Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece. Vol II

BOOK IV. — CHAPTER I. PRIVATE DWELLINGS. — CHAPTER II. HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE. — CHAPTER III. FOOD OF HOMERIC TIMES—MEAT, FISH, ETC. — CHAPTER IV. POULTRY, FRUIT, WINE, ETC. — CHAPTER V. ENTERTAINMENTS. — CHAPTER VI. ENTERTAINMENTS. — CHAPTER VII. THE THEATRE. — CHAPTER VIII. THEATRE ( continued ).

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 76degenerated 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]

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]

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 77with, and surrounded by, all the circumstances of pomp known to their age.^[267]

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]

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 78in 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]

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]

In this porch were seats of handsome polished 79stone, 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.

80The 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.

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 81century, 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.

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 82were 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.

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 83arranged 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]

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 84more 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.

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, 85there 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.

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.

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, 86therefore, 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, signifiessignifies 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.

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.

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 87property, 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]

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 88into 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.

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.

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]

When once the warm bath came into use, people 89employed 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.

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.

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, 90and 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]

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.

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 91ran 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]

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.

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 92to 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.

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 93furnished with stoppers to keep out the rain in bad weather.^[350]

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]

The street-door of a Grecian house, usually, when single, opened outwards, but when there were folding 94doors 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.

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 95keep 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.

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 96diminish 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.

The movables in a Grecian house were divided into classes after a very characteristic manner. First, as a mark of the national piety, everything used in domestic sacrifices was set apart. The second division, placing women immediately after the gods, comprehended the whole apparatus of female ornaments^[375] worn on solemn festivals. Next were classed the sacred robes and military uniforms of the men; then came the hangings, bed-furniture, and ornaments of the harem; afterwards those of the men’s apartments. Another division consisted of the shoes, sandals, slippers, &c., of the family, from which we pass to the arms and implements of war, mixed up familiarly in a Greek house with looms, cards, spinning-wheels, and embroidery-frames, just, as Homer describes them in the Thalamos of Paris at Troy. Even yet we have not reached the end of our inventory in mere classification. The baking, cooking, washing, and bathing vessels formed a separate class, and so did the breakfast and dinner services, the porcelain, the plate of silver and gold, the mirrors, the candelabra, and all those curious articles made use of in the toilette of the ladies.^[376]

In well-regulated families a second division took place, a separation being made of such articles as 98might be required for daily use, from those brought forward only when routs and large parties were given. The movables of all kinds having been thus arranged in their classes, the next step was to deposit every thing in its proper place.^[377] The more ordinary utensils were generally laid up in a spacious store-room, called tholos,^[378] a circular building detached from the house, and usually terminating in a pointed roof, whence in after ages a sharp-crowned hat obtained among the people the name of Tholos. When a gentleman first commenced housekeeping, or got a new set of domestics, he delivered into the care of the proper individuals his kneading troughs, his kitchen utensils, his cards, looms, spinning wheels, and so on; and, pointing out the places where all these, when not in use, should be placed, committed them to their custody.

Of the holiday, or show articles, more account was made. These, being brought forward only on solemn festivals, or in honour of some foreign guest, were entrusted to the immediate care of the housekeeper, a complete list of everything having first been taken; and it was part of her duty, when she delivered any of these articles to the inferior domestics, to make a note of what she gave out, and take care they were duly returned into her keeping.^[379]

But the above comprehensive glance over the articles of furniture made use of in an Athenian gentleman’s establishment, though it may give some notion of the careful and economical habits of the people, affords no conception of the splendour and magnificence often found in a Grecian house: for, as we have already seen, their opinions are highly erroneous who imagine that in the Attic democracy the rich were by any prudential or political considerations 99restrained from indulging their love of ostentation by the utmost display they could make of wealth.^[380] In fact, not content with outstripping their neighbours in the grandeur of their dwellings, furniture, and dress, these persons had often the ludicrous vanity, when they gave a large party, to excite the envy of such dinnerless rogues as might pass, by throwing out the feathers of game and poultry before their doors.^[381] Indeed, since the Athenians exactly resembled other men, the exhibition of magnificence tended but too strongly to dazzle them; so that, among the arts of designing politicians, one generally was, to create a popular persuasion that they possessed the means of conferring important favours on all who obliged them.

To proceed, however, with the furniture. Though the principal value of many articles arose from the exquisite taste displayed in the design and workmanship, the materials themselves, too, were often extremely rare and costly. Porcelain, glass, crystal, ivory, amber,^[382] gold, silver, and bronze, with numerous varieties of precious woods, were wrought up with inimitable taste and fancy into various articles of use or luxury. Among the decorations of the dining-room was the side-board, which, though sometimes of iron, was more frequently of carved wood, bronze, or wrought silver, ornamented with the heads of satyrs and oxen.^[383] Their tables, in the Homeric age, were generally of wood, of variegated colours, finely polished, and with ornamented feet. Myrleanos, an obscure writer in Athenæus, 100imagines^[384] they were round, that they might resemble the disc of the sun and moon; but from the passage in the Odyssey,^[385] and the interpretation of Eustathius, they may be inferred to have been narrow parallelograms,^[386] like our own dining-tables. The luxury of table-cloths being unknown, the wine spilled, &c., was cleansed away with sponges.^[387] But the poet had witnessed a superior degree of magnificence, for he already, in the Odyssey,^[388] makes mention of tables of silver. The poor were, of course, content with the commonest wood. But as civilisation proceeded, the tables of the wealthy became more and more costly in materials, and more elegant in form.

It grew to be an object of commerce, to import from foreign countries the most curious kinds of wood,^[389] to be wrought into tables, which originally supported on four legs, rested afterwards on three, fancifully formed, or on a pillar and claws of ivory, or silver, as with us. There was a celebrated species of table manufactured in the island of Rhenea;^[390] the great, among the Persians, delighted in maple tables with ivory feet, and, in fact, the knotted maple appears at one time to have been regarded as the most rare and beautiful of woods.^[391] But the rage for sumptuous articles of furniture of this kind did not reach its full height until Roman times, when a single table of citron wood

101sometimes cost six or seven thousand pounds sterling. Already, however, in the best ages of Greece, their tables were inlaid with silver, brass, or ivory, with feet in the form of lions, leopards, or other wild beasts.^[393]

In more early times, before the effeminate Oriental habit of reclining at meals obtained,^[394] the Greeks made use of chairs which were of various kinds, some being formed of more, others of less costly materials, but all beautiful and elegant in form, as we may judge from those which adorn our own drawing-rooms, entirely fashioned after Grecian models. The thrones of the gods represented in works of art, however richly ornamented, are simply arm-chairs with upright backs, an example of which occurs in a carnelian in the Orleans Collection,^[395] where Apollo is represented playing on the seven-stringed lyre. This chair has four legs with tigers’ feet, a very high upright back, and is ornamented with a sculptured car and horses. They had no Epicurean notions of their deities, and never presented them to the eye of the public lounging in an easy chair, which would have suggested the idea of infirmity. On the contrary, they are full of force and energy, and sit erect on their thrones, as ready to succour their worshipers at a moment’s warning. In the Homeric age these were richly carved, like the divans, adorned with silver studs, and so high that they required a footstool.^[396] The throne of the Persian kings was of massive gold, and stood beneath a purple canopy, supported by four slender golden columns thickly crusted with jewels.

102Bedsteads were generally of common wood such as deal,^[397] bottomed sometimes with planks, pierced to admit air, sometimes with ox-hide thongs,^[398] which in traversing each other left numerous open spaces between them. Odysseus’s bedstead, which the hero was sufficient joiner to manufacture with his own hands, was made of olive-wood, inlaid with silver, gold, and ivory. Sometimes the bed was supported by a sort of netting of strong cord, stretched across the bedstead, and made fast all round.^[399] Later ages witnessed far greater luxury,—bedsteads of solid silver,^[400] or ivory embossed with figures wrought with infinite art and delicacy,^[401] or of precious woods carved, with feet of ivory or amber.^[402] Occasionally, also, they were veneered with Indian tortoiseshell, inlaid with gold.^[403] This taste would appear to have flowed from the East, where among the kings of Persia still greater magnificence was witnessed even in very early times. Thus, speaking of the royal feast celebrated at Susa, the Scripture says, there were in the court of the garden of the king’s palace “white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings, and pillars of marble. The beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble.” A similar style of grandeur is attributed by Hellenic writers to the Persian king, who, according to Chares,^[404] reclined in his palace on a couch shaded by a spreading 103golden vine, the grape clusters of which were imitated by jewels of various colours.

Four-post bedsteads were in use in remoter ages, as appears from a white sardonyx in the Orleans Collection,^[405] representing the surprisal of Ares and Aphrodite, by Hephæstos. There is a low floating vallance fastened up in festoons, the tester is roof-shaped, and the pillars terminate in fanciful capitals. The figure of an eagle adorns the corners of the bedstead below. From a painting on the walls of Pompeii we discover, that the peculiar sort of bedstead at present found almost universally in France was likewise familiar to the ancients, made exactly after the same fashion, and raised about the same height above the floor. With regard to the beds themselves they were at different times manufactured from very different materials, and those of some parts of Greece enjoyed a peculiar reputation. From a phrase in Homer,^[406] it would appear that, in his times, beds were stuffed in Thessaly with very fine grass. Those of Chios and Miletos were famous^[407] throughout Greece. In other parts of the country, persons of peculiar effeminacy slept on beds of sponge.^[408] Sicily was famous for its pillows, as were also several other Doric countries. At Athens the rich were accustomed to sleep upon very soft beds, placed on bedsteads considerably above the floor;^[409] and sometimes, it has been supposed, adorned with coverlets of dressed peacocks’ skins with the feathers on.^[410]

But the Greeks appear to have consulted their ease, and sunk more completely into softness and effeminacy, in proportion as they approached the East. Among the Peloponnesians most persons lived hard and lay hard; greater refinement and luxury 104prevailed in Attica; but in Ionia and many of the Ægæan isles the great—although there were exceptions as in the case of Attalos—fell little short in self-indulgence of Median or Persian satraps. Some idea may be formed of their habits in this respect from the description of a Paphian prince’s bed by Clearchos of Soli.^[411] Over the soft mattresses supported by a silver-footed bedstead, was flung a short grained Sardian carpet of the most expensive kind. A coverlet of downy texture succeeded, and upon this was cast a costly counterpane of Amorginian purple. Cushions, striped or variegated with the richest purple, supported his head, while two soft Dorian pillows^[412] of pale pink gently raised his feet. In this manner habited in a milk-white chlamys the prince reclined. Their bolsters in form resembled our own;^[413] but the pillows were usually square, as in France, though occasionally rounded off at both ends, and covered with richly chequered or variegated muslins. To prevent the fine wool or whatever else they were stuffed with from getting into heaps, mattresses were sewn through as now, and carefully tufted that the packthread might not break through the ticking.^[414]

Among the Orientals it is common at present for persons to sleep in their day apparel; but even in the heroic ages it was already customary in Greece to undress on going to bed. When Agamemnon is roused before dawn by the delusive dream, the whole process of the morning toilette is described. First, says the poet, he donned his soft chiton which was new and very handsome; next his pelisse; after which he bound on his elegant sandals and suspended his silver-hilted sword from his shoulder. Thus accoutred he issued forth, sceptre in hand, towards the ships.^[415]

105In Syria, children luxuriously educated are said to have been rocked in their cradles wrapped in coverlets of Milesian wool.^[416] The sheep of Miletos were, in fact, the Merinos of antiquity; and their wool being celebrated for its fineness and softness, it was not only employed in manufacturing the best cloths, but also in stuffing the mattresses of kings and other great personages who thought much of their ease. And as the vulgar imagine they become great by habiting themselves in garments similar to those of their princes, like the honest man who sought wisdom through reading by Epictetus’ lamp, the stuffs, couches, and coverlets of Miletos got into great vogue among the ancients. Virgil, Cicero, Servius, Columella, and many other writers speak accordingly of their excellence, and their testimonies have, with wonderful industry, been collected by the learned Bochart.^[417]

But though Miletos had a reputation for this kind of manufacture, it by no means enjoyed a monopoly. The scarlet coverings of Sardis, and the variegated stuffs of Cyprus, produced by the famous weaver Akesas and his son Helicon,^[418] appear in many instances to have obtained a preference over all others. Pathymias, too, the Egyptian, distinguished himself in the same line.^[419]

All these bed-coverings were commonly perfumed with fragrant essences,^[420] for which reason the voluptuous poets of antiquity dwell with a sort of rapture on the pleasure of rolling about in bed. Ephippos exclaims:—

106Aristophanes, likewise, and Sophron, the mimographer, make mention of these fragrant counterpanes, which were extremely costly, and inwrought, according to the latter, with figures of birds.^[421] Elsewhere Athenæus relates that the Persian carpets contained representations of men, animals, and monsters.^[422] Their blankets, like our own, were plain white; but even so far back as the heroic ages, the upper coverings, as being partly designed for show, were of rich and various colours.^[423]

There seems to be good ground for believing, that if the Greeks did not borrow their philosophy from the East, they at least derived from them many of the vain and luxurious habits which at length rendered that philosophy of none effect. No one appears to have paid a single visit to Persia, or Syria, or Egypt, without bringing back along with him some pestilent new freak in the matter of dress or furniture, wholly at variance with republican simplicity. We might adduce numerous anecdotes in proof of this. For the present we confine ourselves to the following. Among the Persians, renowned in all ages for sensual indulgences, it was judged of so much importance to enjoy soft and elegantly arranged beds, that in great houses persons were employed who attended only to this. An anecdote in illustration has been preserved by Athenæus. Timagoras, or, according to Phanias, Entimos of Gortyna, envying Themistocles his reception at the court of Persia, undertook himself a toad-eating expedition to that country. Artaxerxes, whose ear could tolerate more flatterers than one, took the Cretan into favour, and made him a present of a superb marquee, a silver-footed bedstead, with costly furniture, and, along with them, sent a slave, as a Turkish pasha would send a cook or a pipe-lighter, because, in his opinion, the Greeks who prepared 107sleeping-places for so many Persians at Marathon and Platæa, understood nothing of bed-making.

Entimos evidently excelled the great Athenian in the arts of a courtier. In fact, he was the very prototype of Hajji Baba, and enjoyed even still greater influence over the Shah than the illustrious barber’s son of Ispahan. Charmed by his cajolery, Artaxerxes invited him to his private table, where, usually, none but princes of the blood were admitted,^[424] an honour, as Phanias assures us, which no other Greek ever enjoyed. For, though Timagoras of Athens performed kou-tou before the throne,^[425] whereby he obtained great consideration among a nation of slaves, and was hanged when he got home, he was not invited to hob-and-nob with his majesty, but only enjoyed the distinction of having certain dishes sent him from the king’s table. To Antalcidas, the Spartan, Artaxerxes sent his crown dipped in liquid perfume, an agreeable compliment, but which he more than once paid to Entimos, whose extraordinary favour at court in the long run, however, awakened the envy of the Persians. The canopy of the marquee presented to this Cretan was spangled with bright flowers, and, among the other articles of which the imperial gift consisted, were a throne of massive silver, a gilded parasol, several golden cups crusted with jewels, a hundred maple-tables with ivory feet, 108a hundred goblets of silver, several vases of the same precious metal, a hundred female slaves, an equal number of youths, with six thousand pieces of gold, besides what was furnished him for his daily expenditure.^[426]

A gentleman travelling in Ireland witnessed the ingenuity of that ready-witted people in applying the same thing to various uses: first, he saw the tablecloth, on which he had eaten a good supper, transferred as a sheet to his bed, and, next morning, his kind hostess, offering her services to put him in the right way, converted the same article into a mantle, which she wrapped about her shoulders. The Greeks were almost equally ingenious. With them what was a cloak by day became sometimes a counterpane at night,^[427] in addition, perhaps, to the ordinary bed-clothes; for it is clear they loved to be warm, from the somewhat reproachful allusion of Strepsiades in the “Clouds” to the five sisyræ,^[428] rolled snugly up in which, his son, Pheidippides, could sleep while thoughts of his debts bit the old man like so many bugs, and roused him hours before day to consult his ledgers. All kinds of stromata were, in Plato’s time, divided into two classes, first, coverings for the body, such as cloaks, mantles, and so on; secondly, bed-clothes, properly so called.

The walls of their chambers were frequently hung with Milesian tapestry, a custom to which Amphis alludes in his Odysseus:

109Mention is likewise made among the ancients of purple tapestry, inwrought with pearls and gold.^[431]

Carthage enjoyed celebrity for its manufacture of carpets and variegated pillows,^[432] a piece of luxury which, as we have seen above, had already been introduced in the heroic ages; for Homer, in innumerable passages, speaks of rare and costly carpets, and these were not only spread over couches and seats, but over the floor likewise.^[433] Rolled up, they would occasionally appear to have served for pillows. The manufacture of carpets had, moreover, been carried to considerable perfection, for the poet speaks of some with a soft pile on both sides, which were evidently very splendid.^[434] Theocritus,^[435] too, in his Adoniazusæ, enumerates, among the luxuries of the youthful God,

But in nothing did the Greeks display a more gorgeous or costly taste than in what may be termed their plate, which was not only fabricated of the rarest materials, but wrought likewise with all the elaborateness and delicacy and richness of design within the reach of art. Among the Macedonians, after 110their Eastern conquests, gold plate appears not to have been uncommon; for at the grand supper described by Hippolochos in his letter to Lynceus, every guest is said to have used it.^[437] The predilection for this sort of magnificence they acquired in Asia, where, at a banquet given to Alexander, the whole dessert was brought in tastefully covered with gold-leaf.^[438] In the reign of his father, Philip, the precious metals were rare in Macedonia. Indeed, that crafty old monarch, possessing but one gold cup in the world, had so good an opinion of his courtiers that, to prevent their thieving it, he slept every night with it under his pillow.^[439] Gold was, more early, plentiful in Attica. Alcibiades, with tastes and habits unsuited to a democracy, carried so far his love of display as to make use of thuribles, or censers, and wash-hand basins of pure gold.^[440] But the ostentatious son of Clinias, though extravagant, was in this respect only a type of his nation. Every rich citizen of Athens aimed at the same degree of splendour; and, in describing his town-house or favourite villa, might, with little alteration, have adopted the language of the poet:—

Socrates, in the Republic, speaking of what the prevailing fashion required to be found in a city, makes out a list of good things, not much inferior upon the whole to Shakspeare’s,—beds, tables, and 111other furniture; dainties of all kinds; perfumes, unguents, sauces, &c.; to which the philosopher adds apparel, shoes, pictures, tapestry, ivory, and gold:^[441] and these rare materials, as farther on he observes, were wrought into utensils for domestic purposes.

One of the most plentifully furnished departments of a Greek house was the Kulikeion, or “cupboard,” usually closed in front with a curtain,^[442] where they kept their goblets, cups, and drinking-horns, under the protection of a statue of Hermes, who, as god of thieves, would, it was supposed, be respected by his children. The form and workmanship of these materials varied, no doubt, according to the taste and means of the possessor; but they were in general distinguished for the elegance of their outline, the grace and originality of the sculpture, the fineness, delicacy, and minute finish of the execution. It is well known, as an able antiquarian^[443] has remarked, to what an excess the luxury of the table was carried among the ancients, and how much they surpassed us in the dimensions, the massiveness, the workmanship, the quality, and the variety of their drinking apparatus.

Many persons, however, seem chiefly to have valued their plate as a mark of their wealth and magnificence; among whom may be reckoned Pythias of Phigaleia, who, when dying, commanded the following epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb:—

Amber goblets not being, I believe, in fashion among the modern nations of Europe, some doubt 112may be experienced respecting the veracity of our friend of Phigaleia; but the ancients had other gobletary legends to bring forward in support of it. Helen,^[445] it is said, justly proud of her beautiful bosom, dedicated in one of the temples of Rhodes, as a votive offering, an amber goblet, exactly of the size and shape of one of her breasts, which, had it come down to posterity, might have furnished artists with a perfect model of that part of the female form. However this may be, the ancients, in remote ages, set a great value on their cups, particularly such as were considered heir-looms in the family, and laid apart to be used only on extraordinary occasions. Hence Œdipos, in the old Cyclic poet, is seized with fierce anger at his son, who had, contrary to his will, brought forth his old hereditary goblets to be used at an ordinary entertainment.

Agathocles, tyrant of Sicily, appears to have been an amateur of cups, and would sometimes while exhibiting his collection to his friends make a good-humoured allusion to his original occupation. “These golden vessels,” said he, “have been made out of those earthenware ones which I formerly manufactured.”^[447] Drinking-bowls in fact made no inconsiderable figure in ancient times. They were bestowed as the prizes in gymnastic contests, and in Greece men boxed and wrestled for the cup as horses run for it in England. Parasites, like the jester of Louis XIV., used sometimes to carry home the cups and dishes set before them at dinner; but the tables were often turned when the subject gave and the prince pocketed the dole.

