσμοῦσαι which Meursius, Lect. Att. ii. 5, 62, renders by
“inornatius,” bear such a signification? Κόσμος γυναικῶν does not, as
Kühn observes, signify _ornamentum mulierum_, nor ἀκοσμοῦσαι
_inornatius prodeuntes feminæ_; but κόσμος is εὐταξία and ἀκοσμοῦσαι
means ἀτακτοῦσαι, that is, women who acted in any way whatever
contrary to decorum and good manners, which persons appearing
indecently dressed in public unquestionably do.—Ad. Poll. viii. 112.
p. 763. On the manners of the Tyrrhenian women, Cf. Athen. xii. 14.
sqq.
Footnote 110:
Il. γ. 396. sqq. Cf. 141.
Footnote 111:
Γυναικόσμοι. Poll. viii. 112.
Footnote 112:
Cf. Arist. Pol. iv. 15. 120.
-----
The evil influence of women of this description,[113] who, as Milton
expresses it, would fain at any rate ride in their coach and six, was
perceived and lamented by the philosophers. To their vain and frivolous
notions might be traced, in part at least, the love of power, of
trifling distinctions, of unmanly pleasures, which infected the
Athenians towards the decline of their republic. By them the springs of
education were poisoned, and the seeds sown of those inordinate
artificial desires which convulse and overthrow states. In vain did
philosophers inculcate temperance and moderation, while the youth were
imbued with different opinions by their mothers. The lessons of the
Academy were overgrown and checked in the harem. Such dames no doubt
would grieve to find their husbands content with little[114] (as was the
case with Xantippe) and not numbered with the rulers, since their
consequence among their own sex was thus lessened. They would have had
them keen worshipers of Mammon, eagerly squabbling and wrangling in the
law-courts or the ecclesiæ, not cultivators of domestic habits or
philosophical tranquillity and content: and in conversing with their
sons would be careful to recommend maxims the reverse of the father’s,
with all the cant familiar to women of their character.[115]
-----
Footnote 113:
On the luxurious manners of the Syracusan women see Athen. xii. 20. In
such disorders may be discovered the first germs of the decay of
states; on which account prudent statesmen even in oligarchies have
sought to restrain the licentious manners of women. Thus Fra Paolo:
“Let the women be kept chaste, and in order to that, let them live
retired from the world; it being certain that all open lewedness has
had its first rise from a salutation, from a smile.”—i. § 20. To this
let us add the opinion of the female Pythagorician Phintys: ἴδια δὲ
γυναικὸς, τὸ οἰκουρὲν, καὶ ἔνδον μένεν καὶ ἐκδέχεσθαι καὶ θεραπεύεν
τὸν ἄνδρα. Stob. Florileg., 74. 61. Both the philosophical lady,
however, and the Venetian monk have their views corroborated by the
authority of Pericles: τῆς τε γὰρ ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι
γενέσθαι, ὑμῖν μεγάλη ἡ δόξα, καὶ οἷς ἂν ἐπ’ ἄρσεσι κλέος ᾖ. Thucyd.
ii. 45. Besides leading a retired life, ladies were likewise expected
to cultivate the virtue of silence. Soph. Ajax, 293. Hom. Il. ζ. 410.
Footnote 114:
Which, according to Plato, well-educated men generally are. De Repub.
t. vi. p. 173.
Footnote 115:
Plat. De Repub. viii. 5. t. ii. p. 182. Stallb.
-----
Our review of female society at Athens would be incomplete were we to
overlook the Hetairæ who exerted so powerful an influence over the
morals and destinies of the state. They occupied much the same position
which the same class of females still do in modern communities,
cultivated in mind, polished and elegant in manners, but scarcely
deserving as a body to be viewed in the light in which a very
distinguished historian has placed them.[116] Their position, however,
was anomalous, resembling rather that of kings’ mistresses in modern
times, whose vices are tolerated on account of their rank, than that of
plebeian sinners whose deficiencies in birth and fortune exclude them
from good society. There is much difficulty in rightly apprehending the
notions of the ancients on the subject of these women. At first sight we
are shocked to find that, during one festival, they were permitted to
enter the temples in company with modest ladies. But in what Christian
country are they excluded from church?[117] Again, behold in our
theatres the matron and the courtezan in the same box, while at Athens
even foreign women were not suffered to approach the space set apart for
the female citizens. Nevertheless, though on this point so rigid, they
were in their own houses permitted occasionally to visit them[118] and
receive instructions from their lips, as in Turkish harems ladies do
from the Almè.
-----
Footnote 116:
Mitford, Hist, of Greece, iii. 4. sqq. It appears not to have been
common for these women to rear the children they bore, more
particularly when they were girls. They flew to the practice of
infanticide that they might remain at liberty. Lucian, Hetair. Diall.
ii. 5. iv. 124.
Footnote 117:
Besides, from a passage in Lucian it appears that the ladies and the
hetairæ frequented together the public baths.—Diall. Hetair. xii. 4.
Footnote 118:
Cf. Antiphon. Nec. Venef. § 5.
-----
It is not permitted here to lift the curtain from the manners of these
ladies. But their position, pregnant with evil to the state through its
contaminating influences on the minds of youth, must be comprehensively
explained before a correct idea can be formed of the internal structure
of the Athenian commonwealth, of the germs of dissolution which it
concealed within its own bosom, or the premature blight which an
unspiritual system of morals was mainly instrumental in producing. No
doubt the question whether the existence of such a class of persons
should be tolerated at all, is environed by difficulties almost
insurmountable. They have always existed and therefore, perhaps, it is
allowable to infer that they always will exist; but this does not seem
to justify Solon for sanctioning, by legislative enactments, a
modification of moral turpitude debasing to the individual, and
consequently detrimental to the state. To do evil that good may come, is
as much a solecism in politics as in ethics. On this point I miss the
habitual wisdom of the Athenian legislator. Lycurgus himself could have
enacted nothing more at variance with just principles, or more
subversive of heroic sentiments.
The Hetairæ,[119] recognised by law and scarcely proscribed by public
opinion, may be said to have constituted a sort of monarchical leaven in
the very heart of the republic; they shared with the sophists, whom I
have already depicted, the affections of the lax ambitious youths,
panting at once for pleasure and distinction, fostered expensive tastes
and luxurious habits, increased consequently their aptitude to indulge
in peculation, shared with the unprincipled the spoils of the state, and
vigorously paved the way for the battle of Chæronea. But if their
existence was hurtful to the community, so was it often full of
bitterness to themselves. In youth, no doubt, when beauty breathed its
spell around them, they were puffed up and intoxicated with the incense
of flattery[120]—their conversation at once sprightly and learned seemed
full of charms—their houses spacious as palaces and splendidly adorned
were the resort of the gay, the witty, the powerful, nay, even of the
wise—for Socrates did not disdain to converse with Theodota or to imbibe
the maxims of eloquence from Aspasia. But when old age came on, what
were they? It then appeared, that the lively repartees and grotesque
extravagancies which had pleased when proceeding from beautiful lips,
seemed vapid and poor from an old woman. The wrinkles which deformed
their features were equally fatal to their wisdom that flitted from
their dwellings, and became domiciliated with the last beautiful
importation from Ionia. Thus deserted, the most celebrated Hetairæ
became a butt for the satire even of the most clownish. The wit wont to
set the table in a roar scarcely served to defend them against the jests
of the agora.
-----
Footnote 119:
Vice is generally superstitious; and these ladies accordingly when
they lost a lover, instead of attributing it to the superior beauty or
accomplishments of their rivals, or the common love of novelty of
mankind, always supposed that enchantments had been employed.—Luc.
Diall. Hetair. i. t. iv. 124.
Footnote 120:
Statues, for example, were sometimes erected in their honour—Winkelm.
iv. 3. 7. They were generally well educated, and there were none
probably who could not read.—Drosè, in Lucian, complaining of the
philosopher who kept away her lover, observes that his slave came in
the evening bearing a note from his young master.—Diall. Hetair. x. 2.
3.
-----
“How do you sell your beef?” said Laïs to a young butcher in the
flesh-market.
“Three obels the _Hag_,” answered the coxcomb.
“And how dare you, said the faded beauty, here in Athens pretend to make
use of barbarian weights?”
The word in the original signifying an old woman and a Carian weight, it
suited her purpose to understand him in the latter sense.[121]
-----
Footnote 121:
Athen. xiii. 43. where the word is κύβδα.—The Turkish practice of
drowning female delinquents in sacks, is merely an imitation of what
was performed by a tyrant of old, who disposed of wicked old women in
this manner.—Idem. x. 60. In France likewise formerly it was customary
to avoid the scandal of a public trial, for noblemen and gentlemen to
be examined privately by the king who, when he could satisfy his
conscience that they were guilty, ordered them to be “without any
fashion of judgment put in a sack and in the night season, by the
Marshall’s servants, hurled into a river and so drowned.” Fortescue,
Laud, Legg. Angl. chap. 35. p. 82. b.
-----
Worshiped and slighted alternately they adopted narrow and interested
principles in self-defence. Besides, generally barbarians by birth, they
brought along with them from their original homes the creed best suited
to their calling—“Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.” They were
often the lumber of Asia and hence known under the appellation of
“strange women,” though it is very certain, that many female citizens
were from time to time enrolled among their ranks, some through the
pressure of adversity, others from a preference for that kind of life.
Their education it must be conceded, however, was far more masculine
than that of other women. They cultivated all the sciences but that of
morals, and concealed their lack of modesty by the dazzling splendour of
their wit. Hence among a people with whom intellect was almost
everything their company was much sought after and highly valued, not
habitually perhaps by statesmen, but by wits, poets, sophists, and young
men of fashion.
Many of the _bons mots_ uttered by those ladies have been preserved. One
day at table Stilpo the philosopher accused Glycera of corrupting the
manners of youth.
“My friend,” said she, “we are both to blame; for you, in your turn,
corrupt their minds by innumerable forms of sophistry and error. And if
men be rendered unhappy, what signifies it whether a philosopher or a
courtezan be the cause?”
It is to her that a joke, somewhat hackneyed but seldom attributed to
its real author, was originally due. A gentleman presenting her with a
very small jar of wine sought to enhance its value by pretending it was
sixteen years old. “Then,” replied she, “it is extremely little for its
age.” Gnathena too, another member of the sisterhood, sprinkled her
conversation with sparkling wit, but too redolent of the profession to
be retailed. Some of her sayings, however, will bear transplantation,
though they must suffer by it. To stop the mouth of a babbler who
observed that he had just arrived from the Hellespont—“And yet,” she
remarked, “it is clear to me that you know nothing of one of its
principal cities!” “Which city is that?”—“Sigeion,”[122] (in which there
appears to be a reference to the word Silence) answered Gnathena.
Several noisy gallants, who being in her debt sought to terrify her by
menaces, once saying they would pull her house down, and had pickaxes
and mattocks ready, “I disbelieve it,” she replied, “for if you had, you
would have pledged them to pay what you owe me.” A comic poet remarking
to one of these ladies that the water of her cistern was delightfully
cold—“It has always been so,” she replied, “since we have got into the
habit of throwing your plays into it.” The repartee of Melitta to a
conceited person who was said to have fled ignominiously from the field
of battle is exceedingly keen. Happening to be eating of a hare which
she seemed much to enjoy, our soldier, desirous of directing attention
to her, inquired if she knew what was the fleetest animal in the world.
“The runaway,” replied Melitta.
-----
Footnote 122:
Athen. xiii. 47.
-----
The same taste which induces many persons of rank in our own day to
marry opera dancers and actresses, in antiquity favoured the ambition of
the Hetairæ, many of whom rose from their state of humiliation to be the
wives of satraps and princes. This was the case with Glycera, whom after
the death of Pythionica, Harpalos sent for from Athens, and domiciliated
within his royal palace at Tarsos. He required her to be saluted and
considered as his queen, and refused to be crowned unless in conjunction
with her. Nay, he had even the hardihood to erect in the city of Rossos,
a brazen statue to her, beside his own.[123] Herpyllis, one of the same
sisterhood, won the heart of Aristotle, and was the mother of
Nicomachos. She survived the philosopher, and was carefully provided for
by his will.[124] Even Plato, whose genius and virtue are still the
admiration of mankind, succumbed to the charms of Archæanassa, an
Hetaira of Colophon, whose beauty, which long survived her youth, he
celebrated in an epigram still extant.[125]
-----
Footnote 123:
Athen. xiii. 50.
Footnote 124:
Athen. xiii. 56.—Diog. Laert. v. 12.
Footnote 125:
Diog. Laert. iii. 31.
-----
Of all these ladies, however, not even excepting Phryne, or the Sicilian
Laïs,[126] Aspasia[127] has obtained the most widely extended fame. This
illustrious woman, endowed by nature with a mind still more beautiful
than her beautiful form, exercised over the fortunes of Athens an
influence beyond the reach of the greatest queen. Her genius, unobserved
for some time, by degrees drew around her all those whom the love of
letters or ambition induced to cultivate their minds. Her house became a
sort of club-room, where eloquence, politics, philosophy, mixed with
badinage, were daily discussed, and whither even ladies of the highest
rank resorted to acquire from Aspasia those accomplishments which were
already beginning to be in fashion. From her Socrates professed to have
in part acquired his knowledge of rhetoric, and it is extremely probable
that he could trace to the habit of conversing with one so gifted by
nature, so polished by rare society, something of that exquisite
facility and lightness of manner which characterize his familiar
dialectics. No doubt, we may attribute something of the reputation she
acquired to the desire to disparage Pericles. It was thought that by
appropriating many of his harangues to her they could bring him down
nearer their own level. She was, in influence and celebrity, the Madame
Roland of Athens, though living in times somewhat less troubled.
