The Athenian House and its Furnishings.
21. Following an Athenian Gentleman Homeward.—Leaving the Agora and
reëntering the streets the second impression of the residence districts
becomes more favorable. There are a few bay trees planted from block
to block; and ever and anon the monotonous house walls recede, giving
space to display some temple, like the Fane of Hephæstos[*] near the
Market Place, its columns and pediment flashing not merely with white
marble, but with the green, scarlet, and gold wherewith the Greeks did
not hesitate to decorate their statuary.
[*] Wrongly called the “Theseum” in modern Athens.
At street corners and opposite important mansions a Hermes-bust like
those in the plaza rises, and a very few houses have a couple of
pillars at their entrances and some outward suggestion of hidden
elegance.
We observe that almost the entire crowd leaving the Agora goes on foot.
To ride about in a chariot is a sign of undemocratic presumption;
while only women or sick men will consent to be borne in a litter. We
will select a sprucely dressed gentleman who has just been anointed in
a barber’s shop and accompany him to his home. He is neither one of the
decidedly rich, otherwise his establishment would be exceptional, not
typical, nor is he of course one of the hard-working poor. Followed by
perhaps two clean and capable serving lads, he wends his way down
several of the narrow lanes that lie under the northern brow of the
Acropolis[*]. Before a plain solid house door he halts and cries,
“_Pai! Pai!_” [“Boy! Boy!”]. There is a rattle of bolts and bars. A
low-visaged foreign-born porter, whose business it is to show a surly
front to all unwelcome visitors, opens and gives a kind of salaam to
his master; while the porter’s huge dog jumps up barking and pawing
joyously.
[*] This would be a properly respectable quarter of the city, but we do
not know of any really “aristocratic residence district” in Athens.
As we enter behind him (carefully advancing with right foot foremost,
for it is bad luck to tread a threshold with the _left_) we notice
above the lintel some such inscription as “Let no evil enter here!” or
“To the Good Genius,” then a few steps through a narrow passage bring
us into the _Aula_, the central court, the indispensable feature of
every typical Greek house.
22. The Type and use of a Greek House.—All domestic architecture,
later investigators will discover, falls into two great categories—of
the northern house and the southern house. The northern house begins
with a single large room, “the great hall,” then lesser rooms are added
to it. It gets its light from windows in the outer walls, and it is
covered by a single steep roof. The southern (Greek and Oriental)
house is a building inclosing a rectangular court. The rooms, many or
few, get their light from this court, while they are quite shut off
from the world outside. All in all, for warm climates this style of
house is far more airy, cool, comfortable than the other. The wide
open court becomes the living room of the house save in very inclement
weather.
Socrates is reported to have uttered what was probably the average
sensible view about a good house.[*] The good house, he thought,
should be cool in summer, and warm in winter, convenient for the
accommodation of the family and its possessions. The central rooms
should therefore be lofty and should open upon the south, yet for
protection in summer there should be good projecting eaves (over the
court) and again the rooms on the northern exposure should be made
lower. All this is mere sense, but really the average male Athenian
does not care a great deal about his dwelling. He spends surprisingly
little money beautifying it. Unless he is sick, he will probably be at
home only for sleeping and eating. The Agora, the Public Assembly, the
Jury Courts, the Gymnasium, the great religious festivals consume his
entire day. “I never spend my time indoors,” says Xenophon’s model
Athenian, “my wife is well able to run the household by herself.”[+]
Such being the case, even wealthy men have very simple establishments,
although it is at length complained (_e.g._ by Demosthenes) that people
are now building more luxurious houses, and are not content with the
plain yet sufficient dwellings of the great age of Pericles.[@]
[*] In Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_, III. 8, §§ 9,10.
[+] Xenophon, “_Economics_,” VII. 3.
[@] Very probably in such outlying Greek cities as Syracuse, Taras
(Tarentum), etc., more elegant houses could be found than any at this
time in Athens.
23. The Plan of a Greek House.—The plan of a Greek house naturally
varies infinitely according to the size of the land plot, the size of
the owner’s family, his own taste, and wealth. It will usually be
rectangular, with the narrower side toward the street; but this is not
invariable. In the larger houses there will be two courts (_aulæ_),
one behind the other, and each with its own circuit of dependent
chambers. The court first entered will be the _Andronitis_ (the Court
of the Men), and may be even large enough to afford a considerable
promenade for exercise. Around the whole of the open space run lines
of simple columns, and above the opening swings an awning if the day is
very hot. In the very center rises a small stone altar with a statue
of Zeus the Protector (_Zeus Herkeïos_), where the father of the family
will from time to time offer sacrifice, acting as the priest for the
household. Probably already on the altar there has been laid a fresh
garland; if not, the newcomers from the Agora have now fetched one.
