Whereas modern life is very much a country life, and we see all our
plains and hills studded with farmsteads and well kept houses, it was
seldom so with ancient, as it is never so with modern, Greece. In old
days the fear of pirates and plunderers, in later days the taste for
talking and for politics, kept men from staying in the country, and
brought them into the towns, where they found safety and society. The
tyrants alone insisted upon country life. Thus we find in Homer that
outlying farms belonging to the nobles were managed by trusty slaves,
who grazed cattle, and stall-fed them for city use. In Hesiod’s time
it was the poor farmer only who dwelt in the country; fashionable and
idle people always came together in the towns. The very same facts meet
us when we read the Greek novels of the latest age, such as the _Story
of Daphnis and Chloe_. There the rich citizens of Mitylene only come
out rarely, like many Irish landlords, to visit their tenants and their
flocks. There are only two large instances of Greek gentry living from
choice in the country. The first is that of the old Attic gentry, whom
Thucydides and Aristophanes describe as living luxuriously on their
estates, and coming seldom to Athens. The second is that of the gentry of
Elis, who were often, Polybius says, complete strangers for generations
to the town. This was so because Attica was protected by her forts and
fleets from sudden attack in these early days, and because the Greeks by
common consent respected the land of Elis as sacred on account of the
Olympic games. Accordingly, Xenophon, who was a sportsman, settled in
this country when he retired from his wars. But we must pay our chief
attention to city life as the almost universal form of Greek society.
The older Greek towns were usually some miles from the sea, because
many pirates went about the coasts. These towns grew out from a castle,
or _Acropolis_, which at first had been the only fortified refuge for
the neighboring people in times of danger. Of this we have a remarkable
example in the very old ruins of Tiryns on the plain of Argos. When the
population increased, they built their towns round this fort, and walled
them in. But the Acropolis or hill fort, generally on some steep crag,
was of course the strongest and safest part of the town. It was also the
seat of the oldest temples, and of the god who took the town under his
special charge. Hence it was often a sacred place altogether, and not
occupied with common houses. If the town prospered, there grew up at the
nearest harbor a roadstead or seaport town, where merchants and sailors
carried on their trade. Thus Athens with its Acropolis is three miles
from the nearest sea, and more than four miles from the Peiræus, which
became its port because the harbor was so excellent. The same may be said
of Argos, Megara, and other towns. Thus Corinth had even two ports, one
on either sea, and both at some miles distance from the great rock on
which its citadel, the Acrocorinthus, was situate. Sparta alone had no
citadel, because the passes into its plain were very difficult and easily
defended. It had not even walls, but looked like a few mean villages
close together. This was a remarkable exception.
The citadel was defended by walls, wherever the natural rock was not
steep enough, and supplied with tanks for water, except in such rare
cases as that of Corinth which has a rich fountain on the top of its
great rock. If you looked down from any of these great citadels upon
the town beneath, the most striking objects were always the temples
and other public buildings which were meant to be admired from without,
whereas the private houses were externally poor and shabby. So also the
public squares and markets were large and imposing, often surrounded
by colonnades and porticoes where people lay in the sun, or even slept
at night. These colonnades were adorned with rows of statues; but the
streets were narrow and dirty. The great contrast to any modern city
must have been first of all the absence of all spires and pinnacles, as
all Greek architecture loved flat roofs, and never built even in many
stories. Then the forest of modern chimneys was also absent—an advantage
which may be held fully to make up for the absence of even splendid
steeples. All private houses were flat and insignificant, for the Greek
never intended his house to be admired from without, he merely meant to
shut out the noise and the thoroughfare of the street, and spent all his
care on inner comforts.
While we build our houses facing the street, with most of their ornament
intended to be seen by those who pass by, the Greek did all he could to
shut out completely all connection with the street. He never had ground
floor windows facing the street, and his house looked like a dead wall
with a strong door in it, furnished with a knocker and a handle. This
door opened outward, which made it safer for those within, but when
they were coming out they used to knock inside lest passers-by might be
thrown down when the door was pushed open. Richer houses did not open
directly on the street, but on a porch which was not regarded as part
of the house. Directly inside the hall door was a narrow hall with a
porter’s lodge opening off it, in which a slave sat, who was put to that
work or to that of attending boys, when not useful for anything else. You
passed through the hall or passage into an open square court, which was
the center of the house, and was surrounded by a covered colonnade or
cloister. The various men’s rooms and the dining room opened upon this
cloister. The same general plan was adopted by the Romans, and inherited
by the modern Italians, so that most Italian palaces in Genoa, Florence,
and elsewhere are built in this way. Opposite the entrance was a second
door, which led from the court into the women’s apartments, and here
was situated the bed chamber of the master and mistress of the house.