-----
Footnote 126:
She was a native of Hyccara, but taken prisoner in childhood, and
carried to Corinth, whence that city has generally the honor of being
regarded as her birthplace.—Athen. xiii. 54.—Cf. Thucyd. vi. 62. Sch.
Aristoph. Lysist. 179.
Footnote 127:
Of the younger Aspasia, who had the reputation of being the loveliest
woman of her time, we have the following sketch in Ælian:—“Her hair
was auburn, and fell in slightly waving ringlets. She had large full
eyes, a nose inclined to aquiline, (ἐπίγρυπος) and small delicate
ears. Nothing could be softer than her skin, and her complexion was
fresh as the rose; on which account the Phoceans called her Milto, or
‘the Blooming’. Her ruddy lips, opening, disclosed teeth whiter than
snow. She, moreover, possessed the charm on which Homer so often
dwells in his descriptions of beautiful women, of small, well-formed
ankles. Her voice was so full of music and sweetness, that those to
whom she spoke imagined they heard the songs of the Seirens. To crown
all she was like Horace’s Pyrrha, simplex munditiis, abhorring
superfluous pomp of ornament.”—Hist. Var. xii. 1. Some persons,
however, would not have admired the nose of Milto:—thus, the youth in
Terence (Heauton, v. 5. 17. seq.) “What? must I marry”
“Rufamne illam virginem
Cæsiam, sparso ore, adunco naso?
Non possum, pater.”
Aristotle (Rhet. i. 2) does not undervalue the slightly aquiline nose;
and Plato appears rather to have admired it in men.—Repub. v. § 19. t.
i. p. 392.—Stallb. where the philosopher calls it the Royal Nose.
-----
The name of Phryne, though not so celebrated, is still familiar to every
one, partly, perhaps, through the accusation brought against her in the
court of Heliæa,[128] by Euthios. She was a native of Thespiæ, but
established at Athens, and beloved by the orator Hyperides, who
undertook her defence. His pleading, it may therefore be presumed, was
eloquent. Perceiving, however, he could make but little impression on
the judges, he had her called into court, and, as if by accident, bared
her bosom,[129] the fairness and beauty of which heaving with anguish
and terror—for it was a matter of life and death—so wrought upon the
august judges that her acquittal immediately followed. The Heliasts,
renowned for their upright decisions, were suspected on this occasion of
undue commiseration, though the charge was probably grounded on some
frivolous pretence of impiety; and, to prevent the recurrence of similar
partiality in future, a decree was passed, rendering it illegal thus to
extort the pity of the court, or, on any account, to introduce the
accused, whether man or woman, into the presence of the judges. It was
on her figure that Apelles chiefly relied in painting his Aphrodite
rising from the sea, as Phryne herself rose before all Greece on the
beach at Eleusis; and Praxiteles also wrought from the same model his
Cnidean Aphrodite.[130] This sculptor, who was the rival of Hyperides,
and, indeed, of all Athens, in the affections of Phryne, permitted her
one day to make choice for herself from two statues of his own
workmanship—the Eros and the Satyr. Discovering, by a stratagem, that he
himself preferred the former, she was guided by his judgment, and
dedicated the winged god in a temple of her native city. In admiration
of her beauty, a number of gentlemen erected, by subscription, in her
honour, a golden statue at Delphi. It was the work of Praxiteles, and
stood on a pillar of white marble of Pentelicos, between the statues of
Archidamos, king of Sparta, and Philip, son of Amyntas. The inscription
ran simply thus:—
“Phryne, of Thespiæ, daughter of Epicles.”
-----
Footnote 128:
Poseidip. ap. Athen. xiii. 60.
Footnote 129:
Honest old Burton, whom few anecdotes of this description escaped,
imagines this artifice to have been the only defence he made.—Anatomy
of Melancholy, ii. 222.
Footnote 130:
Athen. xiii. 59. seq.
-----
On seeing this statue, Crates, the cynic, exclaimed, “Behold a trophy of
Hellenic wantonness!”
It is not, of course, among women of this class, that we should expect
to discover proofs of female truth or enduring attachment. But the human
heart sometimes triumphs over adverse circumstances.[131] History has
preserved the memory of more than one act of heroism performed by an
Hetaira, to show that woman doth not always put off her other virtues,
though habitually trampling on the one which constitutes for her the
boundary between honour and infamy.
-----
Footnote 131:
Athen. xiii. 59.—In the apprehension of Lucian, too, they were
anything but mercenary; and stripped themselves cheerfully of all
their personal ornaments to bestow them, like so many sisters, on the
person they loved.—Diall. Hetair. vii. 1.
-----
Ptolemy, son of Philadelphos, while commanding the garrison of Ephesos,
had along with him the courtezan, Irene, who, when his Thracian
mercenaries rose in revolt, fled along with him to the temple of
Artemis, where they fell together, sprinkling the altar with their
blood.[132] Alcibiades, too, of all his friends, found none adhere to
him in his adversity but an Hetaira, who cheerfully exposed her life for
his sake; and, when the assassins of Pharnabazos had achieved their
task, performed, like another Antigone, the last duties over the ashes
of the man she loved.[133] Other anecdotes might be added equally
honourable to their feelings and fidelity, but these will sufficiently
illustrate their character and the estimation in which they were
generally held.
-----
Footnote 132:
Athen. xiii. 64.
Footnote 133:
Plut. Alcib. § 39.
-----
CHAPTER VI.
TOILETTE, DRESS, AND ORNAMENTS.
Having now described the condition and influence of women, it will be
necessary to institute some inquiry into one of the principal means by
which they achieved and maintained their empire. At first sight,
perhaps, the disquisition may appear scarcely to deserve all the pains I
have bestowed upon it; but, as the dress of the ancients is connected on
the one hand with the progress of the useful arts, as spinning, weaving,
dyeing, &c., and on the other with the forms and developement of
sculpture, it can scarcely, when well considered, be reckoned among
matters of trifling moment. Besides, the costume and ornaments of a
people often afford important aid towards comprehending the national
character, constituting, in fact, a sort of practical commentary on the
mental habits, and tone and principles of morals, prevailing at any
given period among them.
The raiment of the Grecian women, of which the public generally obtain
some idea from the remaining monuments of ancient art, may be said to
have been regulated by the same laws of taste which presided over the
developement of the national genius in sculpture and painting. Every
article of their habiliment appeared to harmonise exactly with the rest.
Nothing of that grotesque extravagance which in some of the fleeting
vagaries of fashion transforms our modern ladies, with their inflated
balloon sleeves and painfully deformed waists, into so many whalebone
and muslin hobgoblins, was ever allowed to disfigure the rich contour of
a Greek woman. As she proceeded lovely from the hands of nature, her
pride was to preserve that loveliness. Her garments, accordingly, were
not fashioned with a view to disguise or conceal her form, but by
graceful folds, flowing curves, ornaments rich and tastefully disposed,
to afford as many indications of its matchless symmetry and perfection
as might be compatible with her sex’s delicacy and the severity of
public morals. Consequently the art of dress, like every other
conversant with taste and beauty, reached in Greece its highest
perfection. A woman draped according to the prevalent fashion in the
best ages of the Athenian commonwealth, was an object not to be equalled
for elegance or grace. From the snow white veil which probably shaded
her countenance and ringlets of auburn or hyacinth, to the sandals of
white satin and gold that ornamented her small ankle, the eye could
detect nothing gaudy, affected, or out of keeping. There was
magnificence without ostentation, brilliance of colours, but a
brilliance that harmonised with whatever was brought in contact with it;
the splendour of numerous jewels and trinkets of gold, but no appearance
of display, or of a wish to dazzle. Everything appeared to stand where
it did, because it was its proper place.
But in Sparta where there existed little tendency towards art or
refinement,[134] a costume the antipodes of all this prevailed. That of
the virgins differed in some respects from that of the matrons, and the
difference arose out of a peculiar feature of manners, in which, if in
nothing else, they resembled the English. In several Ionic countries, as
at present on the continent, girls were previously to marriage guarded
with much strictness. At Sparta, on the contrary, and among the Dorians
generally,[135] they were permitted, as in England, to walk abroad in
company with young men, and, of course, to form attachments at their own
discretion. In this, too, as in their dress, they only preserved the
customs of antiquity; for in Homer we find the Trojan ladies making
anxious inquiries of Hector respecting their relations and friends in
the field, and going forth from their houses attended only by their
maids. The married women led more retired lives, and when they went
abroad fashion required that they should be veiled, as we learn from the
following apophthegm of Charillos, who being asked why the maidens went
abroad uncovered while the matrons concealed their faces, replied:
“Because it is incumbent on the former to find themselves husbands, on
the latter only to keep those they have.”[136]
-----
Footnote 134:
Cf. Montaigne, Essais, t. iv. p. 214, seq.
Footnote 135:
See above, chapter ii.
Footnote 136:
Plut. Apophtheg. Lacon. Charill. 2. t. i. p. 161.
-----
The principal, or, rather, the sole garment of the Dorian maidens was
the chiton, or himation,[137] made of woollen stuff, and without
sleeves, but fastened on either shoulder by a large clasp, and gathered
on the breast by a kind of brooch. This sleeveless robe, which seldom
reached more than half way to the knee, was moreover left open up to a
certain point on both sides,[138] so that the skirts or wings, flying
open as they walked, entirely exposed their limbs, closely resembling
the shift of the Bedouin women,[139] slit up to the arm-pit, but
gathered tight by a girdle about the waist. When the girdle was removed
it reached to the calves of the legs,[140] and would then, but for the
side-slits, have been quite as becoming as the blue chemise of the
modern Egyptian women, which is open in front from the neck to the
waist.[141] When dressed in this single robe, their whole form breathing
health, and modesty in their countenance, there was no doubt a simple
elegance in their appearance, little less attractive, perhaps, than the
exquisite and elaborate _mise_ of an Ionian or an Attic girl. In this
costume Melissa, daughter of Procles, of Epidaurus, was habited when, as
she poured out wine to her father’s labourers, Periander, the
Corinthian,[142] beheld and loved her. The married women, however, did
not make their appearance in public _en chemise_, but when going abroad
donned a second garment which seems to have resembled pretty closely
their husbands’ himatia.[143]
-----
Footnote 137:
Herod. v. 87. Duris. ap. Schol. Eurip. Hecub. 922. Æl. Dionys. ap.
Eustath. ad Il. p. 963. 17. ed. Basil. Æl. Var. Hist. i. 18. Cf.
Spanh. Observ. in Hymn. in Apoll. 32. t. ii. p. 63. Schol. Pind. Nem.
i. 74.
Footnote 138:
Poll. vii. 54. seq. Mus. Chiaramont. pl. 35. Antich. di Ercol. t. iv.
tav. 24.
Footnote 139:
Castellan, Mœurs des Ottomans, vi. 47.
Footnote 140:
Schol. Eurip. Hecub. 922.
Footnote 141:
Suidas, however, supposes these garments to have been less becoming
when the girdle was removed, and adds ἐν Σπαρτῇ δὲ καὶ τάς κόρας
γυμνὰς φαίνεσθαι.—v. δωριάζειν. t. i. p. 772. Montaigne observes, that
the ancient Gauls made little use of clothing; and that the same thing
might be said of the Irish of his time, t. iv. p. 214.—The French
ladies, also, of his own day, affected a costume in no respect less
indelicate than that of the Spartan girls: “nos dames, ainsi molles et
delicates qu’elles sont, elles s’en vont tantôt entre ouvertes jusques
au nombril.”—Essais, II. xii. t. iv. p. 213.
Footnote 142:
Athen. xiii. 56.
Footnote 143:
Cf. Il. ε. 425.—In the life of Pyrrhus, the difference between the
dress of married women and that of the virgins is distinctly pointed
out:—ἀρχομένοις δὲ ταῦτα πράττειν, ἧκον αὐτοις τῶν παρθενῶν καὶ
γυναικῶν, αἱ μὲν ἐν ἱματίοις, καταζωσάμεναι τοὺς χιτωνίσκους, αἱ δὲ
μονοχίτωνες, συναργασόμεναι τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις. Plut. Pyrrh. § 27.
-----
Of the simple wardrobe of a Doric lady, which in ancient times was that
of all women of Hellenic race, exceedingly little can be said. It is
altogether different with respect to that of the gentlewomen of Attica,
where, though inferior in personal beauty to none, the women exhibited
so much fertility in the matter of dress, that they appeared to depend
on that alone for the establishment of their empire. For this reason it
would be vain to pretend to describe all their vestments and ornaments,
or the arts of the toilette by which they were adapted to their
purposes. To do so properly would, in fact, require a volume. But all
that can be crowded into one short chapter shall be given, since I am
not deterred by any such scruples as formerly arrested the pen of a very
learned writer, who apprehended that, if he proceeded, he might be
supposed to have been rummaging the boudoir notes of an Athenian
lady![144]
-----
Footnote 144:
Taylor ad Demosth.