A curious legend has been preserved to us connected with the subject of cups. Several princes uniting, in remote times, to send a colony to Lesbos, were commanded by an oracle to cast a virgin, during their voyage, into the sea, as a sacrifice to Poseidon. Obedience, in those superstitious ages, was seldom refused to such injunctions. The maiden was precipitated into the waves, but Enallos, one of the chiefs, in whom love had quenched the reverence 114for oracles, immediately plunged in to save her. Neither the chief, however, nor the virgin appeared again, and the fleet proceeded. The remainder of the tradition may be illustrated by an event said to have taken place in the Tonga islands.^[448] They were probably near some uninhabited isle, and instead of rising to the surface of the sea, emerged into a cavern elevated considerably above its level, and opening perhaps upon the land. “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,” says a modern writer, and so Enallos found it. By means unrevealed in the ancient narrative, the hero and his bride continued to subsist on the rock, and many years afterwards, when the colony was already flourishing, he one day presented himself before his old friends at Methymna, and entertained them with a very romantic account of his residence among the Nereids at the bottom of the sea, where he was honoured with the care of Poseidon’s horses when sent out to grass. At length, however, getting on the back of a large wave it bore him upwards and he escaped from the deep, bearing in his hand a golden cup, the metal of which was so marvellously beautiful that in comparison ordinary gold appeared no better than brass.^[449]

Even the loftiest and least worldly-minded of the Homeric heroes, Achilles, set great value on a favourite drinking-cup, which he preserved for his own particular use, and for pouring out libations to Zeus alone. Priam^[450] was careful to include a rare goblet in the ransom of Hector’s body, and a similar gift aided in alluring Alcmena from the paths of virtue.^[451] But the most famous bowl of antiquity was that of Heracles, which, more capacious than the barber’s basin in Don Quixote, served its illustrious owner in the double capacity of a drinking-cup and a canoe; for when he had quenched his thirst, he could set 115his bowl afloat, and, leaping into it, steer to any part of the world he pleased. Some, indeed, speak of it as a borrowed article, belonging originally to the Sun, and in which the god used nightly to traverse the ocean from West to East.^[452]

To pass, however, over the goblets of mythology. It was fashionable to possess plate of this kind finely sculptured with historical arguments; and history has preserved the names of Cimon and Athenocles, two artists who excelled in this style of engraving. These cups were sometimes of silver gilt, sometimes of massive gold crusted with jewels.^[453] In addition to the two artists named above, we may enumerate Crates, Stratonicos, Myrmecides of Miletos, Callicrates the Lacedemonian, and Mys, whose “Cup of Heracles,” celebrated in antiquity, had represented upon it the storming of Ilion, with this inscription,

The names by which the ancients distinguished their several kinds of goblets are too numerous to be here given. Some were curious—“Amalthea’s Horn,” “The Year,” &c. Rustics made use of two-handled wooden bowls in which, when thirsty, they drew fresh milk from the cow in the fields.^[455] There was a big-bellied cup with a narrow neck which being shaped like a purse, participated with this very necessary article in the name of Aryballos.^[456]

Glass cups of much beauty were manufactured in great abundance at Alexandria. Among these was the Baucalis, mentioned by Sopater the parodist, who says:—

The glass-workers of Alexandria procured earthenware vessels from all parts of the world, which they used as models for their cups. Even the great sculptor Lysippos did not disdain to employ his genius in the invention of a new kind of vase. Having made a collection of vessels of many various shapes, and diligently studied the whole, he hit upon a form entirely new, and presented the model to Cassander, who having just then founded the city of Cassandria, was ambitious of originating an invention of this kind. He was desirous, perhaps, of recommending by the elegance of his drinking-cups the Mendæan wine exported in great quantities from his city.^[458]

There was a peculiar kind of cup called Grammateion, from the letters of gold chased upon its exterior.^[459] Alexis mentions one of this sort in the following lines:

A very handsome sort of cup was imported from Sidon. It had two handles, and was ornamented with small figures in relief. Drinking-vases were also formed from the large horns of the Molossian and Pœonian oxen; and these articles were commonly rimmed with silver or gold.^[461] Small cups were made 117little account of. There was even one kind of bowl which, for its enormous capacity, was called the Elephant.

A very celebrated cup among the Athenians was the Thericlean,^[463] originally invented by Thericles, a Corinthian potter, contemporary with Aristophanes. This ware was black, highly varnished, with gilt edges;^[464] but the name came afterwards to be applied to any vessel of the same form from whatever materials manufactured. There were accordingly Thericlea of gold with wooden stands. The cups of this kind, made at Athens, being very expensive, an inferior sort, in imitation, was produced at Rhodes, which, as far more economical, had a great run among the humbler classes. The Thericlean was a species of deep chalice with two handles, and bulging but little at the sides. Theophrastus^[465] speaks of Thericlea turned from the Syrian Turpentine tree, the wood of which being black and taking a fine polish, it was impossible at a glance to distinguish them from those of earthenware. The paintings on these utensils appear to have been various. Sometimes a single wreath of ivy encircled them immediately beneath the golden rim; but it seems occasionally to have been covered with representations of animals, which gave rise to a forced and false etymology of the name.^[466]

118We have already observed, that the use of drinking-horns^[467] was not unknown to the ancients. In fact, it seems, in very remote ages, to have been customary to convert bulls’ horns into cups with very little preparation; and the practice of quaffing wine from this rude kind of goblet had by some been supposed to have suggested the idea to artists of representing Bacchos with horns, and to poets the epithet of the Bull Dionysos. He was moreover worshiped at Cyzicos under the form of a bull. Afterwards, as taste and luxury advanced, these simple vessels were exchanged for horns of silver, which Pindar attributes to the Centaurs.^[468] Xenophon^[469] found drinking-horns among the Paphlagonians, and afterwards even in the palace of the Thracian king Seuthes. Æschylus speaks of silver horns, with lids of gold, in use among the Perrhæbians, and Sophocles, in his Pandora, makes mention of drinking-horns of massive gold. Philip of Macedon was accustomed among his friends to drink from the common horn. Golden horns were found among the inhabitants of Cythera. Horns of silver were in use at Athens; and, among the articles enumerated as sold at a public auction, mention is made of one of these vessels of a twisted form.

Mirrors constituted another article of Hellenic luxury. These were sometimes of brass,^[470] whence the proverb:

The best, however, until those of glass came into use, were made of silver or of a mixed metal, the exact 119composition of which is not now known. Another kind was fashioned from a species of carbuncle found near the city of Orchomenos,^[472] in Arcadia. Glass mirrors^[473] also came early into use, chiefly manufactured, at the outset, by the Phœnicians of Sidon. The hand-mirrors were usually circular,^[474] and set in costly frames. To prevent their being speedily tarnished they were, when not in use, carefully enclosed in cases.^[475]

There were mirrors, too, of polished silver, fashioned so as to magnify immensely the objects they reflected.^[476] They invented also large cups containing within many diminutive mirrors, so that when any one looked into them, his eye was met by a multitude of faces all resembling his own.^[477] In a temple of Hera in Arcadia, was a mirror fixed in the wall, wherein the spectator could at first scarcely, if at all, discern his own image, while the throne of the goddess and the statues of the other deities ranged around were most brilliantly reflected.reflected.^[478] Many sorts of mirrors appear to have been made for the purpose of playing off practical jokes. For example, looking in one of these, a handsome woman would find her visage transformed into that of a Gorgon, so as to appear terrible even to herself. Others again were so very flattering, that a half-starved barber, viewing his figure therein, appeared to be gifted with the thewes of a Heracles. Another sort distorted the countenance, or inverted it, or showed merely the half.

Religion was the nurse of the fine arts, and first gave rise, not only to sculpture and painting, but 120also to those private collections of statues and pictures^[479] in which we discover the germs of our modern galleries^[480] and museums. The first step was made towards these when the Greek set up the images of his household gods upon his hearth. Thence, step by step, he proceeded, improving the appearance, enriching the materials, increasing the number of his domestic deities, with which niche after niche was filled, till his private dwelling became in some sort a temple. The religious feeling, no doubt, made way, in many cases, for a passion for show, or a nascent taste for the beautiful; so that rude figures in terra-cotta, wood, or stone, were gradually replaced by exquisite statues in ivory, gold, or silver,^[481] or the fairest marble, breathing beauty and life, with eyes of gems, and clothed with majesty as with a garment. Hence flowed the passion for mimetic representations and all the plastic arts. The gods were transferred from the fireside to the temple, to the agora, to the senate-house, to the innumerable porticoes everywhere abounding in Greece.^[482]

On their superb candelabra,^[483] &c., matter for a curious volume might be collected. The lamps in common use,^[484] though sometimes very beautiful in shape, were of course fictile,^[485] such as we find in great numbers among the ruins of Greek cities, both in the mother-country, and in their Egyptian and other colonies. Sometimes, however, they were of bronze, silver, or massive gold. A very beautiful 121specimen in this last metal was found, by Lord Belmore, among the ruins of an Egyptian temple, a short time before my visit to the Nile. In many houses were magnificent chandeliers, suspended from the ceiling, with numerous branches, which filled the apartments^[486] with a flood of light. The most remarkable article of this kind which I remember was that set up as a votive offering to Hestia, in the Prytaneion of Tarentum, by Dionysios the Younger, which held as many lamps as there are days in the year.^[487] Among people of humble condition wooden chandeliers, or candlesticks, were in use.^[488] In remoter ages they burned slips of pine-branches, the bark of various trees, &c., instead of lamps. They were acquainted with the use of horn and wicker lanterns.^[489]

Another kind of decoration of Greek houses we must not overlook,—their armour and implements of war,^[490] with which the poet Alcæos^[491] loved to adorn his chambers, though, like Paris, he cared little to make any other use of them. “My spacious mansion,” exclaims he, “gleams throughout with brazen arms. Even along the ceiling are ranged the ornaments of Ares, glittering helmets, surmounted by white nodding plumes; greaves of polished brass are suspended on the walls, with cuirasses of linen, while, here and there, about my apartments, are scattered hollow shields. Elsewhere, you behold scimitars of Chalcis, and baldricks, and the short vest which we wear beneath our armour.”^[492] Besides the articles enumerated by the poet, there were shield-cases, sheaths for their spears, 122quivers curiously adorned, feathered arrows, and bows of polished horn, tipped at either end with gold.

From these gorgeous and costly commodities the reader, we fear, will be reluctant to accompany us into the kitchen, where we must pick our way among kneading-troughs, pots and pans, Delphian cutlery^[493] and honey-jars.^[494] But as without these the warriors, as Homer himself acknowledges, could make but little use of their weapons, it is absolutely necessary we should inquire into their cooking conveniences. To commence, however, we must allow^[495] Clearchos of Soli, to enumerate a few of the articles found among the furniture of this important part of the house. There was, first, says he, a three-legged table, then a chytra, or earthen pot, which, as in France, was always preferred for making soup. It was not, however, of coarse brown ware, as with us; for, Socrates, in his conversation with Hippias on the Beautiful, observes that, when properly made, round, smooth, and well-baked, the chytra was very handsome, particularly that large sort which contained upwards of seven gallons. It had two handles, and was evidently glazed.^[496] In stirring the chytra while boiling, the Attic cook made choice of a ladle turned from the wood of the fig-tree, which, it is said, communicated an agreeable flavour to the soup, and, in Socrates’s opinion, was preferable to one of gold which, being very weighty, might chance to crack the pot, spill the broth, and extinguish the fire.^[497]

There was used in the kitchen a sort of candelabrum, or lamp-stand, which Clearchos merely names. Then followed the mortar, the stool, the sponge, the cauldron, the kneading-trough, the mug, the oil-flask, 123the rush-basket, the large knife, the cleaver,^[498] the wooden platter, the bowl, and the larding-pin.^[499] Pollux, who had, doubtless, served an apprenticeship to Marcus Aurelius’s cook, gives a formidable list of culinary utensils, from which we must be content to select the most remarkable. First, however, we shall show how important a piece of sponge was to an Athenian cook. It often saved him his dinner; for, if any of his stewpans, crocks, or kettles, had suffered from the embraces of Hephæstos, in other words, had got a hole burnt in them, a bit of sponge was drawn into the aperture, and on went the cooking operations as before.^[500] In some houses culinary utensils were regarded as a nuisance, the presence of which was not to be constantly endured, and, accordingly, when the master desired to treat his friends, cookey was despatched early in the morning to hire pots and kettles of a broker. To this custom Alexis alludes in his Exile:

But we must not pass over the Pyreion or Trypanon,^[502] the clumsy contrivance which supplied the place of our lucifers, phosphorus, and tinder-boxes. This was a hollow piece of wood, in which another 124piece was turned rapidly till sparks of fire flew out.^[503] Soldiers carried these fire-kindlers along with them as a necessary part of their kit.

The ordinary fuel of the Greeks consisted chiefly of wood and charcoal,^[504] (kept in rush or wicker baskets,) though the use of mineral coal was not altogether unknown to them.^[505] In Attica, where wood was always scarce, they economically made use of vine-cuttings,^[506] and even the green branches of the fig tree with the leaves on.^[507] The charcoal of Acharnæ, the best probably in the country, was sometimes prepared from the scarlet oak.^[508] To prevent the wood, used in their saloons, halls, and drawing-rooms from smoking, it was often boiled^[509] in water or steeped in dregs of oil. The use of the bellows^[510] was known in Hellas from the remotest antiquity. They had likewise a kind of osier flap, with a handle, and shaped like a fan, which at times supplied the place of a pair of bellows.

There were chopping-blocks^[511] both of wood and stone, mortars,^[512] fish-kettles, frying-pans, and spits of all dimensions,^[513] some being so diminutive that thrushes and other small birds could be roasted on them. Their ends in the heroic ages rested on stone hobs, but afterwards andirons were invented, probably of fanciful shape as in modern France. Occasionally they would appear to have been manufactured of lead. To these we may add the ovens, the bean and barley-roasters, the sieves of bronze and other materials, the wine-strainers in the form of colanders, the crate for earthern-ware, and the chafing-dish.^[514]

Having described the implements with which a Greek meal was prepared, let us next inquire of what materials it consisted, and how it was eaten. There will be no occasion in pursuing this investigation to adhere to any very strict method. It will probably be sufficient to make a few broad divisions and a flexible outline which we can fill up as the materials fall in our way.

What the original inhabitants of Hellas ate might no doubt be satisfactorily inferred from the accounts we possess of nations still existing in the same state of civilisation. But it is nevertheless curious to examine their traditions relating to the subject. Ælian, who has preserved many notices of remote antiquity, gives a list of various kinds of food, which, as he would appear to think, constituted the chief, if not the whole, sustenance of several ancient nations. The Arcadians lived, he says, upon acorns; the Argives upon pears, the Athenians upon figs;^[515] the wild pear-tree furnished the Tirynthians with their favourite food; a sort of cane was the chief dainty of the Indians; of the Karamanians^[516] the date; millet of the Mæotæ and Sauromatæ; while the Persians^[517] delighted chiefly in cardamums and pistachio nuts.^[518]

126The tradition that while some degree of civilisation already existed in the East, many tribes of Hellas still subsisted upon acorns, has given rise to much curious disquisition. It is abundantly clear, however, that the fruit of our English oak is not what is meant; for, upon this, no one who has made the experiment will for one moment imagine that man could subsist; but every kind of production comprehended by the Greeks under the term “acorn,” (βάλανος). Gerard, an old English botanist, enumerates chestnuts among acorns, and Xenophon calls dates “the acorns of the palm-tree.” The mast, however, of a tree common in Greece, would, as Mitford thinks, afford a not unwholesome nourishment, though he is quite right in supposing that it could not have been a favourite food in more civilised times.^[519] While upon the subject of acorns, this ingenious and able writer appears disposed to make somewhat merry with a certain project of Socrates. If we rightly comprehend him, which very possibly we do not, he means to accuse the philosopher of reducing the citizens of his airy republic to very short commons indeed,^[520] nothing but a little beech-mast, and a few myrtle-berries. This borders strongly on the notion of the comic writer, who describes the Athenians as living on air and hope. But though abstemious enough, Socrates was not so unreasonable as to require even his Utopians to fight and philosophise upon a diet so scanty. 127Before he comes to the mast and the myrtle-berries, we find him enumerating wheaten and barley bread, salt, olives, cheese, and truffles, together with pulse and all such herbs as the fields spontaneously produce. For a dessert he would indulge them with figs, chickpeas, and beans, myrtle-berries, and beech-mast, or chestnuts roasted in the fire. Plato was aware how the luxurious wits of his time would turn up their noses at such primitive diet, and therefore brings in Glaucon inquiring,—“If you were founding a polity of swine, what other food would you provide for them?”^[521] Pausanias remarks, however, that acorns long continued to be a common article of food in Arcadia,^[522] but only those of the fagus.^[523]

If we may credit some writers the ancient inhabitants of Hellas made use of food much more revolting than acorns, having been, in fact, cannibals who devoured each other. There, no doubt, existed among the Greeks of later times traditions of a state of society in which human flesh was eaten by certain fierce and lawless individuals, such as Polyphemos, but nothing in their literature can authorise us to infer that the practice was ever general. Superstition seems on very extraordinary occasions to have impelled them into the guilt of human sacrifice, when the officiating priests, and, perhaps, some few others, probably tasted of the entrails, and Galen had conversed with individuals 128who had been led by mere curiosity to sup on man’s flesh, and found its flavour to resemble that of tender beef.^[524] But instances of this kind prove nothing; for how often does it not happen that mariners are even now driven by distressful circumstances to slaughter and eat their companions at sea! And yet shall we on this account pass for anthropophagi with posterity?

The Greeks, however, were not content with one set of traditions, or upon the whole inclined to give currency to the most gloomy. On the contrary, their poets casting backward the light of their imagination, and kindling up the landscapes of the far past, called up the vision of the golden age, when neither the domestic hearth^[525] nor the altars of the gods were stained with blood, and the fruits of the field,—milk, honey, cheese, and butter sufficed to sustain life. But we must escape from these shadowy times, and come down to the age of beef and mutton.

Food is, with great precision, divided by Aristotle into moist and dry, that is, into meat and drink.^[526] A classification, the credit of which, as Feith contends, belongs to Homer.^[527] In this poet, bread (σίτος), the principal article of provision, is made indiscriminately both from wheat and barley, though the latter grain is thought to have been first in use.^[528] Herodotus found, in the matter of bread, a peculiar taste among the Egyptians; barley and wheat they despised, though in no country are finer produced 129than in Egypt; giving, very strangely, the preference to the olyra, by some supposed to be the spelt, but more probably Syrian dhourra, ears of which I observed sculptured on the interior of the pronaos of Leto’s temple at Esneh. Bread, in the Homeric age, was brought to table in a reed basket, the use of silver bread-baskets, or trays, not having been then, as Donatus thinks, introduced. But in this the learned commentator is mistaken; or, if they had no silver trays, at least they had them of brass and gold, to match their tables of massive silver.^[529]

Next to bread, flesh, in the heroic ages, was the greatest stay-stomach, particularly beef, kid, mutton, and pork. They had not, however, as yet discovered many ways of cooking it. Nearly all their culinary ingenuity reduced itself in fact to roasting and boiling, a circumstance which led Athenæus,^[530] and the president Goguet to look back with great pity and concern on these unhappy ages when even princes, generally gourmands, were deprived of the supreme felicity of dining on ragouts, soups, and boiled brains. Servius,^[531] too, and Varro are inclined to participate in this feeling of commiseration, and 130the latter observes, that among their own ancestors people were originally compelled to dine on roast meat, though in the course of time the arts of boiling and soup-making were introduced.^[532] With regard to Homer’s heroes, however, our sympathies are somewhat relieved by finding, that learned men have overrated the extent of their misfortunes. They were not altogether ignorant of the art of boiling, as Athenæus himself admits, where he mentions the boiled shin of beef which one of the drunken suitors flung at Odysseus’s head.

The flesh of young animals was not habitually eaten in those early ages, so that in denominating them public devourers of kids and lambs, Priam accuses his sons of scandalous luxury.^[533] In fact, with the design of preventing a scarcity of animal food, a law was enacted at Athens prohibiting the slaughter of an unshorn lamb, and from the same motive the Emperor Valens forbade the use of veal.^[534]

But there was nothing beyond the difficulty of catching it, to prevent the Homeric heroes from making free with game, such as venison, and the flesh of the wild goat;^[535] and from a passage in the Iliad, Feith infers, that even birds were not spared.^[536] We trust, however, that they feathered and cooked them, and did not devour them au naturel, as certain Hindùs do their sheep, wool and all. The Egyptians had a very peculiar taste in ornithophagy, and actually ate some kinds of birds quite raw, as they likewise did several species of fish; and this not in those early ages when Isis and Osiris had not reclaimed the bogs of the Nile, but in times quite modern, when Herodotus travelled in their country, and heard their vain priests 131lay claim to having civilised Hellas. Both birds and fish, indeed, underwent a certain sort of preparation. Of the latter some were dried in the sun, others preserved in pickle, and the same process was applied to ducks, quails, and many other species of birds, after which they were eaten raw. We recommend the practice to our gourmands, and have no doubt they would find a pickled owl or jackdaw, devoured in the Egyptian style, altogether as wholesome as diseased goose’s liver. It must not, however, be dissembled, that many critics, concerned for the gastronomic reputation of the Egyptians, contend that, by the word which we translate “to pickle,”^[537] Herodotus must have meant some kind of cookery; to which Wesseling replies, that, without designing to impugn the taste of those gentlemen, he must yet refuse to accept of their interpretation, since by observing that they roasted or boiled all other species of birds and fish, such as were sacred excepted, the historian evidently intends to say, that these were eaten raw. The learned editor might have added, that Herodotus uses the same term in treating of the process of embalming,^[538] and we nowhere learn that the mummies were cooked before they were deposited in the tombs.