[Illustration: Conjectural Plan for the House of A Wealthy Athenian.
A = Altar of Zeus Herkelos.
B = Altar of Hestia.
C = Entrance Hall.
D = Kitchen.
T = Thalmos.
T′ = Anti-thalmos.
X = Rooms for the Men.
Y = Rooms for the Women.]
The Andronitis is the true living room of the house: here the master
will receive his visitors, here the male slaves will work, and the
women also busy themselves (promptly retiring, however, on the
appearance of masculine strangers). The decoration is very plain: the
walls are neatly tinted with some kind of wash; the floor is of simple
plaster, or, in a humbler house, common earth pounded hard. Under the
colonnade at all four sides open the various chambers, possibly twelve
in all. They really are cells or compartments rather than rooms, small
and usually lighted only by their doors. Some are used for storerooms,
some for sleeping closets for the male slaves and for the grown-up sons
of the house, if there are any. Dark, ill ventilated, and most
scantily furnished, it is no wonder that the average Athenian loves the
Agora better than his chamber.
The front section of the house is now open to us, but it is time to
penetrate farther. Directly behind the open court is a sizable chamber
forming a passage to the inner house. This chamber is the _Andron_,
the dining hall and probably the most pretentious room in the house.
Here the guests will gather for the dinner party, and here in one
corner smokes the family hearth, once the real fire for the whole
household cooking, but now merely a symbol of the domestic worship. It
is simply a little round altar sacred to Hestia, the hearth goddess,[*]
and on its duly rekindled flame little “meat offerings and drink
offerings” are cast at every meal, humble or elaborate.
[*] Who corresponds to the Roman goddess _Vesta_.
In the rear wall of the Andron facing the Andronitis is a solid door.
We are privileged guests indeed if we pass it. Only the father, sons,
or near male kinsmen of the family are allowed to go inside, for it
leads into the _Gynæconitis_, the hall of the women. To thrust oneself
into the Gynæconitis of even a fairly intimate friend is a studied
insult at Athens, and sure to be resented by bodily chastisement,
social ostracism, and a ruinous legal prosecution. The Gynæconitis is
in short the Athenian’s holy of holies. Their women are forbidden to
participate in so much of public life that their own peculiar world is
especially reserved to them. To invade this world is not bad breeding;
it is social sacrilege.
In the present house, the home of a well-to-do family, the Gynæconitis
forms a second pillared court with adjacent rooms of substantially the
same size and shape as the Andronitis. One of the rooms in the very
rear is proclaimed by the clatter of pots and pans and the odor of a
frying turbot to be the kitchen; others are obviously the sleeping
closets of the slave women. On the side nearest to the front of the
house, but opening itself upon this inner court, is at least one bed
chamber of superior size. This is the _Thalamos_, the great bedroom of
the master and mistress, and here are kept all the most costly
furnishings and ornaments in the house. If there are grown-up
unmarried daughters, they have another such bedroom (_anti-thalamos_)
that is much larger than the cells of the slave girls. Another special
room is set apart for the working of wool, although this chief
occupation of the female part of the household is likely to be carried
on in the open inner court itself, if the weather is fine. Here,
around a little flower bed, slave girls are probably spinning and
embroidering, young children playing or quarreling, and a tame quail is
hopping about and watching for a crumb. There are in fact a great many
people in a relatively small space; everything is busy, chattering,
noisy, and confusing to an intruding stranger.
24. Modifications in the Typical Plan.—These are the essential
features of an Athenian house. If the establishment is a very
pretentious one, there may be a small garden in the rear carefully
hedged against intruders by a lofty wall.[*] More probably the small
size of the house lot would force simplifications in the scheme already
stated. In a house one degree less costly, the Gynæconitis would be
reduced to a mere series of rooms shut off in the rear. In more simple
houses still there would be no interior section of the house at all.