-----
The primary garment,[145] answering to the _chemise_ of the moderns, was
a white tunic reaching to the ground,[146] in some instances sleeveless,
and fastened on the shoulders with buttons, in others furnished with
loose hanging sleeves descending to the wrist, and brought together at
intervals upon the arm by silver or golden agraffes.[147] It was
gathered into close folds under the bosom by a girdle,[148] or riband,
sometimes fastened in front by a knot, sometimes by a clasp.[149] This
inner robe, made in the earlier ages of fine linen,[150] manufactured in
Attica, or imported from Tyre, Egypt, or Sidon, came, in after times, to
be of muslin from Tarentum, or woven at home from Egyptian cotton. The
use of linen, however, for this purpose was not wholly superseded. A
very beautiful kind, from the island of Amorgos,[151] one of the
Cyclades, was often substituted down to a very late period in place of
the byssos, or fine muslin of Egypt; and this insular fabric,[152]
whether snow-white or purple, would have rivalled the finest cambric,
being of the most delicate texture and semi-transparent,[153] like the
Tarentine and Coan vests of the Roman ladies, the sandyx-coloured Lydian
robe, or the silken chemises of the Turkish sultanas, described by Lady
Montague.[154] It is in a tunic of this linen that Lysistrata, in
Aristophanes, advises the Athenian ladies to appear before their
husbands in order to give full effect to the splendour of their
charms.[155]
-----
Footnote 145:
Athen. xii. 5. 29. Boeckh. i. 141. Aristoph. Lysist. 43. sqq.
Footnote 146:
Ἐκ δὲ λίνου, λινοῦς χιτὼν, ὃν Ἀθηναῖοι ἔφορουν ποδήρη.—Poll. vii. 71.
Footnote 147:
Ælian. V. H. i. 8.
Footnote 148:
On the ζῶνη, Cf. Il. ξ. 181. Odyss. τ. 231. Damm. 988. On the Cestus
Il. ξ. 214. Aristoph. Lysist. 72. βαθυχζώνοι. Æschyl. Pers. 155. et
Schol.—Bœttig. Les Furies, p. 34.
Footnote 149:
Achilles Tatius. ii. cap. xi. p. 33, seq. Jacobs.
Footnote 150:
Thucyd. i. 6.
Footnote 151:
Aristoph. Lysist. 150. 735, et Schol.
Footnote 152:
Poll. vii. 75.
Footnote 153:
Aristoph. Lysist. 48. Poll. vii. 57. 74.
Footnote 154:
Works, ii. 191.
Footnote 155:
Aristoph. Lysist. 48.
-----
Because the Amorginean linen was often, perhaps commonly, dyed purple,
it has been inferred, that none purely white was produced; but this, as
Bochart[156] observes, is, probably, a mistake. At all events, it was of
extraordinary fineness, superior, in the opinion of Suidas,[157] even to
the byssos and carbasos, or lawn of Cyprus, and appears to have been of
a thin, gauze-like texture, like the drapery of “woven air” which
Petronius[158] throws around his female characters.
-----
Footnote 156:
Chanaan. I. 14. p. 449.
Footnote 157:
Corrected by Bochart, who reads ἔστι δὲ σφόδρα λεπτὸν ὑπὲρ τὴν βύσσον
ἢ τὴν κάρπασον. Cf. Suid. v. Ἀμοργ. t. i. p. 204. c. Etym. Mag. 85.
15.
Footnote 158:
Satyricon. cap. 55. p. 273. Burmann.
-----
Over the chiton was worn a shorter robe not reaching below the knee, and
confined above the loins by a broad riband. This also was, in some
instances, furnished with sleeves, and of a rich purple or saffron
colour, generally ornamented, like the chiton, with a broad border of
variegated embroidery. To these, in order to complete the walking-dress,
was added a magnificent mantle, generally purple, embroidered with gold,
which, being thrown negligently over the shoulders,[159] floated airily
about the person, discovering the under garments exquisitely disposed
for the purpose of displaying all the contours of the form, particularly
of the waist and bosom. The Athenian ladies being, like our own,
peculiarly jealous of possessing the reputation of a fine figure, and
nature sometimes failing them, had recourse to art, and wore what, among
milliners, I believe, are called _bustles_.[160] I am sorry to be
obliged to add, that there were, also, mothers at Athens who anticipated
us in the absurdity of tight lacing, and invented corsets for the
purpose of compressing the abdomen and otherwise reducing the figures of
their daughters to some artificial standard which they had already begun
to set up in defiance of nature.[161] Some women, too, when apprehensive
of growing fat, would collect on fine wool a quantity of summer dew,
which they afterwards squeezed out and drank, this liquid having been
supposed to be possessed of deleterious qualities, more particularly the
ascending dew.[162]
-----
Footnote 159:
We find, from ancient monuments, that persons likewise wore over their
shoulders an article of dress exactly resembling the modern cape or
tippet.—Mus. Cortonens. tab. 58.
Footnote 160:
Athen. xiii. 23. Alex. Frag. v. 13, seq.
Footnote 161:
Victor. Var. Lect. ii. 6. 32.
Footnote 162:
Plut. Quæst. Nat. § 6. t. v. p. 321.—Coray sur Hippocrate, t. II. p.
82, seq.
-----
Like the eastern ladies of the present day, they seldom went abroad
without their veil, which was a light fabric of transparent texture,
white or purple, from Cos, or Laconia. It was thrown tastefully over the
head, raised in front on the point of the sphendone,[163] as in modern
Italy by the comb, and hung waving on the shoulders and down the back in
glittering folds. But this was not the only covering they made use of
for their head. Those modern writers who have so thought are mistaken,
since it is clear, both from contemporary testimony and numerous works
of art still remaining, that very frequently they wore caps or bonnets.
Several examples occur in Mr. Hope’s work, on the Costumes of the
Ancients;[164] and Mnesilochos, in Aristophanes, when putting on the
disguise of a woman for the purpose of being present at the Festival of
Demeter, like Clodius at that of the Bona Dea, desires to borrow from
Agathon a net or mitre for the head. “Will you have my night-cap?”
inquires the poet. “Exactly,” replies Euripides, “that is just what we
want.”[165]
-----
Footnote 163:
See an exact representation of it in the Mus. Chiaramont. pl. 8, where
we likewise find an example of the sleeves closed with agraffes.—Cf.
pl. 16.
Footnote 164:
Plates. Nos. 98. 108. 131. 162. 172.
Footnote 165:
Aristoph. Thesmoph. 256.
-----
But we have hitherto scarcely entered upon the list of their wardrobe,
in enumerating some of the articles of which, I must crave the reader’s
permission to employ the original terms, our language, in most cases,
furnishing us with no equivalent. And, first, following the order of
Pollux, who observes no principle of classification, we have the
_Epomis_, a robe with sleeves, opposed to the _Exomis_, which had none.
The _Diploïdion_, an ample cloak, or mantle, capacious enough to be worn
double. The _Hemidiploïdion_, a more scanty mantle; the _Katastiktos_,
adorned with flowers or figures of animals, or richly marked with spots,
the _Katagogis_, the _Epiblema_, or cloak, and the _Peplos_,[166] a word
of very equivocal character, used to signify a veil or mantle, a
sofa-carpet, or a covering for a chariot. Generally, it seems to have
designated a garment of double the necessary size, that, at pleasure, it
might be put on, or cast, like a cloak, over the whole body, as appears
from the Peplos of Athena.[167] That the word sometimes was used to
signify a tunic appears from Xenophon, who says “the peplos being rent
above, the bosom appeared.”[168] He, however, considers it to have
formed part of the male costume.
-----
Footnote 166:
Poll. vii. 49, seq.—The _peploma_ of Pindar (Pyth. ix. 219) is now
paploma. Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 32. Cf. Iliad. ε. 315.—The
peplos was sometimes embroidered with figures.—Il. ζ. 289–295.
Footnote 167:
Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 564. Poll. vii. 50.
Footnote 168:
Poll. vii. 50. Cf. Cyrop. iii. 1. 13.-3. 67. In Homer, Iliad, γ. 385,
&c. the word, ἑανὸς, signifying a richly-wrought vest or robe, is
synonymous, as Pollux remarks, with πέπλος vii. 51. This is, likewise,
the opinion of Buttmann, who, however, supposes it to mean a “flexibly
soft garment.”—Lexil. Art. 41. Others draw a distinction between ἑανὸς
and πέπλος, the former, they say, being employed to signify a veil
unwrought and purely white, the latter, one which was variegated with
colours and embroidery. Passow considers it to be a mere adjective
signifying “clear, light,” and says, that εἷμα or ἱμάτιον is always
understood with it.
-----
Another article of female dress was the _Zoma_, a short vest fitting
close to the shape, and adorned at the bottom with fringe, as appears
from a fragment of Æschylus in the Onomasticon. A character of Menander,
too, exclaims,—“Don’t you perceive the nurse habited in her Zoma?”—for,
adds Pollux, it was generally worn by old women. An elegant woollen
dress, called _Parapechu_, white, but with purple sleeves, was imported
from Corinth, and would appear to have been much worn by the
Hetairæ.[169] Other garments seem to have been affected by the middle
class of citizens, who, being unable to dress in purple,[170] the
distinguishing colour of the wealthy and the noble, brought into fashion
the _Paruphes_ and _Paralourges_, robes adorned on either side with a
purple stripe. As much dignity is supposed to belong to ample drapery,
our citizen ladies took care not to be sparing of stuff, their dresses
trailing to the ground, and displaying numerous folds, produced
purposely at the extremity by a band passing round the edge. These
garments were generally of linen; but when a lady, in Homer, is said to
be wrapped in her shining mantle, the poet[171] is supposed to intend a
fine, light, woollen cloak, like the white burnooses of the Tunisian and
Egyptian ladies.[172]
-----
Footnote 169:
Poll. vii. 53. Jam παράπηχυ λήδιον vel ἱμάτιον, collatis Hesychii et
Pollucis interpretationibus, intelligi videtur dictam fuisse vestem
albam cui manicæ adpositæ essent purpureæ.—Schweig. ad Athen. xiii.
45. t. xii. p. 146.
Footnote 170:
Athen. xiii. 45. Poll. _ubi supra_.
Footnote 171:
Iliad, γ. 141.
Footnote 172:
Poll. vii. 54.
-----
Several sorts of dresses obtained their appellation from their colours;
as the _Crocotos_, a saffron robe of ceremony, the _Crocotion_, a
diminutive of the same; the _Omphakinon_, of the colour of unripe
grapes, which, though prescriptively appropriated to women, was much
affected by Alexander the Great. Modern ladies have delighted in
flea-coloured dresses, and, in like manner, the ancients had theirs of
asinine hue, called _Killios_, from a Doric name for the ass, and
afterwards _Onagrinos_,[173] which, if they really resembled the wild
ass in hue, must have been exceedingly beautiful. There was a scarlet
robe, with the appellation of _Coccobaphes_, the _Sisys_, a thick heavy
cloak, likewise called _Hyphandron Himation_, resembling the
_Amphimallos_, which had a double warp, and was hairy on both
sides.[174]
-----
Footnote 173:
Among the Dorians the ass (ὄνος) was called κίλλος, and an ass-driver
(ὀνηλάτης) κιλλακτὴρ. Poll. vii. 56.
Footnote 174:
Poll. vii. 56, seq.
-----
Not to extend this list of dresses beyond the patience of a milliner, we
will now pass on to the principal ornaments for the head,[175] in which
the Greek ladies evinced extraordinary taste and invention.[176] Among
these one of the most elegant was the _Ampyx_, a fillet by which they
confined their hair in front. It sometimes consisted of a piece of gold
embroidery, the place of which was often supplied by a thin plate of
pure gold, studded with jewels. Another Homeric ornament, the
_Kekruphalos_,[177] can only be alluded to as a critical puzzle which
has baffled all the commentators, in which predicament the _Plekte
anadesme_[178] also stands; all that we know being, that it found its
place in the female head-dress, though whether as a mitre or a diadem
Apollonios is unable to determine. It may possibly have been, under
another appellation, that graceful wreath or garland, consisting of
fragrant flowers interwoven or bound together by their stems, described
among female ornaments by Pollux.[179]
-----
Footnote 175:
Cf. Winkelmann, iv. 2. 76. Alex. Pædag. ii. 12.
Footnote 176:
Theoc. Eidyll. i. 33. Æmil. Port. Lex. Dor. in voce.
Footnote 177:
Iliad. χ. 469. Heyne in loc. Pollux. v. 95, enumerates the ἄμπυξ among
female ornaments, but without giving any description of it. Cf. Pind.
Olymp. vii. 118. Dissen. Comm. ad v. 64. Bœttiger. Pictur. Vascul. i.