But to return to the Homeric warriors; it seems extremely^[539] probable, notwithstanding the opinions of several writers of great authority, both ancient and modern, that the demi-gods, and heroes before Troy, admitted that effeminate dainty called fish to their warlike tables. At all events the common people understood the value of this kind of food,^[540] and it may safely be inferred that their betters, never slow in appropriating delicacies to their 132own use, soon perceived that fish is no bad eating. Hunger would at least reconcile them to the flavour of broiled salmon, as we find by the example of Odysseus’s companions, who devoured both fish and fowl.^[541] This is acknowledged by Athenæus;^[542] but Plutarch contends, that they could have been driven to it only by extreme necessity. At all other times he imagines they temperately abstained from food of so exciting a kind,^[543] though Homer describes the Hellespont as abounding in fish,^[544] and more than once alludes to the practice of drawing it thence with hook and line.^[545] Thus we find that angling can trace back its pedigree to the heroic ages; and the disciple of the rod as he trudges with Izaak in his pocket through bog and mire in search of a good bite, may solace his imagination with reminiscences of Troy and the Hellespont. But the good people of those days did not wholly rely for a supply of fish on this very tedious and inefficient process; they had discovered the use of nets, which Homer describes the fisherman casting on the sea shore.^[546] Though the poet, however, had omitted all allusion to this kind of food, its use might, nevertheless, have been confidently inferred, as may that of milk, common to all nations, though Homer mentions it only, I believe, in the case of the Hippomolgians,^[547] and the cannibal Polyphemus, who understood also the luxury of cheese.^[548] Circe, too, who being a goddess may be supposed to have been a connoisseur in dainties, presents her paramour Odysseus with a curious mixture, consisting of cheese, honey, flour, and wine,^[549] very savoury, no 133doubt, and by old Nestor considered of salutary nature, since Hecamedè, at his order, prepares a plentiful supply of it for the wounded Machaon. Along with this posset, garlic was eaten as a relish.^[550]

Fruits and potherbs, as may be supposed, were already in use.^[551] Garlic we have mentioned above; and Odysseus, after all his wars and wanderings, recallsrecalls to mind with a quite natural pleasure the apple and pear trees which his father, Laertes, had given him when a boy.^[552] Alcinoös possessed a fine orchard, where, though the process of grafting is supposed to have been then unknown, we find a variety of beautiful fruits, as pears, apples, pomegranates, delicious figs, olives, and grapes; and in his kitchen-garden were all kinds of vegetables.^[553] And the shadowy boughs of a similar orchard, covered with golden fruit, wave over Tantalos in Hades, but are blown back by the wind whenever the wretched old sinner stretches forth his hand towards them.^[554] From this circumstance Athenæus, with much ingenuity, infers that fruit was actually in use before the Trojan war! Apples seem then, as now, to have constituted a favourite portion of the dessert, though among the Homeric warriors they seem sometimes to have formed a principal part of the meal; for Servius^[555] describes the primitive repasts as consisting of two courses, of which the first was animal food, and apples the second.

Salt was in great use in the Homeric age, and by the poet sometimes called divine.^[556] Plato, also, in the Timæos,^[557] speaks of salt as a thing acceptable to the gods, an expression which Plutarch quotes with manifest 134approbation in a passage where he grows quite eloquent in praise of this article, which he denominates the condiment of condiments, adding, that of some it was numbered among the Graces.^[558] By the most ancient Greeks salt was, for this reason, always spoken of in conjunction with the table, as in the old proverb, where men were advised “never to pass by salt or a table,” that is, not to neglect a good dinner.^[559] Poor men, who probably had no other seasoning for their food, were contemptuously denominated “salt-lickers.”^[560] But, in Homer’s time, there existed certain Hellenic tribes who had not yet arrived at a knowledge of this luxury; among whom, accordingly, even the most aristocratic personages were compelled to go without salt to their porridge.^[561] The poet has, indeed, omitted to mention their names; but Pausanias supposes him to have alluded to the more inland clans of Epeirots, many of which had not yet, in those ages, acquired a knowledge of salt, or even of the sea.^[562]

It appears to be agreed on all hands, that the primitive races of men were mere water-drinkers. Accordingly they had neither poets nor inn-keepers, nor excisemen,—three classes of persons who never flourish but where wine, or at least beer, is found. Homer more than once alludes to this vicious habit of the old world, where, with a sly insinuation of contempt,—for he was himself partial to the blood-red wine,—he tells us that this or that nation drank, like so many oxen or crocodiles, of the waters of such or such a river. Thus, when enumerating the allies of Ilion, he describes the Zeleians as those who sipped the black waters of the Æsepos.^[563] Pindar, too, in the hope of obtaining a reputation for sobriety, says, he was accustomed to drink the waters of 135Thebes, which, in his opinion, were very delicious,^[564] though Hippocrates would unquestionably have been of a totally different way of thinking. The Persian, and afterwards the Parthian kings, appear in many cases to have entertained a temperate predilection for the water of certain streams, of which Milton has given eternal celebrity to one:—

But evidently through mistake; for though historians pretend that the Parthian monarchs would drink of no water save that of the Choaspes, to which Pliny^[566] adds the Eulæus, it is by no means said that they enjoyed a monopoly of those streams. Perhaps our great poet confounded the Choaspes with those Golden Waters which, in Athenæus, are said to have been wholly reserved for the use of the king and his eldest son.^[567]

Wine, however, was invented very early in the history of the world; and the virtue of sobriety was born along with it; for, until then, it had been no merit to be sober. With whomsoever its use began, wine was well known to Homer’s heroes, one of whom speaks of it, in conjunction with bread, as the chief root of man’s strength and vigour.^[568] Yet the warriors of those ages by no means exhibited that selfish parsimony 136which led the Romans to debar their matrons the use of wine.^[569] In Homer we find women, even while very young, permitted the enjoyment of it: for example, Nausicaa and her companions, who, in setting forth on their washing excursion, are furnished by the queen herself with a plentiful supply of provisions, and a skin of wine.^[570] Boys, likewise, in the heroic ages, met with similar indulgence; for Phœnix is represented permitting Achilles to join him in his potations before the little urchin knew how to drink without spilling it over himself.^[571] This practice, however, is very properly condemned by Plato, who considered that no person under eighteen should be allowed to taste of wine, and even then but sparingly.^[572] After thirty, more discretion might, he thought, be granted them; though he recommended sobriety at all times, save, perhaps, on the anniversary festival of Dionysos, and certain other divinities, when a merry bowl was judged in keeping with the other ceremonies of the day.^[573]

We shall now pass from the primitive aliments of the heroic times to those almost infinite varieties of good things which the ingenuity of later ages brought into use. The reader, not already familiar with the gastronomic fragments of ancient literature, will probably be surprised at the omniverous character of the Greeks, to whom nothing seems to have come amiss, from the nettle-top to the peach, from the sow’s metra to the most delicate bird, from the shark to the small semi-transparent aphyæ, caught along the shores of Attica.^[574] Through this ocean of dainties 137we shall endeavour to make our way on the following plan:—first, it will be our “hint to speak” of the more solid kinds of food, as beef, mutton, pork, veal; we shall then make a transition to the soups, fowls, and fish; next the fruit will claim our attention; and, lastly, the several varieties of wines.

It has already been observed, that in the earliest ages men wholly abstained from animal food.^[575] Afterwards when they began to cast “wolfish eyes” upon their mute companions on the globe, the hog is said to have been the first creature whose character emboldened them to make free with him. They saw it endued with less intelligence than other animals; and, from its stupidity, inferred that it ought to be eaten, its soul merely serving during life, as salt, to keep the flesh from putrefying.^[576] The determining reason, however, appears to have been, that they could make no other use of him, since he would neither plough like the ox, nor be saddled and mounted like the horse or ass, nor become a pleasant companion, or guard the house, like the dog.

It was long before men in any country slew the ox for food; his great utility was his protection, and in some parts of the East the well-meaning priesthood at length compassed him round with the armour of superstition, which outlasted the occasion, and in India has come down in nearly all its strength to our own day. It was otherwise in Greece. There common sense quickly dissipated the illusion, which, while it was necessary, had guarded the ox, and beef became the favourite food 138of its hardy and active inhabitants, who likewise fed indiscriminately on sheep, goats, deer, hares, and almost every other animal, wild or tame.

It has been seen that in remote ages fish did not constitute any great part of the sustenance of the Greeks. But public opinion afterwards underwent a very considerable change. From having been held in so little estimation as to be left chiefly to the use of the poor, in the historical ages it became their greatest luxury.^[577] And there arose among gourmands, those ancient St. Simonians, whose god was their belly, a kind of enthusiastic rivalry as to who should be first in the morning at the fish-market, and bear away, as in triumph, the largest Copaic eels, the finest pair of soles, or the freshest anthias.^[578] On this subject, therefore, our details must be somewhat more elaborate than on beef and mutton. And first, we shall take the reader along with us to the market, whither it will be advisable that he carry as little money as possible, since, according to the comic poets, your Athenian fishmonger, not content with being a mere rogue, dealt a little also in the assassin’s trade.^[579]

The first thing which a rich gourmand inquired in the morning was, which way the wind blew. If from the north, and there was anything like a sea, he remained sullenly at home, for no fishing smacks could in that case make the Peiræeus;^[580] but if the wind sat in any other quarter, out he 139went eagerly and stealthily with a slave and basket^[581] at his heels, casting about anxious looks to discover whether any other impassioned fish-eater had got the start of him on his way to the Agora, who might clear the stalls of the best anthias or thunny before he could reach the spot.

The unmoneyed rogue, however, whose ambitious taste soared to these expensive dainties, approached the market with a rueful countenance. Thus we find a poor fellow describing, in Antiphanes, his morning’s pilgrimage in search of a pair of soles:

Amphis, another comic poet, supplies us with further details respecting the hardships encountered by those who had to deal with fishmongers at Athens. Much of his wit is, I fear, intransferable, depending in a great measure on the vernacular clipping of Greek common in the market-place. But the sense, at least, may perhaps be given:

Alexis, too, that most comic of comic writers, seems to have imagined, that the humour of his pieces would be incomplete without a spice of the fishmonger. Commencing, like Amphis, with an allusion to the haughty airs of military men, he glides into his subject as follows:—

But if the reader should be disposed to infer from these testimonies that the fishmongering race were saucy only at Athens, he will be in danger of falling into error. Throughout the ancient world they were the same, and we fear that should any poor devil from Grub-street, or the Quartier Latin, presume to dispute respecting the price of salmon with one of their cockney or Parisian descendants, he would meet with little more politeness. At all events their manners had not improved in the Eternal city,^[586] for it is a propos of the Roman fishfags that Athenæus brings forward his examples of like insolence elsewhere. The poet Diphilos would appear, like Archestratos, to have travelled in search of good fish and civil fishmongers, but his labours 141were fruitless; he might as well have peregrinated the world in the hope of finding that island where soles are caught ready-fried in the sea. Such at least is the tenour of his own complaint:

Xenarchos paints a little scene of ingenious roguery with a comic extravagance altogether Shakespearian, and incidentally throws light on a curious law of Athens, enacted to protect the citizens against stinking fish.^[588] The power of invention, he observes—willing to kill two birds with one stone—had totally deserted the poets in order to take up with the fishmongers; for while the former merely hashed up old ideas, the latter were always hitting upon new contrivances to poison the Demos:

By a law passed at the instance of the wealthy Aristonicos, himself no doubt an ichthyophagos, the penalty of imprisonment was decreed against all those who, having named a price for their fish, should take less, in order that they might at once demand what was just and no more. In consequence of this enactment, an old woman or a child might be sent to the fish-market, without danger of being cheated. According to another provision of this Golden Law, as it is termed by Alexis, fishmongers were compelled to stand at their stalls and not to sit as had previously been the custom. The comic poet, in the fulness of his charity, expresses a hope that they might be all suspended aloft on the following year, by which means, he says, they would get a quicker sight of their customers, and 143carry on their dealings with mankind from a machine like the gods of tragedy.^[590]

In consequence no doubt of the perpetually increasing demand, fish was extremely dear at Athens. Accordingly Diphilos, addressing himself to Poseidon, who, as god of the sea, was god also of its inhabitants, informs him that, could he but secure the tithe of fish, he would soon become the wealthiest divinity in Olympos. Among those who distinguished themselves in this business in the agora, and apparently became rich, it is probable that many were metoiki, such as Hermæos, the Egyptian, and Mikion, who, though his country is not mentioned, was probably not an Athenian. In proportion as they grew opulent, the gourmands on whom they preyed became poor, and doubtless there was too much truth in the satire which represented men dissipating their whole fortunes in the frying-pan. There were those also it seems who spent their evenings on the highway, in order to furnish their daily table with such dainties. For this fact we have the satisfactory testimony of Alexis in his Heiress:

They had at Corinth a pretty strict police regulation on this subject. When any person was observed habitually to purchase fish, he was interrogated by the authorities respecting his means. If found to be a man of property they suffered him to do what he pleased with his own; but, in the contrary event, he received a gentle hint that the 144state had its eye upon him. The neglect of this admonition was followed, in the first place, by a fine, and ultimately, if persevered in, by a punishment equivalent to the treadmill.^[592] These matters were in Athens submitted to the cognizance of two or three magistrates, called Opsonomoi, nominated by the Senate.^[593] With respect to the purchase of this class of viands, everywhere attended with peculiar difficulties, it may be said, that the ancients had considerably the advantage of us; since in Lynceus of Samos’s “Fish-buyer’s Manual,” they possessed a sure guide through all the intricacies of bargaining in the agora.

But before we proceed further with this part of our subject, we will demand permission of Lynceus to hear what Hesiod has to say of saltfish, on which Euthydemos, the Athenian, composed a separate treatise. According to this poet, who boldly speaks of cities erected long after his death, immense quantities of fish were salted on the Bosporos, sometimes entire, as in modern times,^[594] sometimes cut into gobbets of a moderate size. Among these were the oxyrinchos whose taste proved often fatal, the thunny, and the mackerel. The little city of Parion furnished the best kolias (a kind of mackerel), and the Tarentine merchants brought to Athens pickled orcynos from Cadiz, cut into small triangular pieces, in jars.^[595] Physicians, indeed, inveighed against these relishes; but the gourmands would consult only their palates and preferred a short life with pickled thunny to that of Saturn himself on beef and mutton.

But the Hesiod of Euthydemos (a creation probably of his own) is but very poor authority compared with Archestratos, who made the pilgrimage of the world in search of good cheer, and afterwards, for the benefit of posterity, treasured up his experience in a grand culinary epic. In his opinion a 145slice of Sicilian thunny was a rare delicacy, while the saperda, though brought from the Pontos Euxinos, he held as cheap as those who boasted of it.^[596] The scombros, by some supposed to be a species of thunny, though others understand by it the common mackerel, stood high in the estimation of this connoisseur. He directs that it be left in salt three days, and eaten before it begins to melt into brine.^[597] In his estimation the horaion^[598] of Byzantium was likewise a great delicacy, which he advises the traveller, who might pass through that city, to taste by all means. It seems to have been there what macaroni is at Naples.

Alexis, in one of his comedies, introduces the Symposiarch of an Eranos (president of a picnic) accounting with one of the subscribers who comes to demand back his ring, and in the course of the dialogue, where something like Falstaff’s tavern-bill is discussed, we find the prices of several kinds of salt-fish. An omotarichos (shoulder piece of thunny) is charged at five chalci; a dish of sea-mussels, seven chalci, of sea-urchins, an obol, a slice of kybion, three obols, a conger eel, ten, and another plate of broiled fish, a drachma. This comic writer^[599] rates the fish of the Nile very low, and he is quite right, for they are generally muddy and ill-tasted, though the Copts, who have considerable experience during Lent, contrive, by the application of much Archestratic skill, to render some kinds of them palatable. Sophocles, in a fragment of his lost drama of Phineus, speaks of salt-fish embalmed like an Egyptian mummy.^[600] Stock-fish, as I know to my cost, 146is still a fashionable dish in the Mediterranean, especially on board ship, and from a proverb preserved by Athenæus we find it was likewise in use among the Athenians.^[601]

The passion of this refined people for salt-fish furnished them with an occasion of showing their gratitude publicly. They bestowed the rights of citizenship on the sons of Chæriphilos, a metoikos who first introduced among them a knowledge of this sort of food.^[602] A similar feeling prompted the Dutch to erect a statue to G. Bukel, the man who taught them to salt herrings.^[603]

Without enumerating a tenth part of the other species eaten among the Greeks, we pass to the shell-fish, of which they were likewise great amateurs. Epicharmos, in his marriage of Hebe, supplies a curious list, which, however, might be extended almost ad infinitum. Among these were immense limpets, the buccinum, the cecibalos, the tethynakion, the sea-acorn, the purple fish, oysters hard to open but easy to swallow, mussels, sea-snails or periwinkles, skiphydria sweet to taste but prickly to touch, large shelled razor-fish, the black conch, and the amathitis. The conch was also called tellinè as the same poet in his Muses observes. Alcæos wrote a song to the limpet beginning with

Boys used to make a sort of whistle of tortoise and mussel shells. These mussels were usually broiled on the coals, and Aristophanes, very ingenious in his similes, compares a gaping silly fellow to a mussel in the act of being cooked.^[605]

Like the sepia, of which excellent pilaus are made at Alexandria, the porphyra or purple fish was very good eating, and thickened the liquor in which it 147was boiled.^[606] There was a small delicate shell-fish caught on the island of Pharos and adjacent coasts of Egypt, which they called Aphrodite’s ear,^[607] and there is still found on the same coast near Canopos a diminutive and beautiful rose-coloured conch called Venus’s nipple. On the same shore, about the rise of the Nile, that species of mussel called tellinè was caught in great abundance, but the best-tasted were said to be found in the river itself. A still finer kind were in season about autumn in the vicinity of Ephesos. The echinos, or sea-chestnut,^[608] cooked with oxymel, parsley, and mint, was esteemed good and wholesome eating. Those caught about Cephalonia, Icaria, and Achaia were bitterish, those of Sicily laxative; the best were the red and the quince coloured. A laughable anecdote is told of a Spartan, who being invited to dine where sea-chestnuts were brought to table, took one upon his plate, and not knowing how they were eaten put it into his mouth, shell and all. Finding it exceedingly unmanageable, he turned it about for some time, seeking slowly and cautiously to discover the knack of eating it. But the rough and prickly shell still resisting his efforts, his temper grew ruffled: crunching it fiercely he exclaimed, “Detestable beast! Well! I will not let thee go now, after having thus ground thee to pieces; but assuredly I will never touch thee again.”

Oysters were esteemed good when boiled with mallows, or monks’ rhubarb.^[609] In general, however, 148the physicians of antiquity considered them hard of digestion. But lest the shelled-fish should usurp more space than is their due, we shall conclude with Archestratos’ list, in which he couples with each the name of the place where the best were caught:

We have already mentioned the magnificent eels of Lake Copais,^[612] in Bœotia, a longing for which appears to have been Aristophanes’s chief motive for desiring an end to the Peloponnesian war. Next in excellence were those caught in the river Strymon, and the Faro of Messina.^[613] The ellops, by some supposed to be the sword-fish,^[614] was found in greatest perfection near Syracuse; at least, in 149the opinion of Archestratos; but Varro and Pliny give the preference to that of Rhodes, and others to that of the Pamphylian sea.^[615] The red mullet, the hepsetos, the hepatos, the elacaten, the thunny, the hippouros, the hippos, or sea-horse, found in perfection on the shores^[616] of Phœnicia, the ioulis, the kichlè, or sea-thrush, the sea-boar, the citharos, the kordylos, the river cray-fish, the shark, which was eaten when young, the mullet, the coracinos, the carp, the gudgeon, the sea-cuckoo, the sea-wolf, the latos, the leobatos, or smooth ray, the lamprey,^[617] the myræna, the anchovy,^[618] the black tail, the torpedo, the mormyros, the orphos, the onos, the polypus, the crab, the sea-perch, the physa, or sea-tench, the raphis, the sea-dog,^[619] the scaros, the sparos, the scorpios, the salpe, or stock-fish, the synodon, the sauros, the scepinos, or halibut, the sciaina, the syagris, the sphyræna, the sepia, the tœnia, the skate, the cuttle-fish, the hyca, the phagros, the perca cabrilla, the chromis, the gilthead, the trichidon, the thratta, and the turbot;^[620] such is a list of the fish in common use among the Greeks. The species it will be seen has not in many cases been ascertained.