In richer houses the women’s rooms were built round a second court like
the first. But more commonly they did not occupy so much room, and were
often placed on a second story, raised over the first at the back part
of the building, with a staircase going up from the court. The Greeks
preferred living on the ground floor, and their houses were not lofty
blocks, like those of our streets. The bed rooms and sitting rooms round
the court were usually small and dark, being mostly lighted only through
their door into the cloister. The upper story had windows. The roof,
which was tiled, like ours, was so flat as to allow people to walk upon
it. The pantries and store rooms were generally at the back of the house,
and near them the kitchen, which alone was supplied with a chimney.
The other rooms seldom required a fire, and, if necessary, were heated
with braziers of hot coke, or charcoal. The covered way upon which they
opened made them cool in summer. Of course the palaces of early kings
and the country houses of the rich Attic nobles had larger rooms and
courtyards than ordinary city houses, but their plan was not different.
Homer describes their halls as ornamented by plates of bright metal on
the walls—a fashion preserved in the house of Phocion at Athens, and of
which we still have traces in the so-called treasure house of Atreus,
near Mycenæ. Fresco painting and rich coloring on the walls did not come
into fashion till the fourth century B. C., and then became so common
that we find almost all the houses in Pompeii, which was really a Greek
town, though in Italy, ornamented in this way. There are large panels of
black, scarlet, or yellow, surrounded with the borders of flowers, and in
the center of the panel there are figures painted, when the owner could
afford it. The same style of ornament, with far better execution, may be
seen in the chambers of the palace now excavated on the Palatine at Rome.
As the Greek citizen lived chiefly in the open air, and in public, and
regarded his house merely as a safe and convenient place to keep his
family and store his goods, it was not to be expected that his furniture
should be expensive or elaborate. The small size of the rooms and the
dislike of the Greeks for large entertainments also tended to the same
economy. Besides, the low valuations of furniture alluded to in several
speeches made in the law courts of Athens prove it clearly as a general
rule in earlier days, though some cities, such as the rich Sybaris, may
have formed exceptions. In later days, with the decay of public spirit,
greater luxury prevailed in private life.
We must therefore consider early Greek household furniture to have been
cheap and simple, but remarkable for a grace of design and beauty of
form which have never since been rivalled. And these were combined with
a diligent attention to comfort and to practical use. Thus the Greek
chair which is often drawn on vases, and which is reproduced in marble
in the front row of the theater at Athens, as we still see it, is the
most comfortable and practical chair yet designed. So also the pots and
pitchers and vases which have been discovered in endless variety, are
equally beautiful and convenient. The chief articles of which we hear
are chairs, stools and couches made in ornamental wood work, with loose
cushions (unlike our modern upholstery); there were also high-backed
arm-chairs, and folding stools often carried after their masters by
slaves. Though men of ruder ages and poorer classes were content to sleep
between rugs and skins on the ground, and a shake down for a sudden guest
was always such (and is so still); yet the Greeks had beds of woolen
mattresses stretched on girths. Tables were only used for eating, and
were then brought in, and laid loosely upon their legs. In early days
each guest had a separate table for himself. This absence of solid tables
must have been the most marked contrast between a Greek room and ours.
People wrote either on their knees (as they now do in the East) or upon
the arm of a couch. Whatever ornaments they kept in their rooms seem
to have been placed on tripods, which often carried a vase of precious
metal and of elegant workmanship. The wonderful variety and beauty of
their lamps must also have been a remarkable feature. They possessed all
manner of cups, bowls, jars, and flasks for wine, and water, and oil,
and we have long lists of names for kitchen utensils, probably not very
different from those found at Pompeii. They used plates and dishes, and
sometimes knives and spoons at meals, but never forks.