87.—The κεκρύφαλος, or κροκύφαντος,, which occurs once in the Iliad,
was a female ornament for the head, unknown to the later Greeks. The
scholiast describes it as κόσμος τὶς περὶ κεφαλήν; and Damm observes
that, it was “redimiculam _vel_ reticulam quo mulieres crines
coërcent.”—1158. Heyne is equally unsatisfactory. The commentators on
Pollux. v. 95, avoid the subject altogether. Cf. Foës. Œcon. Hippoc.
p. 202.
Footnote 178:
Iliad, χ. 469. Πλεκτὴ ἀναδέσμη· οἱ μὲν διάδημα, says Apollonios, οἱ δὲ
μίτραν. Πλὴν κοσμου εἶδος περὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν. This is the basis of
Hesychius’ article. The Leyden scholia say:—ἀναδέσμη λέγεται, σειρὰ,
ἥν περὶ τοὺς κροτάφους ἀναδοῦνται· καλεῖται δ᾽ ὑπ’ ἑνίων καλανδάκη.
(In which Heyne imagines we may detect _calantica_, “a hood, hurlet,
or coif.”) Κρήδεμνον δὲ πάλιν τὸ μαφόριον.
Footnote 179:
Poll. v. 96. Iliad. σ. 595. In Homer the epithet, however, is not
πλεκτὴ but καλὴ. Hemsterhuis ad Poll. t. iv. p. 998.
-----
Another article of the same ambiguous character was the _Pylæon_,
supposed to have derived its name from φύλον, _a leaf_. Athenæus,[180]
on a subject of this kind, perhaps, one of the best authorities,
describes it as the crown which, during certain festivals, the Spartans
placed upon the head of Hera. Doubtless, however, the most tasteful and
elegant of this class of female ornaments was the _Kalyx_, a golden
syrinx or reed, passed like a ring over each several tress to keep it
separate.[181] Eustathius describes it as a ring resembling a
full-blown, but not expanded, rose; and this explanation will not be
inconsistent with that of Hesychius, if we suppose the golden tubes to
have terminated in the form of that flower. The _Strophion_ was a band
or fillet[182] with which women confined their hair, as we discover from
many ancient statues. Parrhasios the artist, who used to bind his
luxuriant locks with a white strophion, was therefore accused of
effeminacy.[183] The name, however, appears to have been applied to any
kind of band, even to the broad belt worn to support the bosom: “My
strophion being untied the walnuts fell out,” says the girl in
Aristophanes.[184] There was also an ornament of the same name worn by
priests.[185]
-----
Footnote 180:
Deipnosoph. xv. 22. Cf. Poll. v. 96.
Footnote 181:
Cœl. Rhodig. xxvii. 27, imagines it to mean a female head-dress, or a
parasol. Jungermann. ad Poll. v. 96. Eustath. ad Iliad. β. 401.
Footnote 182:
On a mask, engraved among the Gemm. Antich. of Agostini, we find an
exact representation of the modern feronet, pl. 24.
Footnote 183:
Athen. xii. 62. Pollux. v. 96.
Footnote 184:
Poll. vii. 67. 95.
Footnote 185:
Plut. Arat. § 58.
-----
The _Opisthosphendone_,[186] one of the female ornaments enumerated in a
fragment of Aristophanes, was worn only on the stage. Its proper name
_sphendone_ it derived from its resemblance to a sling, being broad and
elevated in front,[187] and terminating in narrow points at the back of
the head where it was tied. On the comic stage it was sometimes worn for
sport with the fore part behind.[188] The _Anadesma_[189] was a gilded
fillet or diadem of gold, used like the _strophion_ for encircling the
forehead. What was the precise use or form of the _Xanion_, another
golden ornament fashionable in remote antiquity, could not be
ascertained in the age of Pollux, who says that many writers supposed it
to have been a comb. Of this number are Hesychius, Suidas,[190] and
Phavorinus. But a learned modern conjectures with more probability, that
it was some talismanic idol worn as a spell against the evil eye.[191]
In fact it is expressly observed in the Etymologicon Magnum,[192] that
the Hellenic women reckoned it among their phylacteries.
-----
Footnote 186:
Clem. Alexand. Pædag. ii. 12. Winkelmann, Histoire de l’Art. iv. 2.
75. note 6, and i. 2. 18. See also Cabinet Pio Clement, t. i. pl. 2,
with the observations of Visconti.
Footnote 187:
Cf. Mus. Chiaramont, pl. 20.
Footnote 188:
Poll. v. 96. vii. 95. Eustath. ad Dion. Perieg, v. 7. Comment. ad
Poll. iv. 999. On the κάλαμος, named but not described by Pollux, v.
96, see Eustath. ad Il. τ. p. 1248. Phavor. et Hesych. _in voce_
καλαμις. What the ἔντροπον was, Jungermann confesses he does not know;
nor do I, though it appears probable that it may have been the golden
or gilt ornament with which the hair when gathered on the top of the
head was bound together.
Footnote 189:
Damm. 444. Aristoph. Plut. 589. Poll. v. 96.
Footnote 190:
This lexicographer speaks of it as follows:—κτένιον. ὁ φοροῦσιν αἱ
γυναῖκες ἐν τοῖς ἀναδέμασιν, οἷς κόσμος χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ κεφαλῆς. t. ii. p.
252. b.
Footnote 191:
612, 23, seq.
Footnote 192:
Hemsterhuis. ad Poll. t. iv. p. 1000.
-----
Of the ear-rings worn by Grecian women the variety was very great. The
most ancient kind were called _Hermata_, of which mention occurs both in
the Iliad and the Odyssey.[193] They were usually adorned with three
emerald drops,[194] for which reason they were by the Athenians
denominated _Triopia_ or _Triopides_,[195] and by the other Greeks
_Triopthalma_ or “the triple eye.” By this word, as an ancient
grammarian informs us, some understood an animal like the beetle,
supposed to have three eyes, whence a necklace with three hyaline or
crystal eyes, depending from it in front, was likewise called by the
same name. Pollux[196] supposed the earrings of Hera to have been
adorned with three diminutive figures in precious stones, or gold,
probably of goddesses. The _Diopos_ seems to have been an earring with
two drops. The _Helix_ appears in Homer[197] rather to mean an earring
than an armlet, and to have received its name from its circular shape or
curvature; but the spiral gold rings round the walking-stick of
Parrhasios are also called _Helices_ by Athenæus.[198] Another name for
this sort of earring was _Heliktes_.[199] In the Æolic dialect earrings
were called _Siglai_, in the Doric _Artiala_. A particular kind
denominated _Enclastridia_ and _Strobelia_, by the comic poets, had gold
drops in the form of a pine cone.[200] Two very curious kinds of
earrings were the _Caryatides_, and the _Hippocampia_, the former
representing in miniature the architectural figures, so called, the
latter little horses with tails ending in a fish. There were earrings,
likewise, with drops in the forms of centaurs and other fantastic
creations.[201]
-----
Footnote 193:
Il. ξ. 182. Odys. σ. 296. Ælian. Var. Hist. i. 18.
Footnote 194:
Fabri. Thes. v. auris.
Footnote 195:
Damm. 2195, reads τριότταια, and τριοττίδες, in the passage of
Eustathius, which forms the basis of my text; but Kuhn and Jungermann
ad Poll. t. iv. p. 1003, correct as above.
Footnote 196:
Onomast. v. 97.
Footnote 197:
Il. σ. 401. Cf. Eustath. ad Odyss. ω. 49.
Footnote 198:
Deipnosoph. xii. 62.
Footnote 199:
Poll. v. 97.
Footnote 200:
Jungermann ad Poll. t. iv. 1001.
Footnote 201:
Poll. v. 95.
-----
The names and figures of necklaces were scarcely less numerous.[202] A
jewelled collar fitting tight to the throat formed, under the name of
_Peritrachelion_, the principal of these ornaments, of which another was
the _Perideraion_.[203] The _Hypoderaion_ was as its name imports a
necklace that hung low on the bosom, and the same was the case with the
_Hormos_.[204] On the _Tantheuristos Hormos_ little information can be
obtained, for which reason the commentators would alter the text; but
the most probable conjecture is, that it obtained its appellation from
the flashing and glancing of the jewels depending from it upon the
breast.[205] The _Triopis_ was a species of necklace distinguished for
having three stars or eye-like gems depending from it as drops. This
being the most fashionable necklace was known under a variety of names,
as the _Kathema_, and _Katheter_, and _Mannos_ or _Monnos_, among the
Dorians.[206]
-----
Footnote 202:
Odyss. σ. 290. Hymn, in Ven. ii. 11, seq. Necklaces of gilded wood.
Xen. Œcon. x. 3. 61.
Footnote 203:
Plut. Mar. § 17. Bulenger, De Spoliis Bellicis, c. 12.
Footnote 204:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 677.
Footnote 205:
Comment. ad Poll. v. 98 p. 1003.
Footnote 206:
Theocrit. xi. 41. Casaub. Lect. Theocrit. c. 13.
-----
Of armlets and bracelets there was likewise a great variety. Some worn
above the elbow were denominated _Brachionia_, others called
_Pericarpia_, or _Echinoi_ encircled the wrists and were often in the
form of twisted snakes of gold, which the woman-hater in Lucian would
have converted into real serpents.[207] The _Psellia_ or chain bracelets
were much worn; the _Clidones_ adorned the rich and luxurious only. As
stockings were not in common use, and shoes and sandals frequently
dispensed with when within doors, fashion required that the feet and
ankles should not remain unadorned. Ancient writers, accordingly,
enumerate several kinds of anklets, or bangles, all of gold, and varying
only in form, the distinction between which I have been unable to
discover. The _Ægle,_ the _Pede_ and the _Periscelides_ were so many
ornaments for the instep or ankle.[208]
-----
Footnote 207:
Amor. § 41.
Footnote 208:
Poll. v. 100. Golden periscelides are enumerated by Longus l. i. among
the possessions of the young Lesbian girl; and Horace, Epist. i. xvii.
56, speaks of the periscelis being snatched away from a courtezan.
Here Dr. Bentley understands the word to mean _tibialia_, and
observes,—“delicatulæ fasciolis involvebant sibi crura et femora.” But
Gesner ad Horat. p. 503, seq. rather supposes “compedes mulierum,” to
be intended, and he is probably right. Cf. Petron. Sat. c. 67.
-----
Among the ornaments for the bosom we find the _Ægis_, evidently like the
ægis of Athena, a sort of rich covering with two hemispherical caps to
receive the breasts, such as we find worn by the Bayadères of the
Dekkan. Extending from this on either side, or passing over its lower
edge was the _Maschalister_, a broad belt which covered the armpits,
though in Herodotus the word merely signifies a sword-belt.[209]
Like all other delicate and luxurious women, the Grecian ladies
displayed upon their fingers a profusion of rings, of which some were
set with signets, others with jewels remarkable for their colour and
brilliance. To each of these their copious language supplied a distinct
name.[210] Other female ornaments are spoken of by the comic poets; but
in their descriptions it is difficult to distinguish satire from
information. Among these were the _Leroi_, golden drops attached to the
tunic; the _Ochthoiboi_, which seem to have been a sort of rich tassels;
the _Helleboroi_, ornaments shaped perhaps like the leaves or flowers of
that plant; and the _Pompholuges_, which, though left unexplained by the
commentators, probably signified a large clear kind of bead, as the word
originally meant a “water-bubble,” which a transparent bead
resembles.[211]
-----
Footnote 209:
Cf. Mus. Chiaram. pl. 14. pl. 18.
Footnote 210:
Poll. v. 101. Rhodig. vi. 12.
Footnote 211:
Poll. v. 101. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 249. Bergler ad loc. renders
it by _bulla_, which, among the Romans, signified “a golden ornament
worn about the neck, or at the breast of children, fashioned like a
heart, and hollow within, which they wore until they were fourteen
years old, and then hung up to the household gods.”—Porphyr. in Horat.
vid. et Fab. Thes. in v.
-----
The Athenian ladies, likewise, displayed their taste for luxury and
splendour in their shoes and sandals.[212] Like our own fashionable
dames, they seldom contented themselves with articles of home
manufacture, but imported whatever was considered most elegant or
tasteful from the neighbouring countries. Sometimes, perhaps, the
fashion only and the name were imported, as in the case of the Persian
half-boot, fitting tight to the ankle.[213] The same thing may probably
be said of the Sicyonian slipper. But there was an elegant sandal,
ornamented with gold, which, down to a very late period, continued to be
imported from Patara, in Lycia.[214] Snow-white slippers of fine linen,
flowered with needlework, were occasionally worn; and from many ancient
statues it would seem, that something very like stockings had been
already introduced. Short women, desirous of adding, if not a cubit, at
least a few inches to their stature, adopted the use of _baukides_ with
high cork heels, and soles of great thickness.[215]
-----
Footnote 212:
Diog. Laert. ii. 37. c. Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. 417. Wooden shoes were
worn in Thessaly. With these the women killed Lais in the temple of
Aphrodite—Athen. xiii. 55. There was a species of shoes peculiar to
female slaves called peribarides.—Poll. vii. 87. Aristoph. Lysist. 47.
Footnote 213:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 152. See in Antich. di Ercol. t. vi. p. 11, a
representation of half-boots open in front.
Footnote 214:
Lucian, Diall. Meret. xiv. 3. ἐκ Πατάρων σανδάλια ἐπίχρυσα.