The reader by this time will, probably, be willing to escape from fish, though it would be easy to treat him to many new kinds, and along with us take a slice of Greek pheasant, or the breast of an Egyptian quail. In other words, he will hear what we have to say on Hellenic poultry. Chrysippos, in his treatise on things desirable in themselves, appears to have reckoned Athenian cocks and hens among the number, and reprehends the people of Attica for importing, at great expense, barn-door fowls from the shores of the Adriatic, though of smaller size, and much inferior to their own; while the inhabitants of those countries, on the other hand, were anxious to possess Attic poultry.^[621] Matron, the parodist, who furnishes an amusing description of an Athenian repast, observes, that excellent wild ducks were brought to town from Salamis, where they grew fat in great numbers on the borders of the sacred Lake.^[622]

The thrush,^[623] reckoned among the greatest delicacies 151of the ancients, generally at grand entertainments formed part of the propoma, or first course, and was eaten with little cakes, called ametiskoi. If we may credit Epicharmos, a decided preference was given to such as fed on the olive. Aristotle divides the thrush into three species, the first and largest of which he denominates Ixophagos, or the “mistletoe-eater;” it was of the size of a magpie. The second, equal in bigness to the black bird, he calls Trichas,^[624] and the third, and smallest kind, which was named Ilas or Tulas, according to Alexander, the Myndian, went in flocks, and built its nest like the swallow.^[625] Next in excellence to the thrush was a bird known by a variety of names, elaios, pirias, sycalis,^[626] the beccafico of the moderns, which was thought to be in season when the figs were ripe. They likewise ate the turtle and the ringdove,^[627] which are excellent in Egypt; the chaffinch, to whose qualities I cannot bear testimony; and the blackbird. Nor did they spare the starling, the jackdaw, or the strouthanion, a small bird for which modern languages cannot afford a name. Brains were thought by the ancient philosophers an odious and cannibal-like food, because they are the fountain of all sensation; but this did not prevent the gourmands from converting pigs’ brains into a dainty dish,^[628] and their taste has maintained its ground in Italy. Partridges, wood-pigeons, geese, quails, jays, are also enumerated among the materials of an Hellenic banquet.

152Goose’s liver was in extreme request both at Rome and Athens.^[629] Another dainty was a cock served up with a rich sauce, containing much vinegar. Aristophanes speaks of the pheasant in his comedy of the Birds; and, again, in the Clouds, Athenæus rightly supposes him to mean this bird, where others imagine he alludes to the horses of the Phasis. Mnesilochos, a writer of the middle comedy, classes a plucked pheasant with hen’s milk, among things equally difficult to be met with, which shows that the bird had not then become common. It obtained its name from being found in immense numbers about the embouchure of the Phasis, and the bird was evidently propagated very slowly in Greece and Egypt, since we find Ptolemy Philadelphos, in a grand public festival at Alexandria, exhibiting it, among other rarities, such as parroquets, peacocks, guinea-fowl, and Ethiopian birds in cages.^[630]

Among the favourite game of the Athenian gourmands was the Attagas,^[631] or francolin, a little larger than the partridge, variegated with numerous spots, and of common tile colour, somewhat inclining to red. It is said to have been introduced from Lydia into Greece, and was found in extraordinary abundance 153in the Megaris. Another of their favourites was the porphyrion, a bird which might with great advantage be introduced into many countries of modern Europe, since it was exceedingly domestic, and kept strict watch over the married women, whose faux pas it immediately detected and revealed to their husbands, after which, knowing the revengeful spirit of ladies so situated, it very prudently hung itself. It is no wonder, therefore, that the breed has long been extinct, or that the remnant surviving has taken refuge in some remote region, where wives require no such vigilant guardians. In the matter of eating it agreed exactly with Lord Byron, loving to feast alone, and in retired nooks, where none could observe. Aristotle describes this half fabulous bird as unwebfooted, of blue colour, with long legs, and red beak. The porphyrion was about the size of a cock, and originally a native of Libya, where it was esteemed sacred.^[632]

Another bird common in Greece, but now no longer known, was the porphyris, by some confounded with the foregoing. Of the partridge, common throughout Europe, we need merely remark, that both the gray and the red (the bartavelle of the French) were common in Greece.

If we pass from the poultry to puddings and soups,^[633] we shall find that the Athenians were not ill-provided with these dainties. They even converted gruel into a delicacy,^[634] and it is said, that the best was made at Megara. They had bean soup, flour soup, ptisans made with pearl-barley or groats.^[635] We hear, also, of a delicately-powdered dish or soup 154which was sprinkled over with fine flour and olives. The polphos, evidently soupe à la julienne, is said, by some, to have been composed of scraped roots, vegetables, and flour. Others take it to mean a sort of made-dish, resembling macaroni or vermicelli. Another kind of soup was the kidron, which, according to Pollux,^[636] they made of green wheat, roasted and reduced to powder.

There was one dish fashionable among the ancient Greeks mistaken by our neighbours, the French, for plum-pudding, which is still found in perfection in the Levant, where I have many times eaten of it. Julius Pollux^[637] has preserved the recipe for making it, and we can assure our gourmands, that nothing more exquisite was ever tasted, even in the best café of the Palais Royal. They took a certain quantity of the finest clarified lard, and, mixing it up with milk until it was quite thick, added an equal portion of new cheese, yolks of eggs, and the finest flour. The whole rolled up tight in a fragrant fig-leaf, was then cooked in chicken-broth, or soup made with kid’s flesh. When they considered it well done, the leaf was removed and the pudding soused in boiling honey. It was then served up hissing-hot. All the ingredients were used in equal proportions, excepting the yolks of eggs, of which there was somewhat more than of anything else, in order to give firmness and consistency to the whole.^[638]

Black puddings, made with blood, suet, and the other materials now used were also common at Athens.^[639] Mushrooms and snails were great favourites; and Poliochos speaks of going out in the dewy mornings in search of these luxuries.^[640] In spring, before the arrival of the swallow, the nettle 155was collected and eaten, it being then young and tender.^[641] Leeks, onions, garlic, were in much request, the last particularly, which grew in great plenty in the Megarean territory, and hence, perhaps, the inhabitants were accounted hot and quarrelsome, garlic being supposed to inspire game, even in fighting cocks, to which it was accordingly given in great quantities.^[642]

Among the herbs eaten by his countrymen, Hesiod enumerates the mallow,^[643] and the asphodel, which are likewise said by Aristophanes to have constituted a great part of the food of the early Greeks. Gœttling, therefore, not without reason, wonders that Pythagoras should have prohibited the use of the mallow. Lupines, pomegranates, horse-radish, the dregs of grapes and olives, all of which entered into the material of an Attic entertainment, were commonly cried about the streets of Athens.^[644] But these edible lupines, (θέρμοι) still eaten by the Egyptian peasantry and the poor generally throughout the Levant, must be distinguished from the common species. An anecdote of Zeno, of Cittion, will illustrate the character of this kind of pulse, with which the philosopher was evidently familiar. Being one day asked why, though naturally morose, he became quite affable when half-seas-over: “I am like the lupine,” he replied, “which, when dry, is very bitter, but perfectly sweet and agreeable after it has been well soaked.”^[645] Kidney-beans, too, were in much request, and pickled olives, slightly flavoured with fennel.

The radish^[646] was esteemed a great delicacy, particularly 156that of Thasos and Bœotia. And the seeds of the ground-pine,^[647] still eaten as a dessert in Italy, entered, in Greece, also into the list of edible fruits.^[648] The tree, I am informed, has been introduced into England, but I have nowhere seen its fruit brought among pears, walnuts, and apples, to table. Hen’s milk has already been spoken of among the good things of Hellas;^[649] but lest the reader should suspect us of amusing him with fables, it should be explained, that the white of an egg was so called by Anaxagoras.^[650] Eggs of all kinds were much esteemed. Sometimes they were boiled hard, and cut in two with a hair; but, many writers, confounding ὄα, the berries of the service-tree, with ὠὰ, eggs, have imagined that the Athenians, in the capriciousness of their culinary taste, actually ate pickled eggs, an idea which stirs to the bottom the erudite bile of David Ruhnken.^[651] Generally, eggs were eaten soft, as with us, or swallowed quite raw. Those of the pea-hen were considered the most delicate; next to these, the eggs of the chenalopex bergander, or Egyptian goose, and, lastly, those of the hen. This, at least, is the opinion of Epicrates and Heracleides, of Syracuse, in their treatises on cookery.^[652]

As when an entertainment was given the host necessarily expected his guests to make a good dinner, they usually commenced the business of the day with an antecœnium or whet, consisting of herbs of the sharpest taste. At Athens, the articles which generally composed this course were colewort, eggs, oysters, œnomel—a mixture of honey and wine—all supposed to create appetite.^[653] To these even in later 157times were added the mallow and the asphodel, king’s-spear or day-lily, gourds,^[654] melons, cucumbers. The melons of Greece are still delicious, and famous as ever in the Levant. Antioch was celebrated for its cucumbers, Smyrna for its lettuces. Mushrooms were always a favourite dish;^[655] and they had receipts for producing them, which even now, perhaps, may not be wholly unworthy of attention.

The use, however, of this kind of food was always attended with great danger, there being comparatively few species that could be safely eaten. Persons were frequently poisoned by them, and a pretty epigram of Euripides has been preserved, commemorating a mother and three children who had been thus cut off, in the island of Icaros:

Diodes, of Carystos, enumerates among wholesome vegetables the red beet, the mallow, the dock, the nettle, orach, the bolbos, or truffle, and the mushroom, of which the best kinds were supposed to grow at the foot of elm and pine trees.^[657]

The sion^[658] (sium latifolium), another of their vegetables, is a plant found in marshes and meadows, with the smallage.^[659]

Another plant, of far greater celebrity, was the Silphion,^[660] once extremely plentiful in Cyrenaica, as 158also, though of an inferior quality, in Syria, Armenia, and Media, but afterwards so rare as to be thought extinct. Besides being used in seasoning soups and sauces, and mixed with salt for giving a superior flavour to meat, its juice occupied a high place among the materia medica.^[661] A single plant was discovered in the reign of Nero, and sent to Rome as a present to the Emperor. Its seed, according to Pollux,^[662] was called magudaris, its root silphion, the stem caulos, and the leaf maspeton. Be this as it may, it communicated to the sauces in which it was infused a pungent and somewhat bitter taste, and was in no favour with Archestratos.^[663]

We come now to the fruit,^[664] and shall begin with that which was the pride of Attica, the fig.^[665] According to traditions fully credited in Athens, figs were first produced on a spot near the city, on the road to Eleusis, thence called Hiera Sukè, “the sacred fig-tree.”^[666] Like its men, the figs of Attica were esteemed the best in the world, and to secure an abundant supply for the use of the inhabitants it was forbidden to export them. As might have been expected, however, this decree was habitually contravened, and the informers against the delinquents were called sycophants, that is, “revealers of figs,”^[667] a word which has been adopted by most modern languages to signify mean-souled, dastardly persons, such as informers always are. The fig-tree of Laconia was a dwarfed species, and its fruit, according to Aristophanes,^[668] savoured 159of hatred and tyranny, like the people themselves.

Aristophanes, in Athenæus, speaking of fruit, couples myrtle-berries with Phibaleian figs.^[670]

According to the ancients, there were certain sorts of fig-trees that bore twice, thrice, and even four times, in the year. Sosibios, the Laconian, attributing the discovery of the fig to Bacchos, observes, that for this reason the god was, at Sparta, worshiped under the name of Sukites. Andriscos, however, and Agasthenes, relate that this divinity obtained the name of Meilichios, “the gracious,” among the Naxians because he taught them the use of figs. To eat figs at noon was regarded as unwholesome; and they were at all times supposed to be highly prejudicial to the voice, for which reason singers should carefully eschew them.^[671]

The apples of Delphi enjoyed great celebrity, and probably, therefore, were mild, since these were thought superior, or at least more wholesome, than sharp ones. Quinces they esteemed still more salubrious than apples, and, during certain public rejoicings, this fruit, handfuls of myrtle-leaves, crowns of roses and violets, were cast before the cars of their princes and other great men.^[672] The Greeks loved to connect something of the marvellous with whatever they admired. To the quince they attributed the honour of being a powerful antidote, observing that even the Phariac poison, though of extremely rapid operation, lost its virulence if poured into any vessel which had held quinces and retained their odour.^[673] According to 160Hermon, in his Cretic Glossaries, the quince was called Kodumala, in Crete. Sidoüs, a village of Corinthia, was famous for its fine apples; and even Corinth itself, the “windy Ephyrè” of Homer, produced them in great perfection.

Another favourite fruit was the peach, introduced from Persia into Greece.^[675] The citron, too, though supposed by some not to have been known to the ancient inhabitants of Hellas, perfumed in later ages the tables of the Greeks with its delicious fragrance. This is the fruit which, according to King Juba, was called in Africa “the apple of the Hesperides,” a name bestowed by Timachidas on a rich and fragrant kind of pear called epimelis. The oldest Greek writer who has described the citron tree is Theophrastus,^[676] who says it was found in Persia and Media. Its leaf, he observes, resembled that of the laurel, the strawberry tree, or the walnut. Like the wild pear tree, and the oxyacanthos, it has sharp, smooth, and very strong prickles. The fruit is not eaten, but together with the leaves exhales a sweet odour, and laid with cloths in coffers protects them from the moth. The citron tree, is always covered with fruit, some ripe and fit to be gathered, others green, with patches of gold; and, in the midst of these, are other branches covered thick with blossoms. It now forms the fairest ornaments of the gardens of Heliopolis, where it shades the Fountain of the Sun.

161Antiphanes observes, in his Bœotian, that it had only recently been introduced into Attica:

Athenæus, after quoting the testimony of poets, relates a curious anecdote à propos of citrons, which I shall here repeat: it has, probably, some reference to the secret of the Psylli. An opinion, it seems, prevailed in Egypt, that a citron eaten the first thing in the morning was an antidote against all kinds of poison, whether taken into the stomach, or introduced by puncture into the blood, and the notion arose out of the following circumstance. A governor of Egypt, in the time of the Emperors, had condemned two criminals to be executed, in obedience to custom, by the bite of an asp. They were, accordingly, led in the morning towards the place of execution, and on the way the landlady of an inn, who happened to be eating citrons, compassionating their condition, gave them some which they ate. Shortly afterwards they were exposed to the hungry serpents, which immediately bit them, but instead of exhibiting the usual symptoms followed by death, they remained uninjured. At this the governor marvelled much, 162and at length demanded of the soldier who guarded them, whether they had taken anything previously to their arrival. Learning what had happened he put off the execution to the following day, and ordering a citron to be given to one and not to the other, they were once more exposed to the bite of the asp. The wretch who had eaten nothing died soon after he was bitten, but the other experienced no inconvenience. Similar experiments were several times afterwards made by others, until it was at length ascertained that this exquisite fruit is really an antidote against poisons.^[678]

Another fruit of which great use was made, was the damascene plum, sometimes confounded with the brabylon. The cherry,^[679] introduced into Italy by Lucullus, was known to the Greeks^[680] at a much earlier period, and is described by Theophrastus. The wild service berry,^[681] the dwarf cherry, the arbutus fruit, and the mulberry, formed part of their dessert. Even the blackberry, when perfectly ripe, was not disdained.^[682] In fact, both the mulberry and blackberry were esteemed a preventive of gout, and an ancient writer relates, that this kind of fruit having failed during a period of twenty years, that disease prevailed like an epidemic, attacking persons of both sexes and all ages, and extending its ravages even to the sheep and cattle.

Filberts, walnuts, and almonds,^[683] deservedly held 163a high place in the estimation of the ancients. Of almonds, the island of Naxos had the reputation of producing very excellent ones, and those of Cypros also enjoyed considerable reputation. These latter were longer in form than the former; like pickled olives they were eaten at the commencement of a repast, for the purpose of producing thirst; and bitter almonds were considered a preservative against intoxication, as we learn from an anecdote of Tiberius’s physician, who could encounter three bottles when thus fortified, but easily succumbed if deprived of his almonds. This fruit being extremely common in Greece, they had their almond-crackers, as we have our nut-crackers, which at Sparta were called moucerobatos but amygdalocatactes in the rest of Greece.^[684]

The larger kind of chestnut, sometimes denominated the “acorns of Zeus,” appears to have been introduced into Greece from the countries round the Pontos Euxinos, where they were produced in great abundance, particularly in the environs of Heraclea. There was, likewise, a sort of chestnut imported from Persia, and another from the neighbourhood of Sardes, in Lydia. Both these and the walnut were considered indigestible; but not so the almond, of which it was thought great quantities might be eaten with impunity.^[685] The best kinds were produced in Thasos and Cypros, and, when freshly gathered, the almonds of the south are, undoubtedly, of all fruit, the most delicate. The walnuts andand chestnuts of Eubœa, in the opinion of Mnestheos, were difficult of digestion, but fattening; and no one can have frequented the eastern shores of the Mediterranean without observing what an important article of food, and how nourishing, they are.^[686] The pistachio nut, produced from a tree 164resembling the almond-tree, was imported from Syria and Arabia.^[687] The persea, now no longer known, but supposed to be represented on the walls of the Memnonium,^[688] at Thebes, is, also, said, by Poseidonios, the stoic, to have grown in Arabia and Syria, and I brought home a quantity of leaves, preserved in an Egyptian coffin, which are, probably, those of this tree. Pears, which were brought to table floating in water,^[689] and service-berries, were grown in great perfection in the island of Ceos, and Bœotia was famous for its pomegranates.^[690]

Speaking of this fruit, which the Bœotians call sidè, Agatharchides relates the following anecdote: A dispute arising between the Athenians and Bœotians, respecting a spot called Sidè, situated on the borders, Epaminondas, in order to decide the question, took out a pomegranate from under his robe, and demanded of the Athenians, what they called it. “Rhoa” they replied. “Very good,” said Epaminondas; “but“but we call it Sidè, and, as the place derives its name from the fruit which grows there in abundance, it is clear the land must belong to us.” And it was decided in favour of the Bœotians.^[691]

165We have already observed, that the palm-tree flourished and produced dates in Greece, particularly in Attica and Delos;^[692] but it is clear, from a remark of Xenophon, that these dates were small and of an inferior quality; for, speaking of the productions of Mesopotamia, he says, that they set aside for the slaves such dates as resembled those produced in Greece, while the larger and finer kinds,^[693] which were like amber in colour, they selected for their own use. They were also dried, as they still are in the East, to be eaten as a dessert, at other seasons of the year. From which we learn, that the black date, which is larger and finer than the yellow, was not then cultivated in Persia. But neither dates, nor any other fruit, could compare with the grape, which is found in perfection in almost every part of Greece, where, as in Burgundy and, I presume, in the rest of France, the law regulated the period of the vintage, prohibiting individuals from gathering their grapes earlier under a heavy penalty.^[694] The best kind of grape in Attica, like that of the Clos Vougeot in Burgundy, was the Nikostrateios, supposed to be unrivalled for excellence, though the Rhodians pretended, in their Hipponion, to possess its equal.^[695]

From the grape we pass naturally to wine, which has of itself formed the subject of many treatises. It will not, therefore, be expected that we should enter into very minute details; though, if we are sparing, it will certainly not be for want of materials. D’Herbelot^[696] relates an oriental tradition which attributes 166the invention of wine to the ancient Persian monarch Giamshid; and Bochart, with some show of ingenuity, attributes to Bacchos, the Grecian inventor and god of wine, an origin which would confound him with the founder of Babylon.^[697] A very celebrated wine, called nectar, is said to have been produced in the neighbourhood of that city.^[698] But, according to Theopompos, it was the inhabitants of Chios who first planted and cultivated the vine, and from them the knowledge was transmitted to the other Greeks.^[699]

Theophrastus^[700] relates that, in the territory of Heraclea, in Arcadia, there was a wine which rendered men insane and women prolific.^[701] In the environs of Cerynia, in Achaia, grew a vine, the wine of which blasted the fruit of the womb, nay, the very grapes were said to possess a similar quality.^[702] At Thasos were two kinds of wine, of which the one caused stupefaction, while the other was in the highest degree exhilarating.^[703] The wine called anthosmias,^[704] according to Phanias of Eresos, was produced by mixing one part of salt-water with fifty parts of wine, and it was considered best when made with the grapes of young vines. The comic poets are eloquent in praise of the wines of Thasos, particularly of that mixed sort, of most agreeable flavour, which was drunk in their Prytaneion. Theophrastus^[705] gives the recipe for making it. They threw, he says, into the jars, a small quantity of flour kneaded with honey, the latter to impart a sweet odour to the wine, the former mildness. A similar 167effect was produced by mixing up hard inodorous wine with one which was oily and fragrant.^[706]

The wines of Cos, Myndos, and Halicarnassos, being thought to temper the crudity of rain and well-water, were, therefore, like all others containing a quantity of salt-water, in great request at Athens and Sicyon, where the springs were harsh. The Mareotic wine^[707] was made from vineyards on the banks of the lake Mareotis, where the present Pasha has his gardens, in the vicinity of Marea, once a place of considerable importance, but now a small village. Attempts, however, have been made by M. Abro, an Armenian, once more to cover the ancient sites with vineyards, several acres of ground being planted with cuttings imported from the great nursery grounds at Chambéry, in Savoy.