The women of the family would be provided for by a staircase rising
from the main hall to a second story, and here a number of upper
chambers would give the needful seclusion.[+] Of course as one goes
down the social scale, the houses grow simpler and simpler. Small
shops are set into the street wall at either side of the entrance door,
and on entering one finds himself in a very limited and utterly dingy
court with a few dirty compartments opening thence, which it would be
absurd to dignify by the name of “rooms.” Again one ceases to wonder
that the male Athenians are not “home folk” and are glad to leave their
houses to the less fortunate women!
[*] Such a luxury would not be common in city houses; land would be too
valuable.
[+] Houses of more than two stories seem to have been unknown in
Athens. The city lacked the towering rookeries of tenements (_insulæ_)
which were characteristic of Rome; sometimes, however, a house seems to
have been shared between several families.
25. Rents and House Values.—Most native Athenians own their houses.
Houses indeed can be rented, usually by the foreign traders and
visitors who swam into the city; and at certain busy seasons one can
hire “lodgings” for a brief sojourn. Rents are not unreasonable, 8% or
8 1/3% of the value of the house being counted a fair annual return.
But the average citizen is also a householder, because forsooth houses
are very cheap. The main cost is probably for the land. The chief
material used in building, sun-dried brick, is very unsubstantial,[*]
and needs frequent repairs, but is not expensive. Demosthenes the
Orator speaks of a “little house” (doubtless of the kind last
described) worth only seven minæ [about $126.00 (1914) or $2,242.80
(2000)], and this is not the absolute minimum. A very rich banker has
had one worth 100 minæ [about $1,800.00 (1914) or $32,040.00 (2000)],
and probably this is close to the maximum. The rent question is not
therefore one of the pressing problems at Athens.
[*] This material was so friable and poor that the Greek burglar was
known as a “Wall-digger.” It did not pay him to pick a lock; it was
simpler for him to quarry his way through the wall with a pickax.
26. The Simple yet Elegant Furnishings of an Athenian Home.—These
houses, even owned by the lordly rich, are surprisingly simple in their
furnishings. The accumulation of heavy furniture, wall decorations,
and bric-a-brac which will characterize the dwellings of a later age,
would be utterly offensive to an Athenian—contradicting all his ideas
of harmony and “moderation.” The Athenian house lacks of course
bookcases and framed pictures. It probably too lacks any genuine
closets. Beds, couches, chairs (usually backless), stools, footstools,
and small portable tables,—these alone seem in evidence. In place of
bureaus, dressers and cupboards, there are huge chests, heavy and
carved, in which most of the household gear can be locked away. In
truth, the whole style of Greek household life expresses that
simplicity on which we have already commented. Oriental carpets are
indeed met with, but they are often used as wall draperies or couch
covers rather than upon the floors. Greek costume (see p. 43) is so
simple that there is small need for elaborate chests of drawers, and a
line of pegs upon the wall cares for most of the family wardrobe.
All this is true; yet what furniture one finds is fashioned with
commendable grace. There is a marked absence of heavy and unhealthful
upholstery; but the simple bed (four posts sustaining a springless
cushion stuffed with feathers or wool) has its woodwork adorned with
carving which is a true mean betwixt the too plain and the too ornate;
and the whole bed is given an elegant effect by the magnificently
embroidered scarlet tapestry which overspreads it. The lines of the
legs of the low wooden tables which are used at the dinner parties will
be a lesson (if we have time to study them) upon just proportion and
the value of subtle curves. Moreover, the different household vessels,
the stone and bronze lamps, the various table dishes, even the common
pottery put to the humblest uses, all have a beauty, a chaste elegance,
a saving touch of deft ornamentation, which transforms them out of
“kitchen ware” into works of art. Those black water pots covered with
red-clay figures which the serving maids are bearing so carelessly into
the scullery at the screaming summons of the cook will be some day
perchance the pride of a museum, and teach a later age that costly
material and aristocratic uses are not needful to make an article
supremely beautiful.
Of course the well-to-do Athenian is proud to possess certain
“valuables.” He will have a few silver cups elegantly chased, and at
least one diner’s couch in the _andron_ will be made of rare imported
wood, and be inlaid with gilt or silver. On festival days the house
will be hung with brilliant and elaborately wrought tapestries which
will suddenly emerge from the great chests. Also, despite frowns and
criticisms, the custom is growing of decorating one’s walls with
bright-lined frescoes after the manner of the Agora colonnades. In the
course of a few generations the homes of the wealthier Greeks will come
to resemble those of the Romans, such as a later age has resurrected at
Pompeii.