Footnote 215:
Athen. xiii. 23. Poll. vii. 94.
-----
An Athenian beauty usually spent the whole morning in the important
business of the toilette.[216] The crowd of maids who attended on these
occasions appears to have exceeded in number the assistants at similar
rites in a modern dressing-room, the principle of the division of labour
having been pushed to its greatest extent. Like Hera, who was said by
mythologists to renew her virgin charms as often as she bathed in the
fountain of Canathos,[217] the Attic lady appeared to undergo diurnal
rejuvenescence under the hands of her maids.[218] Her lovely face grew
tenfold more lovely by their arts. Clustering in interesting groups
around her, some held the silver basin and ewer, others the boxes of
tooth-powder, or black paint for the eyebrows, the rouge pots or the
blanching varnish, the essence-bottles or the powder for the head, the
jewel-cases or the mirrors.[219] But on nothing was so much care
bestowed as on the hair.[220] Auburn, the colour of Aphrodite’s
tresses[221] in Homer, being considered most beautiful,[222] drugs were
invented in which the hair being dipped, and exposed to the noon-day
sun, it acquired the coveted hue, and fell in golden curls over their
shoulders.[223] Others, contented with their own black hair, exhausted
their ingenuity in augmenting its rich gloss, steeping it in oils and
essences, till all the fragrance of Arabia seemed to breathe around
them. Those waving ringlets which we admire in their sculpture were
often the creation of art, being produced by curling-irons heated in
ashes;[224] after which, by the aid of jewelled fillets and golden pins,
they were brought forward over the smooth white forehead,[225] which
they sometimes shaded to the eyebrows, leaving a small ivory space in
the centre, while behind they floated in shining profusion down the
back. When decked in this manner, and dressed for the harem[226] in
their light flowered sandals and semi-transparent robes already
described, they were scarcely farther removed from the state of nature
than the Spartan maids themselves.
-----
Footnote 216:
Their perfumes and essences were kept in alabaster boxes from
Phœnicia, some of which cost no more than two drachmæ.—Lucian, Diall.
Meret. xiv. 2.
Footnote 217:
Paus. ii. 37, 38.
Footnote 218:
Aristoph. Concion. 732, et Schol.
Footnote 219:
Pignor. de Serv. p. 195.
Footnote 220:
Cf. Suid. v. κομᾷ. t. i. p. 1489. b.
Footnote 221:
See Pashley, i. 247. Pignor. de Serv. 193.
Footnote 222:
“The beautiful colour we call auburn, and which the ancients expressed
by the term golden, is the most common among the Greeks; and they have
gilt wire and various other ornaments (among which might yet perhaps
be recognised the Athenian grasshopper) in ringlets, which they allow
to float over their shoulders, or bind their hair in long tresses that
hang upon the back.”—Douglas, Essay, &c. p. 147, seq.
Footnote 223:
This is beautifully described by Lucian:—Γυναικὶ δὲ ἀεὶ πάσῃ ἡ τοῦ
δαψιλεῖς μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν βοστρύχων τῆς κεφαλῆς ἕλικες, ὑακίνθοις τὸ καλὸν
ἀνθοῦσιν ὅμοια πορφύροντες· οἱ μὲν, ἐπινώτιοι κέχυνται μεταφρένων
κόσμος, οἱ δε παρ’ ὦτα καὶ κροτάφους, πολὺ τῶν ἐν λειμῶνι οὐλότερον
σελίνων· τὸ δ᾽ ἄλλο σῶμα, μηδ᾽ ἀκαρῆ τριχὸς αὐταῖς ὑποφυομένης
ἠλέκτρου, φάσιν, ἢ Σιδωνίας ὑέλου διαφεγγέστιρον ἀπαστραπται.—Amor. §
26.
Footnote 224:
Pignor. de Serv. 194, seq.
Footnote 225:
The young lady, in Lucian, describes thin hair drawn back so as to
expose the forehead as a great deformity.—Diall. Meret. i.
Footnote 226:
A taste not greatly dissimilar presides over the in-door dress of the
modern Greek women. “In the gynecæum,” says Chandler, “the girl, like
Thetis, treading on a soft carpet, has her white and delicate feet
naked; the nails tinged with red. Her trowsers, which in winter are of
red cloth, and in summer of fine calico or thin gauze, descend from
the hip to the ankle, hanging loosely about her limbs, the lower
portion embroidered with flowers, and appearing beneath the shift,
which has the sleeves wide and open, and the seams and edges curiously
adorned with needlework. Her vest is of silk, exactly fitted to the
form of the bosom and the shape of the body, which it rather covers
than conceals, and is shorter than the shift. The sleeves button
occasionally to the hand, and are lined with red or yellow satin. A
rich zone encompasses her waist, and is fastened before by clasps of
silver gilded, or of gold, set with precious stones. Over the vest is
a robe, in summer lined with ermine, and in cold weather with fur. The
head-dress is a skull-cap, red or green, with pearls; a stay under the
chin, and a yellow fore-head cloth, She has bracelets of gold on her
wrists; and, like Aurora, is rosy-fingered, the tips being stained.
Her necklace is a string of zechins, a species of gold coin, or of the
pieces called Byzantines. At her cheeks is a lock of hair made to curl
toward the face; and down her back falls a profusion of tresses,
spreading over her shoulders.”—ii. 140.
-----
Contrary to the fashion prevalent in modern times the bosom, however,
was always closely covered, because being extremely full shaped it began
very early to lose its firmness and beauty.[227] Earrings, set with
Red-Sea pearls of great price, depended from their ears, and an
orbicular crown studded with Indian jewels surmounted and contrasted
strikingly with their dark locks. Add to these the jewelled throat
bands, and costly and glittering necklaces. Their cheeks though
sometimes pale by nature, blushed with rouge,[228] and they even
possessed the art to superinduce over this artificial complexion that
peach-like purple bloom which belongs to the very earliest, dewiest dawn
of beauty. To the tint of the rose they could likewise add that of the
lily. White paint was in common use,[229] not merely among unmarried
women, and ladies of equivocal reputation, but with matrons the chastest
and most prudent in Athens, for we find that pattern of an Attic
gentlewoman, the wife of Ischomachos, practising after marriage every
delusive art of the toilette.[230]
-----
Footnote 227:
Lucian. Amor. § 41. Homer in numerous passages celebrates the deep
bosoms of his country women, and Anacreon, also, touches more than
once on the same topic.
Footnote 228:
Anchusa. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 8. 3. Dion. Chrysost. i. 262. Poll.
vii. 95. Aristoph. Lysist. 46. et Schol. Muret. Not. in Xen. Cyrop. p.
743, seq. Xen. Cyrop. i. 3. 2.
Footnote 229:
Poll. v. 101, vii. 95.
Footnote 230:
Xenoph. Œconom. x. 2, 60.
-----
It by no means follows that all this attention[231] to dress had any
other object than to please their husbands; for the Turkish Sultanas who
pass their lives in the most rigid seclusion are no less sumptuous in
their apparel; but we know that at Athens, as in London, much of this
care was designed to excite admiration out of doors. For it is highly
erroneous to transfer to Athens the ideas of female seclusion acquired
from travellers in the East, where no such rigid seclusion was ever
known. Husbands, indeed, who had cause, or supposed they had, to be
jealous, might be put on the rack by beholding the crowds of admirers
who flocked around their wives the moment they issued into the streets.
But there was no remedy. The laws and customs of the country often
forced the women abroad to assist at processions and perform their
devotions at the shrines of various goddesses.[232]
-----
Footnote 231:
Cf. Xen. de Vect. iv. 8.
Footnote 232:
Luc. Amor. § 41, seq. Cf. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 339. Aristoph.
Plut. 1015, et schol. Plut. Vit. x. Orat. Lycurg. In the country, too,
women went often abroad, and evidently led a very comfortable life;
their habits, in fact, greatly resembled those of English country
ladies; the wives of men whose estates lay contiguous freely visiting
and gossiping with each other. Thus in the action on the damage caused
by the torrent, we find the wife of Tisias and the mother of Callicles
discussing the spoiling of the barley and the barley meal, and
meeting, evidently, as often as they thought proper. In fact, before
the quarrel, the footpath across the field was clearly well
worn.—Demosth. in Call. § 7.
-----
The dress of men included many of the garments worn by women; for
example, the chiton of which there were several kinds, some with and
some without sleeves. Among the latter was the _Exomis_,[233] a short
tunic worn by aged men and slaves, but the name was sometimes applied to
a garment thrown loosely round the body, and to the chiton with one
sleeve.[234] Over this in Homeric times was worn as a defence against
the cold, the _Chlaina_[235] a cloak strongly resembling a highlander’s
tartan, or the burnoose of the Bedouin Arab. It was, in fact, a square
piece of cloth, occasionally with the corners rounded off, which,
passing over the left shoulder, and under the right arm, was again
thrown over the left shoulder, leaving the spear arm free.[236] This is
what the poet means where he terms the _Chlaina_ double. It was wrapped
twice round the breast, and fastened over the left shoulder by a
brooch.[237] Even this, however, was not deemed sufficient in very cold
weather, and a cloak of skins sown together with thongs was wrapped
about the body as a defence against the rain or snow. Some persons
appear to have worn skin-cloaks all the year round, for we find
Anaxagoras, in the midst of summer at Olympia, putting on his when he
foresaw there would be rain.[238] Rustics also appear to have considered
a tunic and skin-cloak necessary to complete their costume.[239]
-----
Footnote 233:
Aristoph. Lysist. 662.
Footnote 234:
Poll. vii. 49.
Footnote 235:
If the appearance of a ghost can be regarded as good testimony, it may
be concluded that the Thessalians wore the chlamys, since Achilles
when called up by Apollonios of Tyana, presented himself in that
garment.—Philost. Vit. Apoll. iv. 16.
Footnote 236:
Müll. Dor. ii. 283. Diog. Laert. ii. 47. Clothes were suspended in the
house on pegs.—Odyss. α. 440.
Footnote 237:
Il. ω. 230. Poll. vii. 49.
Footnote 238:
Diog. Laert. ii. iii. 5. Cum not. Menag. t. ii. p. 49.
Footnote 239:
Dion, Chrysost. i. 231. Reiske. On the dress of the Arcadians, Polyæn.
Stratagem. iv. 14.
-----
The Dorian style of dress formed the point of transition from the simple
elegance of the Homeric period to the elaborate splendour of the
historic age at Athens. In this mode of clothing, a modern author
remarks, a peculiar taste was displayed, an antique simplicity “equally
removed from the splendour of Asiatics, and the uncleanliness of
barbarians.”[240] They preserved the use of the Homeric chiton, or
woollen shirt, and over this wore also the _Chlaina_ or _Himation_, in
the manner described above. To these was added the _Chlamys_, which, as
the Spartan laws prohibited dyeing, was universally white, and
denominated _Hololeukos_.[241]
-----
Footnote 240:
Müller. Hist. Dor. ii. 277. See the picturesque description which
Hesiod gives of the rustic winter costume of Bœotia. Opp. et Dies,
534, sqq. Goettl.
Footnote 241:
Poll. vii. 46.
-----
It was of Thessalian or Macedonian origin, of an oblong form, the points
meeting on the right shoulder, where they were fastened with a clasp.
This garment was not in use in the heroic ages, and the earliest mention
of it occurs in Sappho;[242] but when once introduced, it quickly grew
fashionable, at first among the young men, afterwards as a military
cloak. At Athens it was regarded as a mark of effeminacy, and was
fastened with a gold or jewelled brooch on the breast.[243]
-----
Footnote 242:
Σαπφὼ πρώτη γὰρ μέμνηται τῆς χλαμύδος.—Ammonius, p. 147. Valcken.
Footnote 243:
Heliodor. i. and ii.
-----
The men of Sparta, though less thinly clad than the women, still went
abroad very scantily covered. Their _Tribon_, a variety of the
himation,[244] like the cloak of the poor Spanish gentleman, was clipped
so close that it would barely enclose their persons, like a case, but
was thick and heavy, and calculated to last. Accordingly, the youth were
allowed only one of these per annum, so that, in warm weather, it is
probable that, with an eye to saving it for winter, they exchanged it
for that more lasting coat with which nature had furnished them.[245] In
the towns, however, and as often as they thought proper to put on the
appearance of extreme modesty, the young Spartans drew close their
cloaks around them so as to conceal their hands,[246] the exhibiting of
which has always been regarded as a mark of vulgarity. Hence the use of
gloves, and the affectation of soft white hands in modern times. The
same notions prevail even among the Turks, who, like Laertes in Homer,
wear long sleeves to their pelisses for the purpose of defending the
hand, to have which white and well-shaped is among them a mark of noble
blood.
-----
Footnote 244:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 415. Cf. Vesp. 116, 475.
-----
The Spartans had the good taste to suffer their beards and hair to grow
long, and were at much pains to render them glossy and shining. Even in
the field, contrary to the practice at Athens, they preserved this
natural ornament of their heads, and we find them busy in combing and
putting it in order on the very eve of battle.[247] It was usually
parted at the top, and was, in fact, the most becoming covering
imaginable. But they set little value on cleanliness, and bathed and
perfumed themselves seldom, being evidently of opinion,[248] that a
brave man ought not to be too spruce. However, having no object to gain
by aping the exterior of mendicants, they eschewed the wearing of ragged
cloaks, which, indeed, was forbidden by law.