The town of Marea derived its name, according to tradition, from Maron,^[708] a person who accompanied Bacchos in his military expedition, and, in honour of its founder, surrounded itself with the fruit-tree most agreeable to that god. The grapes here produced were delicious, and the wine, slightly astringent and aromatic, had an exquisite flavour. The Mareotic was white, of delicate taste, light, sparkling, and by no means heady. The best sort was the Tæniotic, so called from the tænia, “sandy eminences,” on which the vineyards were situated. This wine, in its pure state, had a greenish tinge, like the Johanisberg, and was rich and unctuous; but, mingled with water, it assumed the colour of Attic honey. By degrees the vine grew to be cultivated along the whole course of the Nile,^[709] but its produce differed greatly in different places, both in colour and quality. Among the best was that of Antylla, a city near Alexandria, 168the revenues arising from which the ancient kings of Egypt, and afterwards those of Persia, settled on their queens for their girdle. The wines of the Thebaid, particularly those made about Koptos, were so extremely light as to be given even in fevers, as, moreover, they passed quickly, and greatly promoted digestion.^[710]

According to Nicander of Colophon, the word οἶνος, “wine,” was derived from the name of Oineus, who having squeezed out the juice of the grape into vases, called it, after his own name, wine. Diphilos,^[711] the comic poet, gives us, however, something better than etymologies in that burst of Bacchic enthusiasm in which, in verses fragrant as Burgundy, he celebrates the praises of the gift of Dionysos:

Nectar, the poetical drink of the gods, was a sort of wine made near Olympos in Lydia, by mingling with the juice of the grape a little pure honey and flowers of delicate fragrance. Anaxandrides, indeed, regards the nectar as the food of the immortals, and ambrosia as their wine; in which opinion he is upheld by Alcman and Sappho. But Homer and Ibycos take an opposite view of the matter.^[712]

Alexis speaks of those who are half-seas-over as much addicted to reasoning. Nicænetus^[713] considers wine as the Pegasus of a poet, mounted on the wings of which like Trygæos on his beetle he soars “to the bright heaven of invention.” At the 169port of Munychia, too, good wine was held in high estimation; indeed, the honest folks of this borough, with small respect for the water nymphs, paid particular honour to the hero Acratopotes, that is, in plain English, “one who drinks unmixed wine.” Even among the Spartans,^[714] in spite of their cothons, and black broth, certain culinary artistes set up in the Phydition, or common dining-hall, statues in honour of the heroes Matton and Keraon, that is, the genii of eating and drinking. In Achaia, too, much reverence was paid to Deipneus, or the god who presides over good suppers.^[715]

As the Greeks had a marvellous respect for wine they, like the German paper enthusiast, almost appeared to imagine it could be made out of a stone. They had, accordingly, fig wine,^[716] root wine, palm wine, and so on; and their made or mixed wines were without number. There was scarcely an island or city in the Mediterranean that did not export its wines to Athens: they had the Lesbian, the Eubœan, the Peparethian, the Chalybonian, the Thasian, the Pramnian, and the Port wine. We have already observed, that wine was drunk mixed with flour,^[717] and in the island of Theræ it was thickened with the yolk of an egg. In the Megaris they prepared with raisins or dried grapes^[718] a wine called passon, in taste resembling the Ægosthenic sweet wine, or the Cretan malmsey. But, however exquisite the wines themselves, it was not thought enough in the summer months unless they were brought to table cooled with ice or snow,^[719] which was accordingly the practice.

Having now gone rapidly through the materials of which Grecian repasts consisted, it will next be necessary to describe the manner in which all these good things were disposed of, first to maintain the energy of the frame, and secondly, for mere pleasure and pastime. Locke, with many other modern philosophers, erroneously supposes the Greeks of remote antiquity to have been so abstemious as to content themselves with one meal per diem. But experience appears to have led all mankind on this point to much the same conclusion; viz., that health and comfort require men to eat at least thrice in the day,^[720] which accordingly was the practice of the ancient Greeks, though Philemon and others enumerate four repasts. Our own ancestors, before the introduction of tea and coffee, appear to have been very well content with beer or ale for their morning’s meal, so that we could not pity the Greeks even though it should be found that they had nothing better^[721] than hot rolls, muffins, or crumpets, with strawberries, grapes, pears, and a flask of Chian or Falernian. But they soon found the necessity of some warm beverage; and though it does not appear how it was prepared, they had a substitute for tea,^[722] in use at Athens, in Eubœa, 171in Crete, and, no doubt, in all other parts of Greece. This meal, of whatever it consisted, was called acratisma, or ariston, and eaten at break of day.^[723] Homer’s heroes, whose business was fighting, just snatched a hasty meal, and hurried to the field; but at Athens, where people had other employments, they breakfasted early, to allow themselves ample time for despatching their affairs in the city, if they had any, and afterwards at their neighbouring farms or villas.^[724] The second repast, deipnon, or dinner, seems to have been eaten about eleven or twelve o’clock: the hesperisma,^[725] equivalent to our tea, late in the afternoon, and the dorpon, or supper, the last thing in the evening. But of these meals two only were serious affairs, and the hesperisma was often dispensed with altogether. In fact, Athenæus, a great authority on this subject, considers it perfectly absurd to suppose, that the frugal ancients could have thought of eating so often as three times in one day.^[726]

As the greater includes the less, instead of confining ourselves to the ordinary daily dinner of a Greek, we shall in preference describe their grand entertainments, introducing remarks on the former by the way. These repasts were divided into three classes, the public dinner, the pic-nic, and the marriage 172feast. The last, so far as it had any peculiar features, has been described among the circumstances attending matrimony. We have, therefore, for the present, to do with two only; and, as the Greek contrived to throw much of his ingenuity into all matters connected with feasting and merry-making, the discussion of this part of our subject should savour strongly of mirth and jollity.

The grand dinner,^[727] which they called eilapinè, was generally given at the expense of an individual, and its sumptuousness knew no limit but the means of the host. Other kinds of feasts there were at which all the members of a tribe, a borough, or a fraternity, were entertained, not to speak for the present of the common tables of the Cretans, Spartans, or Prytanes of Athens. We now confine ourselves to those jovial assemblages of private citizens whose object in meeting was not so much the dinner, though that was not overlooked, as the elevation of animal spirits and flow of soul produced by the union of a thousand different circumstances.

When a rich man desired to see his friends around him at his board, he delivered to his deipnocletor^[728] a domestic kept for this purpose, a tablet, or as we should say, a card, whereon the names of the persons to be invited, with the day and hour fixed upon for the banquet, were inscribed. With brothers and other very near relations this ceremony was thought unnecessary.^[729] They came without invitation. So likewise did another class of men, who, living at large upon the public and lighting unbidden upon any sport to which they were attracted by the savour of a good dinner, were denominated^[730] Flies, 173and occasionally Shades or Parasites. There was at one time a law at Athens, which a good deal nonplussed these gentlemen. It was decreed, that not more than thirty persons should meet at a marriage feast, and a wealthy citizen, desirous of “going the whole hog,” had invited the full complement. An honest Fly, however, who respected no law that interfered with his stomach, contrived to introduce himself, and took his station at the lower end of the table. Presently the magistrate appointed for the purpose, entered, and espying his man at a glance, began counting the guests, commencing on the other side and ending with the parasite. “Friend,” said he, “you must retire. I find there is one person more than the law allows.” “It is quite a mistake, sir,” replied the Fly, “as you will find if you will have the goodness to count again, beginning on this side.”^[731] Among the Egyptians, who shrouded all their poetry in hieroglyphics, a fly was the emblem of impudence, which necessarily formed the principal qualification of a Parasite, and in Hume’s^[732] opinion is no bad possession to any man who would make his way in the world.

Archbishop Potter,^[733] in his account of Grecian entertainments, observes, upon the authority of Cicero 174and Cornelius Nepos, that women were never invited with the men.^[734] But in this, as has been shown in the proper place, he was misled by those learned Romans; for, in many cities and colonies of Greece, no banquet was given at which they were not present. Even at Athens, where women of character thought it unbecoming to mingle in the convivial revelries of the men,^[735] in which wine constantly overleaps the boundaries of decorum, their place was supplied by hetairæ, whose polished manners, ready wit, and enlarged and enlightened understandings, recommended them to their companions, and caused the laxity of their morals to be forgotten.^[736] To proceed, however, with our feast: it will readily be supposed, that gentlemen invited out to dinner were careful to apparel themselves elegantly, to shave clean, and arrange their beards and moustachios after the most approved fashion of the day. Even Socrates, who cared as little as most people for external appearances, bathed, put on a pair of new shoes, brushed his chlamys, and otherwise spruced himself up when going to sup at Agathon’s with Phædros, Aristophanes, Eryximachos, and other exquisites. Even in Homeric times the bath was 175among the preliminaries to dinner, and guests arriving from a distance were attended through all the operations of the toilette by female slaves.^[737] But this general ablution was not considered sufficient. On sitting down to table water was again presented to every guest in silver^[738] lavers or ewers of gold. And since they ate with their fingers, as still is the practice in the Levant, it was moreover customary to wash the hands between every course,^[739] and wipe them,^[740] in remoter ages, with soft bread, which was thrown to the dogs, and in aftertimes with napkins. The Arcadians, however, about whose mountains all the old superstitions of Hellas clung like bats, found a very different use for the cakes with which they wiped their fingers. They supposed them to acquire some mystic powers by the operation, and preserved them as a charm against ghosts.^[741]

But we are proceeding too fast, for the guests are scarcely within doors, and our imagination has jumped to the conclusion. To return then. Immediately on entering, and when the host had welcomed and shaken hands with all, such gentlemen as possessed beards^[742] had them perfumed over burning censers of frankincense, as ladies have their tresses on visiting a Turkish harem. The hands, too, after each lavation, were scented.^[743] Before sitting down to table, 176and while the cooks were peppering the soup, frying the fish, or giving the roast-meat another turn, politeness required the guests to take a stroll^[744] in the picture-gallery and admire the exquisite taste of their entertainer in articles of virtu.^[745] Here while the scent of the savoury viands found its way through every apartment, and set the bowels of the hungry parasites croaking, the rogues who had lunched well at home leisurely discussed the merits of Zeuxis or Parrhasios, of Pheidias or Polygnotos, or opened wide their eyes at the microscopic creations of that Spartan artist whose chisel produced a chariot and four that could be hidden under the wing of a fly. At length, however, the connoisseurs were interrupted in their learned disquisitions by the entrance of Xanthos, Davos, or Lydos, with the welcome intelligence that dinner was on the table.

But the appetites of the gourmands had still to encounter another trial.^[746] The Greeks were above all things a pious people, and regarded every banquet, nay, every meal, in the light of a sacrifice, at which the first and best portion should be offered as an oblation to the gods,^[747] with invocations and prayer, after which it was considered lawful to attend to their own appetites. An altar, accordingly, of Zeus stood in the midst of every dining-room, on which these ceremonies were performed, and libations of pure wine poured.^[748] This done, the guests 177took their places, in the earlier ages on chairs, but afterwards, when they had become familiar with the East, on rich sofas, arranged round the board.^[749] Occasionally, however, even so late as the age of Alexander,^[750] princes and other great men chose to adopt the ancient custom, and, on one occasion, that conqueror himself entertained four hundred of his officers, when seats of wrought silver, covered with purple carpets, were provided for all.

The manner of reclining on the divans was not a little ludicrous. For, at the outset, while the appetite was keen, they stretched themselves flat upon their stomachs, in order, I presume, to command the use of both hands, and putting forward their mouths towards the table looked like so many sparrows with their open bills projecting over the nest. But this they could conveniently do only when they had a large space to themselves. When packed close, as usually they were, one man, the chief in dignity, throwing off his shoes,^[751] placed himself on the upper end of the divan, that is, next the host, reclining on one elbow supported by soft cushions. The head of the next man reached nearly to his breast,—whence in Scripture, the beloved disciple is said to recline on the bosom of Christ,^[752]—while the feet of the first extended down behind him. The third guest occupied the same position with respect to the second, and so on until five individuals sometimes crowded each other on the same sofa.

As the heaven of the poets was but a colossal 178picture of earth, we may, from the practice of the gods, infer what took place among mortals, even where supported by no direct testimony. Now, in Homer, we find gods and goddesses mingling freely together at the feast. Zeus takes the head of the table, next him sits his daughter Athena, while the imperial Hera, as Queen of Heaven, takes precedence of all the she Olympians, by placing herself at the head of the secondary divinities, directly opposite her husband. On one occasion we find Athena, the type of hospitality and politeness, yielding up her seat of honour to Thetis, because, as an Oceanid, she was somewhat of a stranger in Olympos.^[753] Potter has discussed, with more learning than perspicuity, the question of precedence at table. To render the matter perfectly intelligible would require a plan of the dining-room; but wanting this, it may be observed, that in Persia the king, or host of whatever rank, sat in the middle, while the guests ranged themselves equally on both sides of him.

In Greece, the bottom of the table was the end next the door. Here no one sat, it being left open for the servants to bring in and remove the dishes. From this point, on either side, the seats augmented in value, and consequently the post of greatest honour was the middle of the other extremity.^[754] There were those, however, who made no account of these matters, but suffered their guests to seat themselves as they pleased. This was the case with Timon, who, having invited a very miscellaneous party, would not be at the pains to settle the question of precedence between them; but a pompous individual of aristocratic pretensions, dressed like an actor, arriving late with a large retinue, and surveying the company from the door, went away again, observing, there was no fit place left for him. Upon which the guests, who, as Plutarch remarks, were 179far gone in their cups, burst into shouts of laughter, and bade him make the best of his way home.^[755]

Some persons observed a very different order in arranging their guests, grouping those together whom they considered suited by age or temper to each other, in order by this contrivance to produce general harmony,—the vehement and impetuous being placed beside the meek and gentle, the silent beside the talkative, the ripe and full and expansive minds beside those who were ready to receive instruction. But very often, as at Agathon’s, those sat next each other, who were most intimately acquainted or united together by friendship; for thus the greatest freedom of intercourse with the brightest sallies of convivial wit were likely to be produced.

At length, however, we must imagine the guests in their places and every thing in proper train. The servants bring in first one well-covered table, then a second, then a third, till the whole room is filled with dainties. Brilliant lamps and chandeliers poured a flood of light over the crowned heads of the guests, over the piled sweetmeats, over the shining dishes, and all the baits with which the appetite is caught. Then, on silver pateræ, cakes whiter than snow were served round. To these succeeded eggs, pungent herbs, oysters, and thrushes.^[756] Next several dishes of rich eels, brown and crisp, sprinkled thickly with salt, followed by a delicious conger dressed with every rare device of cookery, calculated to delight the palate of the gods. Then came the belly of a large ray, round as a hoop; dishes, containing, one some slices of a sea-dog, another garnished with a sparos, a third with a cuttle-fish, or smoking polypus whose legs were tender as a chicken. While the sight of these dainties was feasting the eyes of the 180guests, the noses of the experienced informed them of the approach of a synodon,^[757] which perfumed the passages all the way from the kitchen, and, flanked with calamaries, covered the whole table. Shrimps too were there in their yellow cuirasses, sweet in flavour as honey, with delicious varieties of puff pastry bordered with fresh green foliage.^[758] The teeth of the parasites watered at the sight. But while deeply engaged in the discussion of these good things, in came some smoking slices of broiled thunny, a mullet fresh from the fish-kettle, with the teats of a young sow cooked en ragoût.

Pleasure of all kinds being supposed to promote digestion, female singers, flute-players and dancers, were meanwhile exercising their several arts for the entertainment of the guests. But as they paid very little attention to them till the rage of hunger was appeased, we shall imitate their example, and proceed with the gourmandize. One of the greatest accomplishments a boon companion could possess, was the power to seize with the fingers, and swallow hissing-hot, slices of grilled fish or morsels of lamb or veal broiled like kabobs, so as to be slightly burnt and cracking externally, while all the juice and flavour of the meat remained within. And the acquirement being highly important, great pains were taken to become masters of it. For this purpose some accustomed themselves daily to play with hot pokers, others case-hardened their fingers by repeatedly dipping them in water as hot as they could bear, and gargled their throats with the same, while one famous gourmand, more inventive than the rest, hit upon the ingenious device of wearing metallic fingerlings with which he could have seized a kabob even from the gridiron. These proficients in the art of eating, an art practised indeed by all, but possessed in perfection by very few, enjoyed great advantages over the ignorant and uninitiated. And 181accordingly, when invited out, they generally succeeded in bribing the cook to send in all his dishes hot as Phlegethon, that, while the more modest and inexperienced guests sat gazing on, they might secure the best cuts, and come again before the others could venture on a mouthful.

Among the articles served up in this scorching state were calf’s pluck, pig’s harslet, with the chine, the kidneys, and a variety of small hors-d’œuvre. To these may be added the head of a sucking-kid which had tasted nothing but milk, baked between two dishes well luted together; giblets boiled; small, delicate hams with their white sward unbroken; pigs’ snouts and feet swimming in white sauce, which the gourmand Philoxenos thought a rare invention. Roast kid and lamb’s chitterlings, or the same viands boiled, formed a supplement to the dishes above enumerated, and were usually done so exactly to a turn, that even the gods, Bacchos for example, and Hermes, the parasites of Olympos, might have descended expressly to wag their beards over them. But the Levantines have always been enamoured of variety in cookery. Lady Wortley Montague counted fifty dishes served up in succession at the Sultana Hafiten’s table; and this she-barbarian, with all her wealth, could never rival the variety of invention of an ancient Eleian or Sicilian cook, who usually closed the list of his dainties with hare, chickens roasted to the gold-colour celebrated by Aristophanes, partridges, pheasants, wood-pigeons or turtle-doves, which your true gourmand should eat in the Thebaid, immediately after the close of harvest. But the dinner was not yet over. There still remained the dessert to be disposed of, consisting of pure honey from the district of the silver mines, curdled cream, cheese-tarts, and all that profusion of southern fruit of which we have already spoken.^[759]

It is a well-known rule among modern gourmands, 182that no man should utter a syllable at table till the first course is removed, and precisely the same regulation prevailed among the ancients. Silence, however, was sometimes interrupted by the arrival of some wandering buffoon, who, after long roaming about in search of a dinner, happened, perhaps, to be attracted thither by the wings and feathers ostentatiously scattered before the door. This sort of gentry required no introduction: they had only to knock and announce themselves to ensure a ready welcome; for most men would willingly part with a share of their supper to be made merry over the remainder. The Athenian demos was pre-eminently of this humour. No king, in fact, ever kept up so large an establishment of fools by profession, or, which is much the same thing, of wits,—fellows who grind their understandings into pointed jests to tickle the risible muscles and expand the mouths of sleek junketters, who esteem nothing beyond eating and grinning.

At a feast given by Callias, the famous jester, Philip, a-kin in spirit, I trow, to him of Macedon, presented himself in this way, and, on being admitted,—“Gentlemen,” said he, “you know my profession and its privileges, relying on which I am come uninvited, being a foe to all ceremony, and desiring to spare you the trouble of a formal invitation.”—“Take your place,” replied the host; “your company was much needed, for our friends appear to be plunged up to the chin in gravity, and would be greatly benefited by a hearty laugh.”^[760]

In fact, the heads of the honest people were filled with very serious meditations, being all in love, and endeavouring to discover how each might excel the other in absurdity. Philip began to fear, therefore, that he had carried his jests to a bad market, and, in reality, made many vain attempts to kindle the spirit of mirth, and call home the imaginations of persons who had evidently suffered them to stray as far as the clouds. Aware that success on this point was indispensable 183to his subsistence, the jester grew piqued at the indifference of his hearers, and breaking off in the midst of his supper, wrapped up his head in his chlamys, and lay down like one about to die. “What, now!” cried Callias. “Has any sudden panic seized on thee, friend?”—“The worst possible, by Zeus!” replied Philip; “for, since laughter, like justice, has taken its leave of earth, my occupation is gone. Hitherto I have enjoyed some celebrity in this way, living at the public expense, like the guests of the Prytaneion, because my drollery was effective, and could set the table in a roar. But it is all over, I see, with me now, for I might as soon hope to render myself immortal as acquire serious habits.” All this he uttered in a pouting, desponding tone, as if about to shed tears. The company, to humour the joke, undertook to comfort him, and the effect of their mock condolences, and assurances that they would laugh if he continued his supper, was so irresistibly ludicrous, that Autolychos, a youthful friend of Callias, was at length unable to restrain his merriment; upon which the jester took courage, and apostrophising his soul, informed it very gravely, that there would be no necessity for them to part company yet.^[761]

The Greeks had, properly speaking, no drawing-rooms, so that, instead of retreating to another part of the house, they had the tables themselves removed immediately after dinner. Libations were then poured out to Zeus Teleios, and having sung a hymn to Phœbos Apollo, the amusements of the evening commenced. Professional singers and musicians were always hired on these occasions. They were female slaves, selected in childhood for their beauty and budding talents, and carefully educated by their owners.^[762] When not already engaged, they stood in blooming bevies in the agora, waiting, like the Labourers of Scripture, until some one should 184hire them, upon which they proceeded, dressed and ornamented with great elegance, to the house of feasting. But, besides these, there were other artistes who contributed to the entertainment of the demos, persons that, like our Indian jugglers, performed wonderful feats by way of interlude between the regular exhibitions of the damsels from the agora.^[763]

Xenophon introduces into that living picture of Greek manners called the Banquet, a company of this kind. Finding Philip’s jokes dull things, he brings upon the scene a strolling Syracusan, with a beautiful female flute-player, a dancing girl who could perform surpassing feats of activity, and a handsome boy, who, besides performing on the cithara, was likewise able, on occasion, to sport the toe like his female companions.

But, where philosophers were present, amusements of this kind were not allowed to occupy their whole attention. Every thing that occurred was made a handle for conversation, so that discussions, more or less lively, according to the temperament or ability of the interlocutors, formed the solid ground-work upon which the flowers of gaiety and laughter were spread. It was usual, immediately after supper, to perfume the guests, and great was the variety of unguents, essences, and odorous oils, made use of by the rich and vain upon these occasions; but when Callias proposed conforming to the mode in this particular, Socrates objected, observing, that the odour of honourable toil was perfume enough for a man.^[764] Women, indeed, to whom every thing sweet and beautiful naturally belongs, might, he admitted, make use of perfume, and they did so most lavishly as we have already shown, when we entered their dressing-room and assisted at their toilette.

The Greeks, however, were careful not to convert 185their pleasure-parties into a mere arena for the exhibition of dialectic power. They from time to time glanced at philosophy, but only by the way, in the moments of transition from one variety of recreation to another. Their conversation was now and then brought to a pause by the rising of dancing girls,^[765] robed elegantly, as we behold them still on vases and on bas-reliefs, in drapery adapted to display all the beauty of their forms. Hoops were brought them, and while musicians of their own sex called forth thrilling harmonies from the flute, they executed a variety of graceful movements, in part pantomimic,—now casting up the hoops, now catching them as they fell, keeping time exactly with the cadences of the flute. Their skill in this accomplishment was so great, that many were enabled to keep up twelve hoops in the air at the same time, while others made use of poniards.^[766]

When the novelty of this exhibition was worn off a little, other different feats followed. A hoop stuck all round with upright swords was placed in the midst of the apartment, into which one of the dancing girls threw herself head foremost, and while standing on her head balanced the lower part of her body round over the naked points, to the infinite terror of the spectators. She would then dart forth between the swords, and, with a single bound, regain her footing without the circle.^[767] To add to the entertainment of the company, some parasitical buffoon would at times undertake to exhibit his awkwardness as a foil to the grace of the dancers, frisking about with the clumsy heaviness of a bear, and exaggerating his own ignorance of orchestics to excite a laugh. Sometimes the female dancer, like our own fair tumblers, would throw back her head till it reached her heels, and then putting herself in motion, roll about the room like a hoop.hoop.^[768] To 186these, as a relief and a change, would succeed, perhaps, a youth with fine rich voice, who accompanied himself on the lyre with a song.

But nothing could entirely restrain the Greeks from indulging in the pleasure of listening to their own voices. The buzz of conversation would soon be heard in different parts of the room, which, when Socrates was present, sometimes provoked from him a sarcastic reproof. For example, at Callias’s dinner, observing the company broken up into knots, each labouring at some particular question in dialectics, and filling the apartment with a babel of confused murmurs; “As we talk all at once,” said he, “we may as well sing all at once;” and without further ceremony he pitched his voice and began a song.^[769]

But when professed jugglers happened to be present, gentlemen were not long abandoned to their own resources for amusement. Trick followed trick in rapid succession. To the pantomimic dances, and the sword circle, succeeded the exhibition of the potter’s wheel, in which a young girl seated on this machine, like a little Nubian at a cow’s-tail in a sakia, was whirled round with great velocity,^[770] but retained so much self-possession as to be able both to write and to read. These, however, were merely sources of momentary wonder. Other amusements succeeded capable of exciting superior delight, such for example, as the mimetic dance, which, like that of the ghawazi, could tell a whole story of love, of adventure, of war, of religious frenzy and enthusiasm, transporting by vivid representations the fancy of the spectators to warmer or wilder scenes, calling up images and reminiscences of times long past, or steeping the thoughts in poetical dreams, filled with the caverned nymphs, the merry Seileni, the frisking satyrs, Bacchos, Pan, the Hours, the Graces, sporting by moonlit fountains, through antique woods, 187or on the shelled and sand-ribbed margin of the ocean.^[771]

On some occasions a slight dramatic scene was represented. Clearing the centre of the banqueting hall, the guests ranged themselves in order as at the theatre. A throne was then set up in the open space, and a female actor, representing Ariadne, entering, took her seat upon it, decked and habited like a bride, and supposed to be in her Thalamos at Naxos. Dionysos, who has been dining with Zeus, comes flushed with Olympian nectar into the harem to the sound of the Bacchic flute, while the nymph who has heard his approaching footsteps makes it manifest by her behaviour that her soul is filled with joy, though she neither advances nor rises to meet him, but restrains her feelings with difficulty, and remains apparently tranquil. The god, drawing near with impassioned looks, and dancing all the while, now seats himself, and places the fair one on his knee. Then, in imitation of mortal lovers, he embraces and kisses her, nothing loth; for, though she hangs down her head, and would wish to appear out of countenance, her arms find their way round his neck and return his embrace. At this the company, we may be sure, clapped and shouted. The god, encouraged by their plaudits, then stood up with his bride, and going through the whole pantomime of courtship, not coldly and insipidly, but as one whose heart was touched, at length demanded of Ariadne if in truth she loved him. Sometimes the mimic scene concealed beneath it all the reality of passion. From personating enamoured characters, the youthful actor and his partner learned in reality to love; and what was amusement to others contained a deep and serious meaning for them. This, Xenophon says, was the case with the youth and maiden who enlivened the banquet of Callias. Absorbed in the earnestness of their 188feelings, they seem to have forgotten the presence of spectators, and instead of a stage representation, gave them a scene from real life, where every impassioned look and gesture were genuine, and every fiery glance was kindled at the heart.^[772]

This, however, may be considered a serious amusement, and something like broad farce was necessary to awaken the guests from the reverie into which the love scene had plunged them. Jesters were, therefore, put in requisition; and, as even they sometimes failed to raise a laugh, their more humorous brethren the wits and jesters of the forests, or, in the language of mortals, monkeys were called upon to dissipate the clouds of seriousness. These were the favourite buffoons of the Scythian Anacharsis,—not the Abbé Barthélemy’s,—who said, he could laugh at a monkey’s tricks, because his tricks were natural, but that he found no amusement in a man who made a trade of it.^[773] Nor could Euripides at all relish punsters and manufacturers of jokes, whom he considered, with some reason, as a species of animal distinct from mankind.

But if Euripides found nothing desirable in laughter, there were those who had a clean contrary creed, and lamented nothing so much as the loss of their risible faculties. On this subject Semos has a story quite à propos. Parmeniscos, the Metapontine, having descended, he says, into the cave of Trophonios, became so extremely grave, that with all the appliances, 189and means to boot, furnished by wealth, and they were not a few, he thereafter found himself quite unable to screw up his muscles into a smile; which taking much to heart, as was natural, he made a pilgrimage to Delphi, to inquire by what means he might rid himself of the blue devils. Somewhat puzzled at the strangeness of the inquiry, the Pythoness replied,—

Upon this, Parmeniscos hastened homeward, hoping soon to enjoy a good laugh as the reward of his industry; but, finding his features remain fixed as cast-iron, he began to suspect the oracle had deceived him. Some time after, being at Delos, he beheld with admiration the several wonders of the island, and, lastly, proceeded to the temple of Leto, expecting to find in the mother of Apollo something worthy of so great a divinity. But, on entering and perceiving, instead, a grotesque and smoky old figure in wood, he burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, whereupon the response of the oracle recurred to his mind, and he understood it; and, being thus delivered from his infirmity, he ever after held the goddess in extremest reverence.^[775]

Even from this story, therefore, it will be seen how highly “broad grins” were estimated in antiquity, particularly at Athens, where there was a regular “Wits’ Club,” consisting of threescore members, who assembled during the Diomeia,^[776] in the temple of Heracles. The names of several of these jovial mortals have come down to us; Mandrogenes, for example, and Strato, Callimedon, who, for some particular quality of mind or body, obtained 190the sobriquet of the Lobster, Deinias, Mnasigeiton, and Menæchmos. The reputation of these gentlemen spread rapidly through the city, and, when a good thing had a run among the small wits, it was remarked, that “the Sixty had said that.” Or, if a man of talent were asked, whence he came, he would answer, “From the Sixty.” This was in the time of Demosthenes, when, unhappily, jesters were in more request in Athens than soldiers; and Philip of Macedon, himself no mean buffoon, learning the excellent quality of their bon mots, sent them a present of a talent of gold, with a request that, as public business prevented his joining the sittings of the club, they would make for his use a collection in writing of all their smart sayings, which was, probably, the first step towards those repositories for stray wit, called “Joe Millers,” that form so indispensable a portion of a bon vivant’s library.^[777]

But we are all this while detaining the company from their wine, and those other recreations which the fertile genius of the Greeks invented to make the wheels of life move smoothly. Though the tables, according to the fashion of the times, were removed with the solid viands, others were brought in to replace them, on which the censers, the goblets, the silver or golden ladles for filling the smaller cups, were arranged in order.^[778] The chairman, or, as he was then called, the king of the feast,^[779] enjoyed absolute power over his subjects, and could determine better than their own palates, how much and how often each man should drink. This important functionary was not always identical with the entertainer, but sometimes his substitute, sometimes 191a person chosen by lot.^[780] Capacious bowls of wine,^[781] mingled with water, were placed on a sideboard, whence cup-bearers, sometimes of one, sometimes of the other sex, but always selected for their youth and beauty, filled, with ladles,^[782] the goblets of the guests, which, when the froth rose above the brim, were, by an obvious metaphor, said to be crowned.^[783] Among the Doric Greeks, female cup-bearers seem to have been always preferred; the Ptolemies of Egypt cherished the same taste; and the people of Tarentum, themselves of Doric race, passing successively through every stage of luxury, came, at length, to be served at table by beautiful young women without a vestige of clothing. In most cases, these maidens were slaves, but, in some countries, and everywhere, in remoter ages, the performance of such offices was not regarded as any way derogatory to persons of noble or princely blood. But, whatever might be their birth, beauty of form and countenance constituted their chief recommendation. For there is a language in looks and gestures, there is a fountain of joy and delight concealed deep in the physical structure, and its waters laugh to the eye of intellect, and reflect into the hearts of those who behold it a sunniness and exhilaration greater than we derive from gazing on the summer sea. Hence, Hebe and Ganymede were chosen to minister at the tables of the gods, even Zeus himself^[784] not disdaining to taste of the pleasures to be derived from basking in the irradiations of beauty.

When the goblets were all crowned with the 192nectar of earth, the Master of the Feast^[785] set the example of good-fellowship by drinking to his guests, beginning with the most distinguished.^[786] Originally, custom required him who drank to the health of another to drain off his cup while his comrade did the same; but, in after ages, they sipped only a portion of the wine, and, as they still do in the East, presented the remainder to their friend. The latter, by the rules of politeness, was bound to finish the goblet, or, where the antique fashion prevailed, to drink one of equal size.^[787] The Macedonians, who, probably, excelled the Greeks in drinking, if in nothing else, disdained small cups as supplying a very roundabout way to intoxication, and plunged into Lethe at once by the aid of most capacious bowls. It was customary, when the practice of passing round the goblet had been introduced, for the king of the feast to drink to the next man on his right hand, who, in his turn, drank to the next, and so on till the bowl had circulated round the board. But different customs prevailed in the different parts of Greece. At Athens, small cups, like our wine-glasses, were in use; among the Chians, Thracians, and Thessalians, nations more prone to sensual indulgences, the goblets were of larger dimensions; but, at Sparta, where sobriety and frugality long flourished, the practice was to drink from diminutive vessels, which, as often as required, were replenished by the attendants.^[788]

Isocrates, in his exhortation to Demonicos, marks the distinction between the true and false friend, by observing, that, while the latter thinks only of those around him, the former remembers the absent, and makes his affection triumph over time and distance. And the Greeks generally had this merit. 193Amid the enjoyments of the festive board, they recalled to mind the friends of other days; and, having first performed libations to the gods, those best and purest of friends, drank to the health and prosperity of former associates, now far removed by circumstances,^[789] and this they did not in the mixed beverage which formed their habitual potations, but in pure wine.^[790] There was something extremely delicate in this idea, for tacitly it intimated, that their love placed the objects of it almost on a level with their divinities, in whose honour, also, on these occasions, a small portion of the wine was spilt in libations^[791] upon the earth. The young, in whose hearts a mistress held the first place,^[792] drank deeply in honour of their beloved, sometimes equalling the number of cups to that of the letters forming her name,^[793] which, if the custom prevailed so early, would account for Ægisthos’s being a sot. Sometimes, however, taking the hint from the number of the Graces, they were satisfied with three goblets; but, when an excuse for drinking “pottle deep” was sought, they chose the Muses for their patrons, and honoured their mistresses’ names with three times three.^[794] This is the number of cheers with which favourite political toasts are received at our public dinners, though every one who fills his bumper, and cries “hip, hip, hip, hurrah!” on these occasions, is, probably, not conscious that he is keeping up an old pagan custom in honour of the Muses.

The number four was in no favour at the drinking-table, not because it was an even number, for they sometimes drank ten, but because some old superstition had brought discredit on it. Our very fox-hunters, however, exhibit an inferior capacity to many 194of the ancients in affairs of the bottle, though when it is the poets who perform the feat, we may safely consider them to be simply regaling their fancies on “air-drawn” goblets, which cost nothing, and leave no head-aches behind them. On this subject there is a very pretty song in the Anthology, which Potter, following some old edition, completely misrepresents.^[795] It deserves to be well translated, and I would translate it well if I could. The following at least preserves the meaning:

But the Macedonians entertained no respect for poetical goblets: they loved to scent their moustachios with the aroma of the real rosy wine when it sparkled in the cup,—when it moved itself aright, as the wise king of Judah expresses it. Plutarch describes briefly one of their drinking-bouts which took place on the evening of the day wherein old Kalanos, the Hindù Yoghi, burnt himself alive to escape the colic. Alexander, on returning from the funeral pile, invited a number of his friends and generals to sup with him, and, proposing a drinking contest, appointed a crown for the victor. Prodigious efforts were made by all present to achieve so enviable a triumph; but the man who proved himself to possess the most capacious interior was Promachos, who is said to have 195swallowed upwards of two gallons. He obtained the prize, which was a golden crown, valued at a talent, but died within three days.^[797] Chares, the Mitylenian, relates the matter somewhat differently. According to him, Alexander celebrated funeral games in honour of Kalanos, at his barrow, where horseraces and gymnastic contests took place,^[798] and a poetical encomium was pronounced upon the Yoghi, who, like the rest of his countrymen, was, doubtless, a great toper, and thence the drinking-match instituted in the evening. Chares says there were three prizes; the first, in value, a talent; the second, thirty minæ, or about a hundred and twenty pounds sterling; the third, three minæ. The number of aspirants is not stated, but thirty-five (Plutarch says forty-one) perished in cold shiverings on the spot, and six more died shortly after in the tents.^[799]

Numbers have celebrated the military genius of Alexander; but Athenæus alone has given him due credit for his truly royal power of drinking. Like his father, Philip, who, in his jolly humour, ruffled the Athenian dead at Chæronea, where he could safely beard the fallen republicans, Alexander delighted to spend his evenings among drunken roysterers, whose chief ambition consisted in making a butt of their bowels. One of these worthies was Proteas, the Macedonian mentioned by Ephippos, in his work on the sepulture of Alexander and Hephæstion. He was a man of iron constitution, on which wine, whatever quantity he drank, appeared to make no impression. Alexander, knowing this, loved to pledge him in huge bowls, such as none, perhaps, but themselves could cope with. This he did even at Babylon, where the climate suffers few excesses to be indulged in with impunity. Taking a goblet more like a pail than a drinking-cup, Alexander caused it to be crowned with wine, which, having tasted, he presented the bowl to Proteas. The veteran immediately 196drained it off, to the great amusement of the company, and presently afterwards, desiring to pledge the king, he filled it up again, and sipping a little, according to custom, passed the bowl to Alexander, who, not to be outdone by a subject, forthwith drank the whole. But if he possessed the courage, he wanted the physical strength of Proteas: the goblet dropped from his hand, his head sank on a pillow, and a fever ensued of which the conqueror of Persia, and the rival of Proteas in drinking, died in a few days.^[800]

But to return from these barbarians: as the presence of sober persons must always be felt by hard drinkers to be a tacit reproach, it was one of the rules of good fellowship, that all such as joined not in the common potations should depart. “Drink, or begone!” said the law, and a good one in Cicero’s opinion it was, for if men experienced no disposition to join in the mirth and enjoyment of the company, what had they to do there?^[801]

From the existence of these rules, however, an inference has been drawn unfavourable to the Greek character, as if, because some were merry, the nation generally must of necessity have been wine-bibbers.^[802] But this is scarcely more logical than the reasoning of a writer, who, because the comic poets speak chiefly of the mirth and lighter enjoyments of the Athenians, very gravely concludes that they busied themselves about little else. The truth is, that like all ardent and energetic people, they threw their whole souls into the affair, whether serious or otherwise, in which they happened to be engaged; and besides, while the careful and industrious applied themselves to business, there was always an abundance of light and trifling people to whom eating and drinking constituted a serious occupation.

The man upon the creations of whose art the principal enjoyments of Greek gourmands were based was the cook,^[803] whose character and achievements ought not perhaps to be entirely passed over. We are, indeed, chiefly indebted for our information to the comic poets; but, in spite of some little exaggeration, the likeness they have bequeathed to us is probably upon the whole pretty exact.

The Athenian cook was a singularly heterogeneous being, something between the parasite and the professed jester; he was usually a poor citizen, with all the pride of autochthoneïty about him, who considered it indispensable to acquire, besides his culinary lore, a smattering of many other kinds of knowledge, not only for the purpose of improving his soups or ragouts, but in order, by the orations he pronounced in praise of himself, to dazzle and allure such persons as came to the agora in search of an artist of his class. Of course the principal source of his oratory lay among pots and frying-pans, and the wonders effected by his art. Philemon hits off with great felicity one of these worthies, who desires to convey a lofty opinion of himself,—

This honest fellow, in the opinion of Athenæus, exceeded in boasting even that Menecrates of Syracuse, who for his pride obtained the surname of Zeus; he was a physician, and used vauntingly to call himself the arbiter of life to mankind. He is supposed to have possessed some specific against epilepsy; but being afflicted with a vanity at least equal to his skill, he would undertake no one’s cure unless he first entered into an agreement to follow him round the country ever after as his slave, which great numbers actually did. Nicostratos, of Argos, one of the persons so restored, travelled in his train habited and equipped like Heracles; others personated Asclepios, and Apollo, while Menecrates himself enacted in this fantastic 199masquerade the part of Zeus; and, as the actors say, he dressed the character well, wearing a purple robe, a golden crown upon his head, sandals of the most magnificent description, and bearing a sceptre in his hand.^[805]

But whatever might have been the conceit of our Syracusan physician, there were those among the cooking race, who certainly lagged not far behind him. They usually stunned such as came to hire them with reciting their own praises, laying claim to as much science and philosophy as would have sufficed to set up two or three sophists. In fact, to take them at their word, there was nothing which they did not know, nothing which they could not do. Painting they professed to comprehend as profound connoisseurs, and, no doubt, the soles they fried tasted all the better for the accomplishment. In astronomy, medicine, and geometry, they appear to have made a still greater proficiency than Hudibras, notwithstanding that—

In all this he was a fool to the Athenian cooks; for, by the help of astronomy, they could tell when mackerel was in season, and at what time of the year a haddock is better than a salmon. From geometry they borrowed the art of laying out a kitchen to the best advantage, and how to hang up the gridiron in one place, and the porridge-pot in another. To medicine it is easy to see how deeply they must have been indebted, since it not only taught them what meats are wholesome, and 200what not, but also enabled them by some sleight of art to diminish the appetite of those voracious parasites, who when they dined out appeared to have stomachs equal in capacity to the great tun of Heidelberg.^[806]

Many individuals, half guests, half parasites, used to extract considerable matter for merriment out of the dinner materials, that they might render themselves agreeable, and be invited again. Thus Charmos, the Syracusan, used to convert every dish served at table into an occasion for reciting poetical quotations or old proverbs, and sometimes, perhaps, suffered the fish to cool while he was displaying his erudition. He had always civil things to say both to shell-fish and tripe, so that a person fond of flattery might have coveted to be roasted, in order that his shade might be soothed with this kind of incense, which even Socrates allowed was not an illiberal enjoyment. It was, however, a common custom among parasites to make extracts from the poets and carry them in portfolios to the tables of their patrons, where they recited all such as appeared to be à propos. In this way the above Charmos obtained among the people of Messina the reputation of a learned man, and Calliphanes,^[807] son of Parabrycon,^[808] succeeded no less ingeniously by copying out the first verses of various poems, and reciting them, so that it might be supposed he knew the whole.

Cleanthes, of Tarentum, always spoke at table in verse, so likewise did the Sicilian Pamphilos; and these parasites, travelling about with wallets of poetry on their backs, were everywhere welcomed and entertained, which might with great 201propriety have been adduced by Ilgen^[809] among his other proofs of the imaginative character of the Greeks.

Archestratos, the Syracusan, belonged no doubt to this class. He composed an epic poem on good eating, which commenced with recommending that no company, assembled for convivial enjoyment, should ever exceed four,^[810] or at most five, otherwise he said they would rather resemble a troop of banditti than gentlemen. It had probably escaped him, that there were twenty-eight guests at Plato’s banquet. Antiphanes, after observing that the parasites had lynx’s eyes to discover a good dinner though never invited, immediately adds, that the republic ought to get up an entertainment for them, upon the same principle that during the games an ox^[811] was slaughtered some distance from the course at Olympia, to feast the flies, and prevent them from devouring the spectators.