-----
Footnote 245:
Plut. Lyc. § 16. Inst. Lac. § 5.
Footnote 246:
Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. iii. 4. Of Phocion, an imitator of Spartan
manners, the same thing is related.—Plut Phoc. § 4.
Footnote 247:
Herod. vii. 208, with the notes of Valckenaar and Wesseling.
Footnote 248:
Plut. Instit. Lacon. § 5.
-----
But the Athenians ran into the opposite extreme. Wealthy, and fond of
show, they delighted in a style of dress in the highest degree curious
and magnificent, appearing abroad in flowing robes of the finest linen,
dyed with purple and other brilliant colours.[249] Beneath these they
wore tunics of various kinds, which, though the fashion afterwards
changed, were at first sleeveless, since we find the women, in
Aristophanes, suffering the hair to grow under their arm-pits to avoid
being discovered when, disguised as their husbands, they should hold up
their hands to vote in the assembly.[250]
-----
Footnote 249:
Thucyd. i. 6. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 167. Tim. Lex. 188. Aristoph.
Eccles. 332. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 879. Lucian. Amor. § 3.
Footnote 250:
Aristoph. Concion. 60, et Schol.
-----
Like the women, they affected much variety and splendour in their rings,
which were sometimes set with a stone with the portrait engraved thereon
of some friend or benefactor, as Athenion wore on one of his the
portrait of Mithridates.[251]
-----
Footnote 251:
Athen. v. 49.—Even slaves were in the habit of wearing rings set with
precious stones, sometimes of three colours, of which several
specimens are found in the British Museum. Thus, in Lucian, we find
Parmenon, the servant of Polemon, with a ring of this kind on his
little finger.—Diall. Meret. ix. 2. Cf. Hemster. ad Poll. ix. 96. t.
vi. p. 1193.
-----
In his girdle and shoes,[252] too, the Athenian betrayed his love of
splendour. The hair worn long like that of the ladies,[253] was curled
or braided and built up in glossy masses on the crown of the head, or
arranged artfully along the forehead by golden grasshoppers.[254] But as
all this pile of ringlets could not be thrust into the helmet, it was
customary in time of war to cut the hair short, which the fashionable
young men reckoned among its most serious hardships. Hats[255] were not
habitually worn, though on journeys or promenades undertaken during hot
weather they formed a necessary part of the costume. Above all things
the Athenian citizen affected extreme cleanliness and neatness in his
person, and the same taste descended even to the slaves who in the
streets could scarcely be distinguished by dress, hair, or ornaments,
from their masters.[256]
-----
Footnote 252:
Poll. vii. 92, seq.
Footnote 253:
Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 329.
Footnote 254:
Athen. xii. 5. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 1328. Nub. 971.
Footnote 255:
It is very clear from a passage in Demosthenes (De Fals. Leg. § 72),
that hats or caps were sometimes worn in the city. There are those
indeed who suppose the word to mean a wig; but Brodæus disposes of
this by inquiring whether sick persons would be likely to go to bed
with their wigs on as men did with their πιλίδια. Miscell. i. 13.
However, I must confess their wearing hats in bed is still less
likely. The Bœotians appeared in winter with caps which covered the
ears. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 545. On the form of which, see Theoph.
Hist. Plant. iii. 9. 6, with the note of Schneid. t. iii. p. 191.
Footnote 256:
Xenoph. de Rep. Athen. i. 10.
-----
Even the philosophers, after holding out a long time, yielded to the
influence of fashion, and, lest their profession should suffer, became
exquisites in its defence. Your truly wise man, says an unexceptionable
witness in a matter of this kind, has his hair closely shaved, (this was
an eastern innovation,) but suffers his magnificent beard to fall in
wavy curls over his breast. His shoes, fitting tight as wax, are
supported by a net-work of thongs, disposed at equal distances up the
small of the leg. A chlamys puffed out effeminately at the breast
conceals his figure, and like a foreigner he leans contemplatively upon
his staff.[257]
-----
Footnote 257:
Athen. xi. 120. On the gorgeous dress of the painter Parrhasios. xii.
62.
-----
But the art of dress appears to have received its greatest improvements
in Ionia, where, according to Democritos, the Ephesian, both the
garments, at one time in fashion, and the stuffs of which they
consisted, were varied with a skill and fertility of invention worthy of
a polished people. Some persons, he says, appeared in robes of a violet,
others of a purple, others of a saffron colour, sprinkled with dusky
lozenges. As at Athens, much attention was bestowed on the hair, which
they adorned with small ornamental figures. Their vests were yellow,
like a ripe quince, or purple, or crimson, or pure white. Even their
tunics, imported from Corinth, were of the finest texture, and of the
richest dyes, hyacinthine or violet, flame-coloured or deep sea-green.
Others adopted the Persian _calasiris_,[258] of all tunics the most
superb, and there were those among the opulent who even affected the
Persian _actœa_, a shawl-mantle of the costliest and most gorgeous
appearance. It was formed of a close-woven, but light stuff, bedropped
with golden beads in the form of millet-seed, which were connected with
the tissue by slender eyes passing through the stuff and fastened by a
purple thread.[259]
-----
Footnote 258:
We find mention made of Persian dresses variegated with the figures of
animals. Philost. Icon. ii. 32.
Footnote 259:
Athen. xii. 29.
-----
Duris, on the authority of the poet Asios, draws a scarcely less
extravagant picture of the luxury and magnificence of the Samians, who,
on certain festivals, appeared in public adorned, like women, with
glittering bracelets, their hair floating on their shoulders, skilfully
braided into tresses. The words of Asios preserved in the Deipnosophist
are as follow: “Thus proceed they to the fane of Hera, clothed in
magnificent robes, with snowy pelisses, trailing behind them on the
ground. Glistening ornaments of gold, like grasshoppers, surmount the
crown of their heads, while their luxuriant tresses float behind in the
wind, intermingled with golden chains. Bracelets of variegated
workmanship adorn their arms, as the warrior is adorned by his shield
thongs.”[260] This excess of effeminate luxury, attended as everywhere
else by enervating vices, terminated in the ruin of Samos. Similar
manners in the Colophonians drew upon them a similar fate, and so in
every other Grecian community; for men never learn wisdom by the example
of others, but hurry on in the career of indulgence as if in the hope
that Providence might overlook them, or set aside, in their favour, its
eternal laws.
-----
Footnote 260:
Athen. xii. 30.
-----
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
PRIVATE DWELLINGS.
The opinion appears to prevail among certain writers, that the private
dwellings of the Hellenes, or at least of the Athenians, were always
mean and insignificant.[261] This imaginary fact they account for by
supposing, that nobles and opulent citizens were deterred from indulging
in the luxuries of architecture by the form of government and the
envious jealousy of the common people. But such a view of the matter is
inconsistent with the testimony of history. At Athens, as everywhere
else, things followed their natural course. In the early ages of the
commonwealth, when manners were simple, the houses of the greatest men
in the state differed very little from those of their neighbours. As
wealth, however, and luxury increased, together with the developement of
the democratic principle, individuals erected themselves mansions vying
in extent and splendour with the public edifices of the state;[262] and
as the polity degenerated more and more into ochlocracy, the dwellings
of the rich[263] increased in size and grandeur, until they at length
outstripped the very temples of the gods. A similar process took place
at Sparta, where shortly after the Peloponnesian war, the more
distinguished citizens possessed suburban villas, which seem to have
been of spacious dimensions and filled with costly furniture.[264]
-----
Footnote 261:
But even from a fragment of Bacchylides we may infer the magnificence
of Grecian houses; for the poor man who drinks wine, he says, sees his
house blazing with gold and ivory:
χρυσῷ δ᾽ ἐλεφαντί τε
μαρμαίρουσιν οἶκοι.
Athen. ii. 10.
Men had by this time advanced considerably from the state in which
they are supposed to have built their huts in imitation of the
swallow’s nest. Vitruv. ii. 1.
Footnote 262:
Plat. Repub. iv. t. vi. p. 165. Dion Chrysost. i. 262. ii. 459. Dem.
cont. Mid. § 44.—Lucian. Amor. § 34.
Footnote 263:
Dem. Olynth. iii. § 9. De Rep. Ord. § 10.
Footnote 264:
Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5. 27.
-----
Upon these points, however, I dwell, not from any belief that they are
honourable to the Greek character, but because they are true. It would
have been more satisfactory to find them preserving, in every period of
their history, the stern and lofty simplicity of republican manners, far
outshining in the eyes of the philosopher the palaces of Oriental kings
glittering with gold and ivory and jewels, insomuch that the cottage of
Socrates, erected in the humblest style of Athenian domestic
architecture, would be an object, were it still in existence, of far
deeper interest to the genuine lover of antiquity than the mansions of
Meidias or Callias, or even than the imperial abodes of Semiramis,
Darius, and Artaxerxes.
Nevertheless, wherever there exists opulence, it will exhibit itself in
the erection of stately dwellings; and accordingly we find that, prior
even to the Trojan war,[265] commerce and increasing luxury had already
inspired the Greeks with a taste for splendour and magnificence, which
displayed itself especially in the architecture and ornaments of their
palaces and houses of the great.[266]
-----
Footnote 265:
Cf. Athen. i. 28.
Footnote 266:
Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 272.
-----
Homer, minute and graphic in his descriptions, delineates a very
flattering picture of Greek domestic architecture in his time, when the
chiefs and nobles had already begun to enshrine themselves in spacious
edifices, elaborately ornamented with, and surrounded by, all the
circumstances of pomp known to their age.[267]
-----
Footnote 267:
Il. β. 657, sqq.
-----
In those days the greatest men did not disdain to apply themselves to
agriculture, to have their dwellings surrounded by the signs and
implements of the pursuit in which they were engaged.[268] And as in
southern Italy the ancient nobles erected shops in front of their
palaces or villas, in which the produce of their land was disposed of,
so in the Homeric houses the same space was occupied by the farm-yard
enclosed by strong and lofty walls, surrounded by battlements, within
which were their heaps of manure, harrows, ploughs, carts, and waggons,
and stacks of hay and corn;[269] and hither, too, in the evening were
driven in their numerous flocks and herds, to protect them from the
nightly marauders. The great entrance gates were in the heroic ages
guarded by ban dogs,[270] which afterwards made way for porters,[271]
and in still later times were succeeded by eunuchs.[272]
-----
Footnote 268:
A similar taste prevailed among the Merovingian princes of France:
“The mansion of the long-haired kings was surrounded with convenient
yards and stables for the cattle and the poultry; the garden was
planted with useful vegetables; the various trades, the labours of
agriculture, and even the arts of hunting and fishing were exercised
by servile hands for the emolument of the sovereign; his magazines
were filled with corn and wine, either for sale or consumption, and
the whole administration was conducted by the strictest maxims of
private economy.”—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii.
356.
Footnote 269:
Hesych. v. αὐλῆς.
Footnote 270:
Feith. Antiq. Hom. iii. 10. p. 242.
Footnote 271:
Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 145.
Footnote 272:
Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 159. Cf. Aristid. t. i. p. 518. Jebb.
-----
Occasionally for the canine doorkeepers were substituted in commercial
states gold and silver representations, more likely to attract than
repel thieves; for example, at the entrance to Alcinoös’s palace were
groups of this description, attributed to the wonder-working
Hephæstos.[273] A coarse imitation of this practice prevailed among the
Romans, for we find in Petronius that Trimalchio had his court guarded
by a painted mastiff, over which in good square characters were the
words “Beware of the dog.”[274]
-----
Footnote 273:
Odyss. η. 93.
Footnote 274:
Satyr, c. 29. p. 74. Hellenop.
-----
Along the walls of this enclosure the cattle-sheds would in remoter ages
appear to have been ranged, where afterwards stood suites of chambers
for the domestics, or piazzas, or colonades, to serve as covered walks
in extremely hot or bad weather. Within, on either side the
gateway,[275] chiefly among the Dorians, rose a pillar of conical shape,
sometimes an obelisk, in honour of Apollo or of Dionysos, or, according
to others, of both, while in the centre was an altar of Zeus Herceios,
on which family sacrifices were offered up.[276] At its inner extremity
you beheld a spacious portico, adjoining the entrance to the house,
where in warm weather the young men often slept. From the descriptions
of the poet, however, it would appear to have been something more than a
common portico, resembling rather the porches of our old English houses,
roofed over and extending like a recess into the body of the house
itself. In the dwellings of the great, this part of the building,
adorned with numerous statues, was probably of marble finely polished if
not sculptured, and being merely a chamber open in front could not in
those fine climates be by any means an unpleasant bedroom, particularly
as it usually faced the south and caught the early rays of the sun. Here
Odysseus[277] slept during his stay with Alcinoös, as did likewise Priam
and the Trojan Herald while guests of Achilles in his military hut.[278]
-----
Footnote 275:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 875. Here the Romans sacrificed to Janus, the
Greeks to Apollo. Macrob. Saturn. l. i. c. 9. Poll. iv. 123. Comm. p.