Besides Archestratos, there were several other celebrated gastronomers among the ancients. Of these the principal were Timachidas, of Rhodes, who wrote a poem in eleven books on good eating,^[812] Noumenios, of Heraclea, pupil to the physician Dieuches, Metreas, of Pitana, the parodist Hegemon, of Thasos, surnamed the Lentil, by some reckoned among the poets of the old comedy, Philoxenos, of Leucadia, and a second Philoxenos, of Cythera, who composed his work in hexameter verse. The former, after chaunting the eulogium of the kettle, comes nevertheless to the conclusion at last, that superior merit belongs to the frying-panfrying-pan. He earnestly recommended truffles to lovers, but would not have them touch the 202barbel. His anger burst forth with great vehemence against those who cut in pieces fish which should be served up whole; and, though he admits that a polypus may occasionally be boiled, it was much better, he says, to fry it. From this man the Philoxenian cakes derived their name; and he it is whom Chrysippos reproaches with half scalding his fingers in the warm bath and gargling his throat with hot water, in order that he might be able to swallow kabobs hissing from the coals.^[813] He likewise used, at the houses of his friends, to bribe the cooks to bring up everything fiery hot, that he might help himself before any one else could touch them. A kindred gourmand, in the poet Krobylos, exclaims: “My fingers are insensible to fire like the Dactyls of Mount Ida. And ah! how delightful it is to refresh my throat with the crackling flakes of broiled fish! Oh I am in fact an oven, not a man!”

According to Clearchos it was this same Philoxenos, who used to maraud about rich men’s houses, followed by a number of slaves laden with wine, vinegar, oil, and other seasonings. Wherever he smelled the best dinner he dropped in unasked, and slipping slily among the cooks, obtained their permission to season the dishes they were preparing, after which he took his place among the guests where he fed like a Cyclops. Arriving once at Ephesos, by sea, he found, upon inquiry in the market, that all the best fish had been secured for a wedding feast. Forthwith he bathed, and repairing to the house of the bridegroom, demanded permission to sing the Epithalamium. Every one was delighted; they could do no less than invite him to dinner. And “Will you come again to-morrow?” inquired the generous host. “If there be no fish in the market,” replied Philoxenos. It was this gourmand who wished nature had bestowed on man the neck of the 203crane that the pleasure of swallowing might be prolonged.^[814]

Pithyllos, another parasite, surnamed “the Dainty,” not content with the membrane which nature has spread over the tongue, superinduced artificially a sort of mucous covering, which retained for a considerable time the flavour of what he ate.^[815] To prolong his luxurious enjoyment as much as possible, he afterwards scraped away this curious coating with a fish. Of all ancient gourmands he alone is said to have made use of artificial finger-points, that he might be enabled to seize upon the hottest morsels. An anecdote so good as to have given rise to many modern imitations, is related of Philoxenos, of Cythera. Dining one day with Dionysios, of Syracuse, he observed a large barbel served up to the prince, while a very diminutive one was placed before him. Upon this, taking up the little fish, he held it to his ear and appeared to be listening attentively. Dionysios, expecting some humorous extravagance, made a point of inquiring the meaning of this movement, and Philoxenos replied, that happening just then to think of his Galatea,^[816] he was questioning the barbel respecting her. But as it makes no answer, said he, I imagine they have taken him too young and that he does not understand me. I am persuaded, however, that the old fellow they have placed before your majesty must know all about it. The king, amused by his ingenuity, immediately sent him the larger fish which he soon questioned effectually.^[817]

But the Athenians were not reduced to depend for amusement at table upon the invention of these 204humble companions. They knew how, when occasion required, to entertain themselves, and, in the exuberance of their hilarity, descended for this purpose to contrivances almost infantine. They posed each other with charades, enigmas, conundrums, and, sometimes, in the lower classes of society, related stories of witches, lamias, mormos, and other hobgoblins believed in by the vulgar of all nations. Among persons engaged in public affairs the excitement of political discussion was often, of course, intermingled with their more quiet pleasures.^[818] But with this we have, just now, nothing to do, nor with the enigmas which we shall describe anon. There was another and more elegant practice observed by the Greeks at convivial meetings, which, though not peculiar to them, has nowhere else, perhaps, prevailed to the same extent,—I mean the introduction of music and the singing of songs,^[819] light, graceful, and instinct with wit and gaiety, to the barbitos or the lyre.

Among the Greeks, generally, the love of music and poetry seemed to be a spontaneous impulse of nature. Almost every act of life was accompanied by a song,—the weaver at his loom, the baker at his kneading-trough, the reaper, the “spinners and the knitters in the sun,” the drawer of water, even the hard-working wight who toiled at the mill, had his peculiar song, by the chaunting of which he lightened his labour. The mariner, too, like the Venetian gondolier, sang at the oar, and the shepherd and the herdsman, the day-labourer and the swineherd, the vintager and the husbandman, the attendant in the baths, and the nurse beside the cradle. It might, in fact, be said, that from an Hellenic village music arose as from a brake in spring. Their sensibilities were tremblingly alive to pleasure. There was elasticity, there was balm in their atmosphere, 205and joy and freedom in their souls.—How could they do other than sing?

But, if music and poetry thus diffused their delights over the industry of the laborious, it was quite natural that where men met solely for enjoyment, these best handmaids of enjoyment should not be absent. Accordingly, we find that while the goblet circulated, kindling the imagination, and unbending the mind, the lyre was brought in and a song called for. Nor was the custom of recent date. It prevailed equally in the heroic ages, and, like many other features of Greek manners, derived its origin from religion. For, in early times, men rarely met at a numerous banquet, except on occasion of some sacrifice, when hymns in honour of the gods constituted an important part of the ceremonies. Thus Homer, describing the grand expiatory rites by which the Achæan host sought to avert the wrath of Apollo, observes, that they made great feasts, and celebrated the praises of the god amid their flowing goblets.^[820]

Yet, though the theme of those primitive songs may have been at first serious, it was, probably, not long before topics better adapted to festive meetings obtained the preference. At all events, they soon came to be in fashion. The first step appears to have been from the gods to the heroes, whose achievements, being sometimes tinged with the ludicrous, opened the door to much gay and lively description. And these convivial pleasures,^[821] so highly valued on earth, were, with great consistency, transferred to Olympos, where the immortals themselves were thought to heighten their enjoyments by songs and merriment.

In the ages following, the art of enhancing thus the delights of social intercourse, so far from falling into 206neglect, grew to be more than ever cultivated. Even the greatest men, beginning from the Homeric Achilles, disdained not to sing. They did not, says a judicious and learned writer, consider it sufficient to perform deeds worthy of immortality, or to be the theme of poets and musicians, or so far to cultivate their minds as to be able to relish and appreciate the songs of others, but included music within the circle of their own studies, as an accomplishment without which no man could pretend to be liberally educated. For this reason it was objected by Stesimbrotos, as a reproach to Cimon, that he was ignorant of music, and every other gentlemanly accomplishment held in estimation among the Greeks;^[822] and even Themistocles himself incurred the charge of rusticity, because, when challenged at a party, he refused to play on the cithara.^[823]

A different theory of manners prevailed among the Romans, who, like the modern Turks, considered it unbecoming a gentleman to sing. But to the Greeks, a people replete with gaiety and ardour, and whose amusements always partook largely of poetry, music presented itself under a wholly different aspect, and was so far from appearing a mean or sordid study, that no branch of education was held in higher honour, or esteemed more efficacious in promoting tranquillity of mind, or polish and refinement of manners. The lyre is accordingly said, by Homer, to be a divine gift, designed to be the companion and friend of feasts, where it proved the source of numerous advantages. In the first place, persons too much addicted to the bottle found in this instrument an ally against their own failing, for, whether playing or listening, a cessation from drinking was necessarily effected. Rudeness also and violence, and that unbridled audacity commonly inspired by wine, were checked by music, which, in their stead, inspired a pleasing exaltation 207of mind, and joy free from all admixture of passion.^[824]

It has already been observed that the convivial song soon divested itself of its religious and sombre character; for, as parties are made up of persons differing extremely in taste and temperament, it necessarily happened that when each was required to sing, much variety would be found in the lays, which generally assumed a festive and jocund air. Hymns in honour of the gods were more sparingly introduced,^[825] nor was much stress laid on the praises of heroes;^[826] the spirit of joviality moulded itself into

Every one poured forth what the whim of the moment inspired,—jokes, love-songs, or biting satires, with the freedom and fertility of an improvisatore.^[827]

These convivial songs were divided by the ancients into several kinds, with reference sometimes to their nature, sometimes to the manner in which they were chaunted: the most remarkable they denominated Scolia, or zig-zag songs,^[828] for a reason somewhat difficult of explanation. Several of the later Greek writers appear to have been greatly at a loss to account for the appellation, which is, no doubt, a singular one; but the learning and diligence of Ilgen^[829] may be said to have fully resolved this curious question. After determining the antiquity of the Scolion, which Pindar^[830] supposes to have been an invention of Terpander, 208or, at least, the verses of the song, but which Ilgen dates as far back as the heroic period, he observes, that the name itself was known in very remote ages, since they formed a separate class among the works of Pindar, and are mentioned by Aristophanes and Plato,^[831] and that, like the Cyclic chorus, it arose out of the circumstances under which it was sung. For as this chorus was called Cyclic, or circular, because chaunted by persons moving in a circle round the altar of Bacchos, so the Scolion, or zig-zag song,^[832] received its name from the myrtle branch, or the cithara, to which it was sung, being passed from one guest to another in a zig-zag^[833] fashion, just as those who possessed the requisite skill happened to sit at table.

To render this explanation perfectly intelligible, it will, perhaps, be necessary to describe succinctly the whole process of singing in company. At first, it has been conjectured, when manners were rude, and the language still in its infancy, singing, like dancing, required no great art, and was little more than those wild bursts of melody still common among the improvisatori of Arabia and other Eastern countries, but that from these humble beginnings lyrical poetry took its rise, preserving still the freedom of its original state, and rising, unshackled by the rigid laws of metre, to heights of sublimity and grandeur beyond which no human composition ever soared. By degrees some complex forms of verse obtained the preference,—such, for example, as those of Sappho and Alcæos,—and fixed and definite laws of metre were established.

209The Scolion, however, always preserved something of its original spontaneous character, at least in appearance, and the same thing may be predicated of all their festive lays. But before they gave loose to their gaiety, the deep religious sentiment which pervaded the whole nation required a pæan, or hymn, to be sung in honour of the gods, and in this every person present joined.^[834] While thus engaged, each guest, it is supposed, held in his hand a branch of laurel, the tree sacred to Apollo.^[835] To the pæan succeeded another air, which all present sang in their turn, holding this time a branch of myrtle,^[836] which, like the laurel bough mentioned above, was called æsakos, or the “branch of song.”^[837] The singing commenced with the principal guest, to whom the symposiarch or host delivered the Cithara^[838] and æsakos, demanding a song, which, according to the laws of the table, no one could refuse. Having performed his part, the singer was, in turn, entitled to call upon his neighbour, beginning on the right hand, and delivering to him the Cithara and the myrtle branch. The second, when he had sung, handed it then to the third, the third to the fourth, and so on until the whole circle of the company had been made. It sometimes happened, though not often, that among the guests an individual, unskilled in instrumental music, was found, and, in this case, he sang without accompaniment, holding the æsakos in his hand.^[839]

The poets who had the honour thus to cheer the convivial hours of the Greeks were, in remoter times, Simonides and Stesichoros, and, probably, Anacreon, with others of the same grade;^[840] and, if we may credit Aristophanes, songs were also selected from the plays of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, as 210among ourselves from Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, or Ben Jonson. It may even be inferred that passages from Homer himself^[841] were sung on these occasions; or, if not sung, they were certainly recited by rhapsodists introduced for the purpose into the assembly, who, holding a laurel branch while thus engaged, probably gave rise to the practice of passing round the myrtle bough. This branch, therefore, whether of myrtle or laurel,^[842] constituted a part of a singer’s apparatus. The latter was originally chosen as sacred to Apollo, the patron of music, and because it was also believed to be endowed with something of prophetic power, the Pythoness eating its leaves before she ascended the tripod, while it was the symbol of ever-during song. Instead of the laurel, myrtle was afterwards introduced, on account, probably, of its being sacred to Aphrodite, whose praises were celebrated in those amatory songs common at feasts. It may, likewise, have been considered an emblem of republican virtue, since Harmodios and Aristogeiton concealed their swords in a myrtle wreath.^[843]

To proceed, however, with the Scolia. These lays, like the rest, made the circle of the company, though not by passing in an unbroken series from man to man, but, as has already been said, from one skilful singer to another. In fact, the chanting of the scolia was a kind of contest which took place when all the other songs were concluded.^[844] The person who occupied the seat of honour chanted to the Cithara a song containing the praises of some mortal or immortal, or the developement of some moral precept or erotic subject, which was comprehended in a small number of verses. When he had finished, he handed the Cithara and myrtle, at his own discretion, to some other among the guests, and the 211person thus challenged, who could not refuse without passing for an illiterate clown, must at once take up the same subject, and, without delay or premeditation, break forth into a song in the same metre and number of verses, if possible; and if unfamiliar with the Cithara, he could sing to the myrtle. The second singer now exercised his privilege and called upon a third, who was expected to do as he had done; so that very often the same idea underwent five or six transformations in the course of the evening. When the first argument had thus made the circle of the company, he who concluded had the right to start a new theme, which received the same treatment as the first; so that sometimes, when people were in a singing humour, air followed air, until eight or ten subjects had received all the poetical ornaments which the invention of those present could bestow upon them.

But to sing without wine would have been insipid. I have said the chanting of the scolia was a sort of contest, and, as he who contends and obtains the victory looks naturally for a reward, so the successful performer aspired to his, which, it must be owned, was not inappropriate, consisting of a brimming bowl, called odos, or the “cup of song,” at once a mark of honour and a reward of skill.^[845] All these particulars are inferable from the examples of the scolion, which still remain; and Aristophanes in the “Wasps,” presents something like an outline, though dim and obscure, both of the argument and the mode of execution. He imagines a company of jolly fellows,^[846] such as Theoros, Æschines, Phanos, Cleon, Acestor, and a foreigner of the same kidney, and represents them as engaged in performing certain scolia for their own entertainment.

But the idea we should form of this kind of song from the very comic passage in the “Wasps” differs materially from the theoretic view of Ilgen, since Philocleon constantly interrupts his son, terminating 212each sentence for him in a manner wholly unexpected, and of course calculated to excite laughter.

But though musical, the Greeks would not imitate the grasshoppers,^[847] who are said to sing till they starve; but, having accomplished the circle above-mentioned, proceeded to other amusements which, though too numerous to be described at length, must not be altogether passed over. In the heroic ages the discovery had not been made that rest after meals is necessary to digestion, which in later times was a received maxim, and accordingly we find from the practice of the Phæacians,^[848] who, if an after-dinner nap had been customary, would certainly have taken it, that the men of those times, instead of indulging in indolent repose out of compliment to their stomachs, sallied forth to leap, to run, to wrestle, and engage in other athletic sports, which by no means appear to have impaired their health or their prowess. As civilisation advances, however, excuses are found for laying aside the habits of violent exercise. Science, in too many cases, fosters indolence and pronounces what is fashionable to be wise. But to the race-course and the wrestling-ring, sedentary, or at least indoor, pastimes succeed, and, instead of overthrowing their antagonists on the palæstra-floor or the greensward, men seek to subdue them at Kottabos, or on the chess-board, or to ruin them at the card-table or in the billiard-room.

The play of Kottabos,^[849] invented in Sicily, soon propagated itself, as such inventions do, throughout the whole of Greece, and got into great vogue at Athens, where the lively temperament of the people inclined them to indulge immoderately in whatever was convivial and gay. The most usual form of the game was this,—a piece of wood like the upright of a balance having been fixed in the floor 213or upon a stable basis, a small cross-beam was placed on the top of it with a shallow vessel like the basin of a pair of scales, at either end.

Under each of these vessels stood a broad-mouthed vase, filled with water, with a gilt bronze statue, called Manes, fixed upright in its centre. The persons who played at the game, standing at some little distance, cast, in turn, their wine, from a drinking-cup into one of the pensile basins, which descending with the weight, struck against the head of the statue, which resounded with the blow. The victor was he who spilled least wine during the throw, and elicited most noise from the brazen head. It was, in fact, in its origin a species of divination, the object being to discover by the greater or less success obtained, the place occupied by the player in his mistress’s affections. By an onomatopœa the sound created by the wine in its projection was called latax, and the wine itself latagè. Both the act of throwing and the cup used were called ankula, from the word which expresses the dexterous turn of the hand with which the skilful player cast his wine into the scales.^[850]

Our learned Archbishop Potter, who has not unskilfully abridged the account of Athenæus, confounds the above with the kottabos katactos, another form of the game described both by Pollux and Athenæus.^[851] In this the apparatus was suspended like a chandelier from the roof. It was formed of brass, and a brazen vessel, called the skiff, was placed beneath it. The player, standing at a little distance, with a long wand, struck one end of the kottabos, which descending came in contact with the skiff, or rather the manes within, and produced a hollow sound. Occasionally the small vessels at the extremity of the kottabos were brought down, as in the former game, by having wine cast into 214them. Another variety required the skiff to be filled with water, upon which floated a ball, an instrument like the tongue of a balance, a manes, three myrtle boughs, and as many phials. In this the great art consisted in striking some one of these with the kottabos, and whoever could sink most of them won the game. The prize, on these occasions, was usually one of those cakes called pyramos^[852] or something similar; but instead of these it was sometimes agreed, when women were present, that the prize should be a kiss, as in our game of forfeits. Another kind of kottabos, chiefly practised on those occasions which resembled our christenings, when on the tenth day the child received its name, was a contention of wakefulness, when the person who longest resisted sleep, won the prize. Properly, however, kottabos was the amusement first described; and so fashionable did it become, that persons erected circular rooms expressly for the purpose, in order that the players might take their stand at equal distances from the apparatus which stood in the centre.^[853]

It might, without any authority, be presumed that when people met together for enjoyment they would derive the greater portion of it from conversation, which would, of course, vary and slide

according to the character or fluctuating humour of the company. The Spartans, like all military people, were grievously addicted to jokes, which among them supplied the place of that elegant badinage, alternating with profound or impassioned discourse, familiar to the more intellectual Athenians. The latter, however, though free from the coarseness, possessed more than the mirthfulness of the Dorians, and in the midst of their habits of business and application to 215philosophy, knew better than any people how, amidst wine and good-eating, to unbend and enjoy the luxury of careless trifling and an unwrinkled brow. While some therefore retired to the kottabos-room, which occupied the place of our billiard-room, others still sat clustered round the table, extracting amusement from each other. Among these of course would be found all such as excelled in the art of small talk, who could tell a good story or anecdote, scatter around showers of witticisms, or give birth to a pun. Some, like the Spartans, had a Welsh passion for genealogies, and loved to run back over the history of the “Landed Gentry” of old Hellas, to the time of Deucalion or higher; others coined their wisdom and experience into fables, for which they exhibited an almost Oriental fondness; while the greater number, like the princes in the Arabian Nights, exercised their wits in propounding and resolving difficult questions, enigmas, charades, anagrams, and conundrums.

But the principal classes into which these contrivances were divided were two: enigmas and griphoi,^[854] the former comprehending all those terminating in mere pleasure, the latter such questions and riddles as involved within themselves the kernel of wisdom or knowledge,^[855] supposed to have been a dull and serious affair. Casaubon,^[856] however, vindicates it stoutly from this charge, affirming that in the griphos the utile was mingled with the dulce in due proportion; so that it must, according to Horace’s opinion, have borne away the palm from most literary inventions. In point of antiquity, too, the riddle may justly boast; for, if to be old is to be noble, it has “more of birth and better blood” even than the hungry Dorians of the Peloponnesos, whom Mr. Mitchell 216prefers, on this account, before all nations of Ionic race. Like everything good also it comes from the East. The earliest mention of the riddle occurs in the book of Judges,^[857] where Samson, during his marriage-feast at Timnath, perplexes his guests with the following riddle:

To which they, being instructed by his wife, replied:

The word griphos, in its original acceptation, signified a fishing-net, and hence by translation was employed to describe a captious or cunningly contrived question, in which the wits of people were entangled.^[858] As the ancients delighted in this sort of intellectual trifling they were at the pains to be very methodical about it, dividing the riddle into several kinds, which Clearchos of Soli^[859] made the subject of a separate work. This writer, a sort of Greek D’Israeli, defines the griphos to mean “a sportive problem proposed for solution on condition, that the discovery of the sense should be attended by a reward, and failure with punishment.” His description of the seven classes could scarcely be rendered intelligible, and certainly not interesting to the modern reader. It will be more to the purpose to introduce two or three specimens, prefacing them by a few remarks.