790.
Footnote 276:
Eustath ad Od. χ. 376. p. 790. Cf. Poll. i. 22, seq. Muret. in Plat.
de Rep. p. 635. Soph. Œdip. Tyr. 16.
Footnote 277:
Odyss. η. 345. Cf. Il. ζ. 243. Hesych. v. πρόδομος.
Footnote 278:
Il. ω. 673, sqq. Cf. Feith. Antiq. Hom. iii. 10. p. 244.
-----
In this porch were seats of handsome polished stone, as in the palace of
Nestor at Pylos, which, to render them more shining, would appear to
have been rubbed with oil.[279] Similar seats are found to this day
before the houses of the wealthy at Cairo and other cities of the East,
where in the cool of the evening old men habitually take their station,
and are joined for the purpose of gossip by their neighbours. In the
larger towns of Nubia an open space planted with dates, palms, or the
Egyptian fig-tree, more shady and spreading than the oak, and furnished
with wooden seats, collects together the elders, who there enjoy what
the Englishman seeks in his club, and the Greek found in his lesche—the
pleasure of comparing his opinions with those of his neighbours.
When, in after times, this plain porch had been succeeded by a
magnificent peristyle or colonnade, the primitive custom of sleeping in
the open air was abandoned; but here the master of the house with his
guests took their early walk to enjoy the morning sun. It was customary
among all ranks at Athens to rise betimes, as it generally is still in
the warm countries of the South. Socrates and his young friend, the
sophist-hunter,[280] coming to the house of Callias, soon after
day-break, find its owner taking the air with several of his guests in
the colonnade, the young men moving in the train of their elders, and
making way for them as they turn round to retrace their steps. There was
usually at Athens a similar peristyle on both sides of the house—one for
summer the other for winter, and a door generally opened from the
women’s apartment into that communicating with the garden, where the
ladies enjoyed the cool air in the midst of laurel copses, fountains,
and patches of green sward,[281] interspersed with rose-trees,
violet-beds, and other sweet shrubs and flowers.
-----
Footnote 279:
Odyss. γ. 406, sqq. Cf. π. 343, seq.
Footnote 280:
Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 160.
Footnote 281:
Plat. Epist. t. viii. p. 403. Athen. v. 25. Poll. ix. 466.
-----
The town-houses of Homeric times had generally no aulè, but the porch
opened directly into the street, since it is here that, in the
description of the shield, we find the women standing to behold the
dancers and enjoy the music of the nuptial procession.[282] Afterwards,
as the taste for magnificence advanced, the whole façade of the corps de
logis[283] was richly ornamented, while the outer gates were purposely
left open, that the passers-by might witness the splendour of the owner.
Occasionally, likewise, the great door, leading from the portico into
the house, was concealed by costly purple hangings,[284] which, being
passed, you entered a broad passage, having on either side, doors[285]
leading into the apartments on the ground floor, and conducting to an
inner court, surrounded by a peristyle, where the gynæconitis,[286] or
harem, commenced.
-----
Footnote 282:
Il. σ. 496. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 93.
Footnote 283:
Hesych. v. ἐνώπια. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 380. Compare the whole
character of the “Vain Man,” pp. 57–59. Etym. Mag. 346. 10.
Footnote 284:
Athen. v. 25. Hesych. v. αυλεία. Suid. in v. t. i. p. 491. d.
Footnote 285:
“The doors (at Tanjeers) are richly carved, and placed in arches
shaped like an ace of spades, a form so completely oriental, that
there is no mistaking its origin; these, when they opened on the
verandah, were further ornamented with curtains of rich crimson
silk.”—Napier, Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean, i. p.
264.
Footnote 286:
Hesych. v. γυναικωνίτις.
-----
The apartments of palaces displayed, even in very early times, the taste
of the Greeks for splendour and magnificence. The walls were covered
with wainscoting inlaid with gold and ivory, as we still find in the
East whole chambers lined with mother-of-pearl.[287] At first, the gold
was laid on in thin plates, which, in process of time, led to the idea
of gilding.[288] Even Phocion, who affected great simplicity and
plainness, had the walls of his house adorned with laminæ of
copper,[289] probably in the same style as that subterraneous chamber
discovered, during the last century, in the excavations made at Rome. It
appears, too, that, occasionally, the walls of the apartments at Athens,
as at Herculaneum and Pompeii were decorated with paintings in bright
colours,[290] probably in the same style, though as much superior in
beauty and delicacy of execution, as art, in the age of Pericles, was
superior to art in the days of Nero. Still the paintings discovered in
the excavated Italian cities,—sometimes[291] grotesque and extravagant,
as where we behold the pigmies making war upon the cranes, winged
geniuses at work in a carpenter’s or shoemaker’s shop, or an ass laden
with hampers of wine, rushing forward to engage a crocodile, whilst his
master pulls him back by the tail—sometimes rural and elegant,
consisting of a series of wild landscapes, mountains dotted with
cottages, sea-shores, harbours, and baths, Nymphs and Cupids angling on
the borders of lakes, beneath trees of the softest and most exquisite
foliage,—may enable us to form some conception of the landscapes with
which Agelarcos[292] adorned the house of Alcibiades.
-----
Footnote 287:
Lady Montague’s Works, ii. 234.
Footnote 288:
Plin. xxxiii. 18. Cf. Dion. Chrysost. t. i. p. 262. t. ii. p. 259.
Pignor. de Serv. p. 214.
Footnote 289:
Plut. Phoc. § 18.
Footnote 290:
As, _minium_, Dioscor. v. 109.
Footnote 291:
Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 34. p. 181. tav. 35. p. 187. tav. 36. p.
191. tav. 48. pp. 253, 257. t. ii. tav. 39. p. 273. Cf. Poll. x. 34.
Footnote 292:
Andocid. cont. Alcib. § 7.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 293:
Plin. xxxvi. 60. Poll. vii. 121. Cf. Sir W. Hamilton, Acc. of Discov.
at Pomp. p. 7, seq. pl. 5.
Footnote 294:
Galen, in Protrept, § 8. t. i. p. 19.
Footnote 295:
Hom. Eires. 10. p. 199. Franke.
Footnote 296:
See the authorities collected by Nixon, Phil. Trans, t. i. p. 126,
sqq. Seneca speaks of glass windows as a new invention, Epist. 90. Sir
William Hamilton, however, in his Account of Discoveries made at
Pompeii, observes:—“Below stairs is a room with a large bow-window;
fragments of large panes of glass were found here, shewing that the
ancients knew well the use of glass for windows.”—p. 13. Cf. Caylus,
Rec. d’Ant. t. 2. p. 293. Mazois, Pal. de Scaur. p. 97. Castell.
Villas of the Ancients, p. 4. Vitruv. vii. 3.
Footnote 297:
In lieu of the lapis specularis, they make use in Persia of thin slabs
of Tabreez marble for the windows of baths, and other buildings
requiring a soft subdued light.—See Fowler, Three Years in Persia,
where the growth of this stone is curiously described.—i. 228, sqq.
Footnote 298:
De Plac, Phil. iii. 5, ed. Corsin. Flor. 1750, p. 81. Cf. Plin. Hist.
Nat. xi. 37.
Footnote 299:
Sir W. Hamilt. Acc. of Discov. at Pomp. p. 7, seq. Antich. di
Ercolano. t. i. tav. i. p. 1. tav. 3. p. 11. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq.
996.
Footnote 300:
Mazois, Pal. de Scaur. p. 98.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 301:
Athen. ix. 67. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 353. Cf. Gog. Origine des Loix,
t. v. p. 443. Poll. Onom. x. 84. Comm. p. 1552. Maz. Pal. de Scau. p.
102. Tibull. iii. 3. 16. Luc. de Dea Syr. § 30. Cynic, § 9. Eurip.
Orest. 1361.
Footnote 302:
Odyss. δ. 45, seq. Luc. Somn. seu Gall. § 29.
Footnote 303:
By Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Hom. § 47. Cf. Feith. Antiq. Homer, iii.
11. 6.
Footnote 304:
Odyss. α. 127, seq.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 305:
Id. η. 95, seq.
Footnote 306:
Id. θ. 65. π. 32.
Footnote 307:
Id. κ. 352, seq.
Footnote 308:
Lucian, Luc. siv. Asin. § 53.
Footnote 309:
Antich. di Ercol. t. ii. tav. 2. p. 13.—Books were preserved from the
moth by cedar-oil.—Geopon. v. 9.
Footnote 310:
Luc. de Merced. Conduct. § 41.
Footnote 311:
Luc. Imag. § 9.
Footnote 312:
Luc. de Merced. Conduct. 41.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 313:
Similar courts in the houses of Magna Græcia are described as having
had in the middle a square tank where the rain-water was collected,
and ran into a reservoir beneath.—Sir W. Hamilt. Acc. of Discov. at
Pomp. p. 13.
Footnote 314:
Odyss. α. 425. seq.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 315:
Eustath. ad Odyss. χ. p. 776.—These female apartments were sometimes
hired out and inhabited by men.—Antiph. Nec. Venef. § 3.—Mr.
Fosbroke’s account is curious:—“The thalamos was an apartment where
the _mothers of families_ worked in embroidery, in tapestry, and other
works, _with their wives_, or their friends.”—Encyclop. of Ant. i. 50.
Footnote 316:
Sometimes, at least, roofed with cypress-wood, as we learn from
Mnesimachos, in his Horsebreeder: βαίν’ ἐκ θαλάμων κυπαρισσορόφων ἔξω,
Μάνη.—Athen. ix. 67.
Footnote 317:
We find ladies, however, sometimes dining with their children in the
Aulè.—Demosth. in Ev. et Mnes. § 16.
-----
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 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.
-----
Footnote 318:
Hesych, v. γυναίκ. p. 866. Cyrill. Lex. Ms. Bren. Bret. ad Hesych. l.
c.
Footnote 319:
Eidyll. ii. 136. Phocyl. v. 198.
Footnote 320:
Athen. ii. 50. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 68.
Footnote 321:
Odyss. ο. 516.
Footnote 322:
Il. β. 514. π. 184.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 323:
Cf. Poll. vi. 7. Cœl. Rhodig. xvii. 24.
-----
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]
-----
Footnote 324:
Plut. Paral. Vit. § 3.
Footnote 325:
Odyss. β. 337, 345. χ. 442. Schol. 459. 466. Poll. vii. 397.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 326:
Xen. Memorab. iii. 8, 9.
Footnote 327:
Anaxand. ap. Athen. ii. 29.—So also thought Socrates, who observes,
that in winter every one will have a fire who can get wood. And,
though he himself wore the same garments all the year round, he
considered it, apparently, a judicious practice in others to put on
warm clothing.—Xen. Œcon. xvii. 3. Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 716. When
the dining-room was not furnished with a chimney, braziers were
kindled outside the door, and carried in when the worst fumes of the
charcoal had evaporated.—Plut. Symp. vi. 7.
-----
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.
-----
Footnote 328:
Etym. Mag. 186, 8. Athen. i. 18. Phot. Bib. 60. b. Hesiod. Frag. 53.
Baths, at Sparta, were common to both sexes.—Goguet, v. 428. Cf.
Pashley, Travels. i. 183.
Footnote 329:
Baccius, de Thermis, p. 365. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 1034.
-----
The form of the Puelos,[330] or vessel in which they bathed, appears
occasionally to have resembled an Egyptian sarcophagus, and to have been
sometimes round, and constructed of white or green marble, or glass, or
bronze, or common stone, or wood,[331] in which case it would seem to
have been portable. In the baths of Pompeii the marble basins, whether
parallelogramatic or circular, were of spacious dimensions, and raised
two or three feet above the pavement. A step for the convenience of the
bathers extends round it on the inside, and at the bottom are marble
cushions upon which they rested. In the labra of the Grecian female
baths rose a smooth cippus in the form of a truncated cone, denominated
omphalos, on which the ladies sat while chatting with their female
companions.[332]
-----
Footnote 330:
Cf. Etymol. Mag. 151, 52, seq. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 1055.
Footnote 331:
Baccius, de Therm. p. 399.
Footnote 332:
Athen. xi. 104.
-----
When once the warm bath came into use, people employed it to excess,
bathing as frequently as five or six times a day, and in water so hot as
to half scald themselves.[333] Immediately afterwards, to prevent the
skin from chapping, they anointed their bodies with oils and perfumed
unguents.[334] Occasionally, instead of plunging into the water, they
sat upright, as is still the custom in the hammāms of the East, while
the water was poured with a sort of ladle on their head and shoulders.
-----
Footnote 333:
Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 1034.
Footnote 334:
Plut. Alexand. § 40.
-----
The public baths, of which no full description referring to very ancient
times remains, were numerous in all Hellenic cities, more particularly
at Athens, where they were surmounted with domes,[335] and received
their light from above. These establishments were frequented by all
classes of women who could afford to pay for such luxury, rich, poor,
honourable, and dishonourable.
-----
Footnote 335:
Athen. xi. 104.
-----
The attendants, in later and more corrupt times at least, were men,
whose sole clothing consisted of a leathern apron about the loins, while
the ladies, who undressed in the Apodyterion, went through the various
processes of the bath in the same primitive clothing. It was, however,
customary for them to enter the water together in crowds,[336] so that
they kept each other in countenance. Here the matrons who had sons to
marry studied the form and character of the young ladies who frequented
the baths; and as all the defects both of person and features were
necessarily revealed, it was next to impossible for any lady, not
sufficiently opulent to keep up a bathing establishment in her own
house, to retain for any length of time an undeserved celebrity for
beauty. In the baths of the East, the bodies of the bathers are cleansed
by small bags of camel-hair, woven rough, and passed over the hand of
the attendant; or with a handful of the fine fibres of the Mekka
palm-tree combed soft, and filled with fragrant and saponaceous earths,
which are rubbed on the skin till the whole body is covered with froth.
Similar means were employed in the baths of Greece, and the whole was
afterwards cleansed off the skin by gold or silver stlengides, or blunt
scrapers somewhat curved towards the point.[337]
-----
Footnote 336:
Victor. ad Aristot. Ethic. p. 214. There was a set of vicious fellows,
called τρίβαλλοι, who passed their lives disorderly in the
baths.—Etym. Mag. 765. 55. Aristophanes bestows the name on certain
barbarian divinities.—Aves. 1528.
Footnote 337:
Xenoph. Anab. i. 2. 10. See one of these stlengides in Zoëga, Bassi
Rilievi, tav. 29.
-----
The architectural arrangements of these baths,[338] if we may draw any
analogy from similar establishments in a later age, were nearly as
follows:—Entering the building by a lofty and spacious portico, you
found yourself in a large hall, paved with marble and adorned with
columns, from which, through a side-door, you passed into the
Apodyterion, or undressing-room; next, into a chamber where was the cold
water in basins of porphyry or green jasper; immediately contiguous lay
the Tepidarium, to which succeeded the Sudarium, a vaulted apartment
furnished with basins of warm water, and where the heat was excessive;
from this, moving forward, you successively traversed saloons of various
degrees of temperature and dimensions, until you found yourself in the
dressing-room, whither your garments had been carried by your domestic,
or the attendants on the baths.[339] These establishments were likewise
provided with water-closets,[340] placed in a retired part of the
building, and furnished with wooden seats, basin and water-pipe, as in
modern times.
-----
Footnote 338:
Cf. Etymol. Mag. 384. 10. Poll. vii. 166, and Plut. Alexand. § 20,
where he describes the luxurious baths of Darius.
Footnote 339:
Lucian. Hippias. § 5, sqq.
Footnote 340:
Sir W. Hamilton’s Acc. of Discov. at Pompeii, p. 41. Cf. Casaub. ad
Theoph. Char. p. 269.
-----
To diminish the chances of being robbed, stealing from a bath was at
Athens made a capital offence;[341] so that the persons who frequented
them ran very little risk. The price was usually moderate, though in
some cities, as for example at Phaselis, they were in the habit of
doubling their charges to foreigners, which drew from a witty sophist a
very cutting remark; for his slave disputing with the keeper of the
bath, and contending that his master ought not to be charged more than
other persons, the sophist, who overheard the dispute, exclaimed,
“Wretch, would you make me a ‘Phaselitan for a farthing?’”[342]
-----
Footnote 341:
Aristot. Problem. xix. 14. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 215.
Footnote 342:
Athen. viii. 45.
-----
The roofs of the more ancient Greek houses were generally flat,[343] not
sloping upwards to a point, as was afterwards the fashion.[344] In Egypt
and Syria, and almost throughout the East, the same taste still obtains;
and as palm trees, loftier than the buildings, often grow beside the
walls, and extend their beautiful pendulous branches over a great part
of the roof, nothing can be more delightful on a mild serene evening
than to sit aloft on those breezy eminences sipping coffee, gazing over
the green rice fields, or watching the stars as they put forth their
golden lamps through the violet skirts of day. But there a parapet
usually preserves him who enjoys the scene from falling. It was
otherwise of old in Greece. The roof consisted simply of a number of
beams laid close together and covered with cement, so that, as was
proved by the fate of Elpenor,[345] the practice of sleeping there in
warm weather, quite common throughout the country, was not wholly
without danger.
-----
Footnote 343:
Æsch. Agam. 3, sqq. We find, however, an allusion to the pointed roof
in Iliad. ψ. 712, seq.
Footnote 344:
Antich. di Erc. tav. 3, p. 11.
Footnote 345:
Odyss. κ. 559. Eustath. ad loc. p. 1669, l. 15. Feith. Ant. Hom. iii.
10, p. 249.
-----
On the construction of the kitchen,[346] which in Greek houses was
sometimes a separate little building erected in the court-yard, our
information is extremely imperfect. It is certain, however, contrary to
the common opinion, that it was furnished with a chimney,[347] and that
the smoke was not permitted to find its way through an aperture in the
roof. Thus much might be inferred from a passage in the Wasps, when the
old dicast, in love with the courts of law, is endeavouring to escape
from the restraint imposed on him by his son, by climbing out through
the chimney. It is clear that he has got into some aperture, where he is
hidden from sight, for hearing a noise in the wall, his son Bdelycleon,
cries out, “What is that?” upon which the old man replies, “I am only
the smoke.” It is plain, that he would not, like a Hindù Yoghi, be
balancing himself in the air, otherwise the young man must have beheld
him sailing up towards the roof. But the matter is set entirely at rest
by the Scholiast, who observes, that the καπνοδόχη was a narrow channel
like a pipe through which the smoke ascended from the kitchen. This
explanation has been confirmed by the discoveries of Colonel Leake,[348]
who on the rocky slopes of the hill of the Museion and Pnyx, found the
remains of a house partly excavated in the rock, in which the chimney
still remained.
-----
Footnote 346:
Cf. Athen. ix. 22. iii. 60.
Footnote 347:
Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 91. Vesp. 139, 147.
Footnote 348:
Topog. of Athens, p. 361.
-----
The same convenience, also, existed in the Roman kitchens,[349] though
they would appear to have been unskilfully constructed in both
countries, since the cooks complain of the smoke being borne hither and
thither by the wind, and interfering with their operations. However,
this may have arisen from the numerous small furnaces which, as in
France, were ranged along the wall for the purpose of cooking several
dishes at once. The chimneys having been perpendicular, as in our old
farm-houses, were furnished with stoppers to keep out the rain in bad
weather.[350]
-----
Footnote 349:
Cf. Perrault, sur Vitruv. vi. 9. Mazois, Pal. de Scaur. p. 178. On the
interior of a Roman house, see Pet. Bellori, Frag. Vet. Rom. p. 31.
Footnote 350:
Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 148.
-----
That the kitchens were sometimes not sufficiently airy and comfortable
may be inferred from the practice of a philosophical cook in Damoxenos,
who used to take his station immediately outside the door, and from
thence give his orders to the inferior operatives. Great care was
nevertheless taken that it should be well lighted, and that the door
should be so situated as to be as little exposed as possible to whirling
gusts of wind.[351] From a passage in the Scholiast on the Wasps, and
the existence of drains in the excavations on the hill of the Museion,
it is clear that the Athenian houses were furnished with sinks,[352]
though in the Italian kitchens there seem merely to have been little
channels running along the walls to carry off the water. The floor, too,
was constructed in both countries with a view at once to dryness and
elegance,[353] being formed of several layers of various materials all
porous though binding, so that it allowed whatever water was spilt to
sink through instantaneously. The upper layer, about six inches thick,
consisted of a cement composed of lime, sand, and pounded charcoal or
ashes, the surface of which, being polished with pumice-stone, presented
to the eye the appearance of a fine black marble. The roof in early
times was no doubt of wood,[354] though afterwards it came to be vaulted
or run up in the form of a cupola. The walls were sometimes decorated
with rude paintings.[355]
-----
Footnote 351:
Athen. iii. 60 ix. 22.
Footnote 352:
Leake, Topog. of Ath. p. 361. Yet we find them sometimes throwing the
water out of the window, crying, Stand out of the way. Schol.
Aristoph. Acharn. 592.
Footnote 353:
Vitruv. viii. 4.
Footnote 354:
Mazois, Palais de Scaurus, p. 177.
Footnote 355:
Representing, for example, a sacrifice to Fornax. Mazois, p. 177.
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The street-door of a Grecian house, usually, when single, opened
outwards, but when there were folding doors they opened inwards as with
us.[356] In the former case it was customary when any one happened to be
going forth, to knock, or call, or ring a bell, in order to warn
passengers to make way.[357] These doors were constructed of various
materials,[358] according to the taste and circumstances of the owner,
sometimes of oak, or fir, or maple, or elm; and afterwards as luxury
advanced they were made of cedar, cyprus, or even of citron wood, inlaid
as in the East, with plates of brass or gold.[359] Mention is likewise
made of doors entirely composed of the precious metals; of iron also,
and bronze and ivory.
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Footnote 356:
Cf. Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 34. pp. 175, 181. Sagittar. de Januis
Veterum. p. 23.
Footnote 357:
Plut. Poplic. § 20.
Footnote 358:
Sagitt. de Jan. Vet. p. 152, seq. Plin. xvi. 40. Theoph. Hist. Plant.
v. 4. 2. iii. 14. 1. Martial. xiv. 89, ii. 43. Lucian. l. ix. Tertull.
de Pall. c. 5. Plin. xiii. 15. Ovid. Metamorph. iv. 487.
Footnote 359:
Aristoph. Acharn. 1072.
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The jambs were generally of wood;[360] but likewise sometimes of brass
or marble. The doors were fastened at first by long bars passing into
the wall on both sides;[361] and by degrees smaller bolts, hasps,
latches, and locks and keys succeeded. For example the outer door of the
Thalamos in Homer was secured by a silver hasp, and a leathern thong
passed round the handle and tied, perhaps, in a curious knot.[362] Doors
were not usually suspended on hinges, but turned, as they still do in
the East, upon pivots inserted above into the lintel and below into the
threshhold.[363] In many houses there were in addition small half-doors
of open wood-work,[364] which alone were commonly closed by day, in
order to keep the children from running out, or dogs or pigs from
entering. The doors usually consisted of a frame-work, with four or six
sunken panels, as with us; but at Sparta, so long as the laws of
Lycurgus prevailed, they were made of simple planks fashioned with the
hatchet.[365] In the great Dorian capital the custom was for persons
desirous of entering a house to shout aloud at the door,[366] which, at
Athens,[367] was always furnished with an elegant knocker.[368]
Door-handles, too, of costly materials and curious workmanship,[369]
bespoke even in that trifling matter the taste of the Greeks.
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Footnote 360:
Sagitt. de Jan. Vet. p. 29, sqq.
Footnote 361:
Sagitt. de Jan. p. 67.
Footnote 362:
Odyss. α. 441. Schol. et Eustath. ad loc.—δ. 862. ρ. 186. Cf. Schol.
Aristoph. Vesp. 155.
Footnote 363:
Sagitt. de Jan. Vet. p. 41.
Footnote 364:
Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 3. p. 11. It should perhaps be remarked,
that when houses were built on a solid basement the door was sometimes
approached by a movable pair of steps. Id. ibid. tav. 8. p. 39. tav.
43. p. 228.
Footnote 365:
Plut. Lycurg. § 13. Agesil. § 19.
Footnote 366:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 30. Cf. Theocrit. Eidyll. xxix. 39.
Footnote 367:
Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 133.
Footnote 368:
Sometimes in form of a crow. Poll. i. 77.
Footnote 369:
See Donaldson’s Collection of Doorways, pl. 8.
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The materials commonly used in the erection of a house were stones and
bricks. In the manufacture of the latter[370] the ancients exhibited
more skill and care than we; they had bricks of a very large size, and
half bricks for filling up spaces, which prevented the necessity of
shortening them with the trowel. Of these some were simply dried in the
sun, used chiefly in building the dwellings of the poor.[371] At Utica
in Africa there were public inspectors of brick-kilns,[372] to prevent
any from being used which had not been made five years. In several
cities on the Mediterranean bricks were manufactured of a porous earth,
which when baked and painted, as it may be conjectured, on the outside,
were so light that they would swim in water.[373] To diminish the weight
of bricks, straw was introduced into them in Syria and Egypt, which was
altogether consumed in the baking. In roofing such of their houses as
were not terraced they employed slates, tiles, and reed-thatch.[374]
Possibly, also, the wealthy may have tiled their houses with those
elegant thin flakes of marble, with which the roofs of temples were
occasionally covered.
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Footnote 370:
Winkelm. Hist. de l’Art. ii. 544. Cf. Xen. Memor. iii. 17. Cyropæd.
vi. 3. 25. Plin. xxxv. 14. Polyb. x. 22. Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 15.
Footnote 371:
Sanchon. ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 10. p. 35.
Footnote 372:
Vitruv. ii. 3.
Footnote 373:
Id. ibid. 3. In lieu of these light bricks, pumice stones are now
frequently used on the shores of the Mediterranean, more particularly
in turning arches. They are, consequently, cut into parallelopipeds,
and exported in great quantities from the Lipari islands.—Spallanzani,
Travels in the Two Sicilies, &c. vol. ii. pp. 298, 302, sqq.
Footnote 374:
Poll. x. 170. Luc. Contemplant. § 6. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 174.
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