It has been above observed, that philosophical truths were often wrapped up in these sportive problems, 217which purposely obscured, so as to afford but dim and distant glimpses of the forms within, necessarily exercised and sharpened the wit and induced keen and persevering habits of investigation. The reward also and the penalty had the same tendency. A crown, an extra junket, and the applause of the company, cheered the successful Œdipos, while the lackwit who beat about the bush without catching the owl, had to make wry faces over a cup of brine or pickle. Theodectes, the sophist, a man distinguished for the excellence of his memory, obtained reputation as a riddle-solver, and denominated such questions the “springs of memory.”^[860] But whatever the interrogatories themselves may have been, the reward, to which their solution often led, was rather a source of forgetfulness, consisting of a goblet of wine which, when no interpreter could be found, passed to the propounder.^[861]

The riddle was of course a mine of wealth to the comic poets, who could not be supposed to forego the use of so admirable a contrivance to raise expectation and beget surprise. But it is clear, from the examples still preserved, that they oftener missed than hit. Antiphanes’s griphoi on “bringing and not bringing;” on the “porridge-pot;” on a “tart,” &c., are poor things; but the following from the “Dream” of Alexis is good:

218The following from Eubulos is not amiss:

Antiphanes, in his Sappho, introduces a very ingenious riddle, partly for the purpose of offering a sarcastic explanation directed against the orators:

The poet introduces the “Lesbian maid,” explaining the riddle, and this passage of the Athenian comic writer may be regarded as the original of those fine lines in Ovid, which Pope has so elegantly translated:

By this time, however, the reader will probably be of opinion, that we have lingered long enough about the dinner-table and its attendant pastimes. We shall therefore hasten the departure of the guests, who after burning the tongues of the animals that had been sacrificed, to intimate that whatever had been uttered was to be kept secret, offered 219libations to Zeus, Hermes, and other gods, and took their leave, in ancient times before sunset; but afterwards, as luxury and extravagance increased, the morning sun often enabled them to dispense with link-boys. Examples, indeed, of similar perversions of the night occur in Homer and Virgil, but always among the reckless or effeminate in the palaces of princes, whence, in all ages, the stream of immorality has flowed downward upon society to disturb and pollute it. The company assembled at Agathon’s, also, sit up all night in Plato; and Aristophanes represents drunken men reeling home through the agora by daylight.

It is far from being my purpose to repeat the information which may be obtained from a hundred authors on the rise and progress of scenic representation in Greece. I shall, on the contrary, confine myself chiefly to those parts of the subject which others have either altogether neglected, or treated in a concise and unsatisfactory manner. It would, nevertheless, be beside my purpose to attempt the clearing up of all such difficulties as occur in the accounts transmitted to us of the Hellenic drama; and, in fact, notwithstanding the laborious investigations into which I have been compelled to enter, I feel that there are many points upon which I can throw no new light, and which appear likely for ever to baffle the ingenuity of architects and scholars.

Dionysos, being a deity connected with agriculture, his worship naturally took its rise, and for a long time prevailed chiefly, in the country. His festivals were celebrated with merriment; and, the power of mimicry being natural to man, the rustics, when congregated to set forth the praise of their tutelar god, easily glided into the enactment of a farcical show. And dramatic exhibitions at the outset were little superior to the feats of Punch, though, so great was their suitableness to the national character, that, in the course of time, every town of note had its own theatre, as it had of old its own dithyrambic bard;^[864] and dramatic writers were 221multiplied incomparably beyond what they have been in any other country.

Both tragedy and comedy,^[865] properly so called, took their rise in Attica, and there only, in the ancient world, flourished and grew up to perfection. The theatre, in fact, formed at length a part of the constitution, and, probably, the worst part, its tendency being to foster personal enmities, to stir the sources of malice, and, while pretending to purge off the dross of the passions by the channels of sorrow and mirth, to induce habits of idleness and political apathy, by affording in the brilliant recesses of a mock world a facile refuge from the toils and duties of the real one. Nevertheless, it may be curious to open up a view into that universe of shadows wherein the vast creations of Æschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, of Aristophanes, and Menander displayed themselves before the eyes of the Athenians, with a costly grandeur and magnificence never equalled save in imperial Rome.

It has been already remarked, that to the Dionysiac theatre of Athens the architectural speculations of Vitruvius on dramatic edifices apply, this building having constituted the model on which similar structures were afterwards erected.^[866] By carefully studying its details, therefore, we shall be enabled to form a tolerably just conception of all the theatres once found in Greece, though each, perhaps, may have been slightly modified in plan, general arrangement, 222and decorations, by the peculiarities of the site, and the science or taste of its architect.

The great theatre of Bacchos, partly scooped out of the rock on the face of the hill at the south-eastern angle of the Acropolis, stretched forth, on solid piers of masonry, a considerable distance into the plain, and was capable of containing upwards of thirty thousand people. The diameter, accordingly, if it did not exceed, could have fallen little short of five hundred feet.^[867] For we are not to suppose that, while Sparta,^[868] and Argos, and Megalopolis, cities comparatively insignificant, possessed theatres of such dimensions, Athens, incomparably the largest and most beautiful of Hellenic capitals, would have been content with one of inferior magnitude.^[869]

To determine accurately the various parts of the theatre, and thus affix a distinct meaning to every term connected with it, has exercised the ingenuity of critics and architects for the last three hundred years, still leaving many difficulties to be overcome. I can scarcely hope in every case to succeed where they have failed. But the following explanation may, perhaps, convey of its interior an idea sufficiently exact for all practical purposes.

Supposing ourselves to be standing at the foot of the Katatomè,^[870] a smooth wall of rock, rising perpendicularly from the back of the theatre to the superimpending fortifications of the Acropolis, we 223behold on either hand, surmounted by porticoes, lofty piers of masonry projecting like horns down the rocky slope into the plain and united at their extremities by a wall of equal height, running in a straight line from one point of the horseshoe to the other. The space thus enclosed is divided into three principal parts,—the amphitheatre for the spectators, the orchestra,^[871] filling all the space occupied by the modern pit, for the chorus, and the stage, properly so called, for the actors. Each of these parts was again subdivided. Looking down still from the Katatomè, we behold the benches of white marble, sweeping round the whole semicircle of the theatre, descend like steps to the level of the orchestra, and intersected at intervals by narrow straight passages converging towards a point below.^[872] A number of the upper seats, cut off, by an open space extending round the whole semicircle, from the rest, was set apart for the women. Other divisions were appropriated to other classes of the population, as the tier of seats immediately overlooking the orchestra to the senators, or dicasts, another portion to the youth, another to foreigners and the guests of the state, while the remainder was occupied by the dense mass of citizens of all ages,^[873] with crowns of flowers on their heads.

Above the level of the most elevated range of seats, and stretching round the whole sweep of the edifice,^[874] arose a spacious portico,^[875] designed to afford 224shelter to the spectators during the continuance of a sudden shower. Another range of porticoes extended along the small lawn or grove within the limits of the theatre, at the back of the stage, so that there was little necessity for the Athenian people to take refuge, as some have imagined, from the weather in the public buildings, sacred or civil, in the vicinity.

It would appear from an expression in Pollux,^[876] that the lower seats of the theatre, appropriated to persons of distinction, were covered with wood,^[877] notwithstanding which, it was usual, in the later ages of the commonwealth, for rich persons to have cushions brought for them to the theatre by their domestics,^[878] together with purple carpets for their feet. Theophrastus, accordingly, whom few striking traits of manners escaped, represents his flatterer snatching this theatrical cushion from the slave, and adjusting and obsequiously smoothing it for his patron.^[879] To render their devotion to Dionysos still less irksome, it was customary to hand round cakes and wine during the representation, though, like Homer’s 225heroes, they were careful to fortify themselves with a good meal before they ventured abroad. We are informed, moreover, that when the actors were bad there was a greater consumption of confectionary, the good people being determined to make up in one kind of enjoyment what they lost in another. Full cups, moreover, were habitually drained on the entrance and exit of the chorus.^[880]

The orchestra, being considerably below the level of the stage, had in the middle of it a small square platform, called the Thymele,^[881] sometimes regarded as a bema on which the leader of the chorus mounted when engaged in dialogue with the actors; sometimes as an altar on which sacrifice was offered up to Dionysos. That part of the orchestra which lay between the Thymele and the stage was denominated the Dromos, while the name of Parodoi was bestowed on those two spacious side-passages,^[882] the one from the east, the other from the west, at the extremities of the tiers of seats which afforded the chorus ample room for marching in and out in rank and file, in the quadrangular form it usually affected.

At the extremity of the orchestra a pier of masonry called the Hyposcenion, adorned with columns and statues, rose to the level of the stage, where a most intricate system of machinery and decoration represented all that was tangible to sense in the creations of the poet. The stage was divided into two parts; first, the Ocribas or Logeion,^[883] floored with boards, and hollow beneath, for the purpose of reverberating the voice; second, the Proscenion,^[884] a broader parallelogram of solid stonework, 226necessary to support the vast apparatus of machinery and decoration required by the character of the Grecian drama. The descent from the stage^[885] into the orchestra was by two flights of steps situated at either extremity of the Logeion, at the point where the Parodoi touched upon the Dromos. Beyond the Proscenion arose the Scene,^[886] properly so called, the aspect of which was constantly varied, to suit the requirements of each successive piece. In most cases, however, it represented the front of three different edifices, of which the central one, communicating with the stage by a broad and lofty portal, was generally a palace. Sometimes, as in the Philoctetes, this portal was converted into the mouth of a cavern,^[887] opening upon the view, amid the rocks and solitudes of Lemnos, while in other plays it formed the entrance to the mansion of some private person of distinction, but was always appropriated to the principal actor. The building on the right assumed in comedy the appearance of an inn, through the door of which the second actor issued upon the stage, while the portal on the left led into a ruined temple, or uninhabited house. In tragedy the right hand entrance was appropriated to strangers, while on the left was that of the female apartments, or of a prison.^[888]

Upon the stage, in front of the doors, stood an altar of Apollo Aguieus, and a table covered with cakes and confectionary,^[889] which appears sometimes to have been regarded as the representative of that ancient table, on which, in the simplicity of Prothespian 227times, the solitary actor mounted when engaged in dialogue with the chorus.

When the stage was fitted up for the performance of comedy, there stood near the house a painted scene representing a large cattle-shed, with capacious double gates, for the admission of waggons and sumpter oxen, with herds and droves of asses, when returning from the field. In the Akestriæ of Antiphanes,^[890] this rustic building was converted into a workshop. Beyond each of the side-doors on the right and left were two machines,^[891] one on either hand, upon which the extremity of the periactoi abutted. The scene on the right represented rural landscapes, that on the left prospects in the environs of the city, particularly views of the harbour. On these periactoi,^[892] were represented the marine deities riding on the waves, and generally all such objects as could not be introduced by machinery. By turning the periactoi on the right, the situation was changed, but when both were turned a wholly new landscape was placed before the eye. Of the parodoi, or side-passages, that on the right led from the fields, from the harbour, or from the city, as the necessities of the play required, while those arriving on foot from any other part entered by the opposite passage, and, traversing a portion of the orchestra, ascended the stage by the flights of steps before mentioned.

The machinery^[893] by which the dumb economy of the play was developed consisted of numerous parts, highly complicated and curious. To avoid labour, and, perhaps, some tediousness, these might be passed over with such a remark as the above, but this would be to escape from difficulties not to diminish them. I shall descend to particulars.

First, and most remarkable, was that machine called an Eccyclema,^[894] much used by the ancients when 228scenes within-doors were to be brought to view. It consisted of a wooden structure, moved on wheels, and represented the interior of an apartment. In order to pass forth through the doors, it was formed less deep than broad, and rolled forth sideways, turning round afterwards, and concealing the front of the building from which it had issued. The channels in the floor, which were traversed by the wheels, doubtless concealed beneath the lofty basis, received the name of Eiscyclema.^[895] Sometimes, as in the Agamemnon, it presented to view “the royal bathing apartment with the silver laver, the corpse enveloped in the fatal garment, and Clytemnestra, besprinkled with blood, and holding in her hand the reeking weapon, still standing with haughty mien over her murdered victim.”^[896] On other occasions a throne, a corpse, the interior of a tent, the summit of a building, were exhibited; and in the Clouds of Aristophanes the interior of Socrates’ house was laid open to the spectators, containing a number of masks, gaunt and pale, the natural fruit of philosophy.^[897] It should be remarked that the Eccyclema issued through any of the doors, as the piece required the cells of a prison, the halls of a palace, or the chambers of an inn, to be placed before the eyes of the audience.

That peculiar machine in which the gods made their appearance,^[898] or such heroes as enjoyed the privilege of travelling through the air,—Bellerophon, for example, and Perseus,—stood near the left side-entrance, and, in height, exceeded the stone skreen at the back of the stage. This, in tragedy, was denominated Mechanè, and Kradè in comedy,^[899]—in 229this case resembling a fig-tree, which the Athenians called Kradè. The watch-tower, the battlements, and the turret, were constructed for the use of those watchmen, such as the old man in the Agamemnon, who looked out for signals, or indications of the coming foe. The Phructorion^[900] was a pharos, or beacon-tower. Another portion of the stage was the Distegia, a building two stories high in palaces, from the top of which, in the Phœnissœ of Euripides,^[901] Antigone beholds the army. It was roofed with tiles, (and thence called Keramos,) which they sometimes cast down upon the enemy. In comedy, libertines and old women, or ladies of equivocal character, were represented prying into the street for prey from such buildings.

The Keraunoskopeion^[902] was a lofty triangular column, which appears to have been hollow, and furnished with narrow fissures, extending in right lines from top to bottom. Within seem to have been a number of lamps, on stationary bases, from which, as the periactos whirled round, sheets of mimic lightning flashed upon the stage from behind the scenes.

The construction of the Bronteion,^[903] or thunder magazine, I imagine to have been nearly as follows:—a number of brazen plates, arranged one below another, like stairs, descended through a steep, vaulted passage behind the scene, into the bottom of a tower, terminating in a vast brazen caldron. From the edge of this, a series of metallic apertures,^[904] probably spiral, pierced the tower wall, and opened without in funnels, like the mouths of trumpets.

When some deity was required to descend to earth in the midst of lightning and sudden thunder, the Keraunoskopeion was instantaneously put in motion, and showers of pebbles from the sea-shore were hurled 230down the mouth of the Bronteion, and, rolling over the brazen receptacles, produced a terrific crash, which, with innumerable reverberations, was poured forth by the Echeia upon the theatre.^[905]

In a lofty gallery called the Theologeion, extending over the marble skreen at the back of the stage, appeared the gods, when the drama required their presence; and hence, I imagine, the Hebrew colony which makes its appearance nightly near the roof of our own theatres have obtained the name of gods. Here Zeus, and the other deities of Olympos, were assembled in that very extraordinary drama of Æschylus, the Psychostasia, or weighing in the balance the souls of Achilles and Hector.

They employed in the theatre the machine called a Crane,^[906] the point of which being lowered, snatched up whatever it was designed to bear aloft into the air. By means of this contrivance, Eos, goddess of the dawn, descended and bore away the body of Memnon, slain by Achilles before Troy. At other times strong cords, so disposed as to resemble swings, were let down from the roof, to support the gods or heroes who seemed to be borne through the air.

Though by turning the Periactoi three changes of scene could be produced, many more were sometimes required, and, when this was the case, new landscapes were dropped, like hangings, or slided in frames in front of those painted columns. These usually represented views of the sea, or mountain scenery, or the course of some river winding along through solitary vales, or other prospects of similar character, according to the spirit of the drama.

The position of the Hemicycle is more difficult to comprehend. It appears to have been a retreating semicircular scene, placed facing the orchestra, and masking the marble buildings at the back of the stage, when a view was to be opened up into some distant part of the city, or shipwrecked mariners 231were to be exhibited buffeting with the waves. Not very dissimilar was the Stropheion,^[907] which brought to view heroes translated to Olympos, or on the ocean, or in battle slain, where change of position with respect to the spectator was produced by the rotatory motion of the machine.

The position of the Charonian staircase,^[908] by which spectres and apparitions ascended from the nether world, is exceedingly difficult to be determined; but that it was somewhere on the stage appears to me certain, notwithstanding the seeming testimony of Pollux to the contrary. The hypothesis which makes the ghosts issue from a door immediately beneath the seats of the spectators, and rush along the whole depth of the orchestra, among the chorus and musicians, is, at any rate, absurd. It must have been somewhere towards the back of the stage, near the altar of Loxios, the table of shew-bread and those sacred and antique images which in certain dramas were there exhibited. Here, likewise, was the trap-door, through which river-gods issued from the earth, while the other trap-door, appropriated to the Furies, seems to have been situated in the boards of the Logeion, near one of the flights of steps leading down into the orchestra.

The above synopsis of the machinery and decorations employed by the Greeks in their theatrical shows may, possibly, from its imperfection, suggest the idea of a rude and clumsy apparatus. But, as the arts of poetry, sculpture, painting, and architecture reached in Greece the highest perfection, and, as this perfection was coëtaneous with the flourishing state of the drama, it is impossible to escape the conviction, that the art of scene-painting and the manufacturing of stage machinery, likewise, underwent all the improvements of which by their nature they are susceptible. For, in the first place, it is not easy to suppose, that a people, so fastidious 232as were the Athenians, would have tolerated in the theatre displays of ignorance and want of skill which everywhere else they are known to have overwhelmed with contempt and derision; more especially as, in the first place, the landscapes and objects represented were usually those with which they were most familiar, though the fancy of the poet sometimes ventured to transport them to the most elevated and inaccessible recesses of Mount Caucasus, to the summit of the celestial Olympos, to the palaces and harems of Persia, to the wilds of the Tauric Chersonese,^[909] or even to the dim and dreary regions of the dead. The names, nevertheless, of few scene-painters, besides Agatharchos,^[910] have come down to us, though it is known, that, in their own day, they sometimes divided with the poet the admiration of the audience, and, on other occasions, enabled poets of inferior merit to bear away the prize from their betters.

The character, however, of stage-scenery differed very widely in tragedy, comedy, and satyric pieces,^[911] usually consisting, in the first, of façades of palaces, with colonnades, architraves, cornices, niches, statues, &c.; in comedy, of the fronts or courts of ordinary houses, with windows, balconies, porticoes, &c.; while, in the satyric drama, the fancy of the painter and decorator was allowed to develope before the audience scenes of rural beauty remote from cities, as the hollows of mountains shaded with forests, winding valleys, plains, rivers, caverns, and sacred groves.

Of the Grecian actors,^[912] whose business and profession next require to be noticed, too little by far is known, considering the curious interest of the subject. Their art, however, would appear to have sprung from that of the rhapsodists, who chanted 233in temples, during religious festivals, and afterwards in the theatres, the heroic lays of Greece. To a certain extent, indeed, the rhapsodist was himself an actor. His art required him to enter deeply into the spirit of the poetry he recited, to suit to the passion brought into play the modulations and inflexions of his voice, his tone, his looks, his gesture, so as vividly to paint to the imagination the picture designed by the poet, and sway the whole theatre by the powerful wand of sympathy through all the gradations of sorrow, indignation, and joy.^[913] By some writers, accordingly, the rhapsodist is apparently confounded with the actor, that is, he is considered an actor of epics,^[914] though in reality his imitations of character were partial and imperfect.

Actors formed at Athens part of a guild, or company, called the Dionysiac artificers,^[915] among whom were also comprehended rhapsodists, citharœdi, citharistæ, musicians, jugglers, and other individuals^[916] connected with the theatre. These persons, though for the most part held in little estimation, were yet somewhat more respectable than at Rome, where to appear on the stage was infamous.^[917] Like the rhapsodists, they generally led a wandering life, sometimes appearing at Athens,^[918] sometimes at Corinth, 234or Sicyon, or Epidauros, or Thebes, after the fashion approved among the strollers of our own day. In the course of these wanderings they now and then fell in with rare adventures, as in the case of that company of comedians which, on returning from Messenia towards the Isthmus, was met by king Cleomenes and the Spartan army near Megalopolis.^[919] To exhibit the superiority of his power and his contempt for the enemy, Cleomenes threw up, probably with turf and boards, a temporary theatre, where he and his army sat all day enjoying the jokes and wild merriment of the stage, after which, he bestowed, as a prize, upon the principal performers, the sum of forty minæ, or about one hundred and sixty pounds sterling.

About this period, however, it was usual for the armies of Greece, republican as well as royal, to be followed by companies of strollers, jugglers, dancing girls, and musicians.^[920] Even in the army of Alexander, when proceeding on the Persian expedition, the “flatterers of Dionysos”^[921] were not forgotten; in fact, the son of Philip set a high value upon the performances of these gentlemen, and with truly royal munificence allowed them to enjoy their full share of the plunder of the East. Thus, when Nicocreon, king of Salamis, and Pasicrates, king of Soli,^[922] played the part of Choregi in Cyprus, in getting up certain tragedies there performed for the amusement of Alexander, and the actors, Thessalos, and Athenodoros 235the Athenian, contended for the prize; he was piqued at the victory of the Athenian, and, though he commended the judges for bestowing the prize on him whom they regarded as the best performer, said, he would have given a part of his kingdom rather than have beheld Thessalos overcome by a rival.

Afterwards, when Athenodoros was fined by his countrymen for absenting himself from Athens during the Dionysiac festival, evidently contrary to the statutes in that case made and provided, Alexander paid the fine for his humble friend, though he refused to make application to the people for its remission.

An anecdote related of Lycon of Scarphe, also shows the high value set by the Macedonian prince upon the amusements of the stage, and the influence exercised over his mind by the Dionysiac artificers, though, according to Antiphanes, he wanted the taste to discriminate between a good play and a bad one. The Scarpheote being one day in want of money, as actors sometimes are, introduced into the piece he was performing a line of his own making, beseeching the conqueror to bestow on him ten talents; Alexander, amused by his extravagance, or captivated perhaps, by the flattery which accompanied it, at once granted his request, and thus upwards of two thousand four hundred pounds of the public money were expended for the momentary gratification of a prince.^[923]

The philosophers, almost of necessity, thought and spoke of these wandering performers with extreme contempt. Plato observes, that they went about from city to city collecting together thoughtless crowds, and, by their beautiful, sonorous, and persuasive voices, converting republics into tyrannies and aristocracies. Aristotle endeavoured to account for their evil character and agency.^[924] They 236were worthless, he says, because of all men they profited least by the lessons of reason and philosophy, their whole lives being consumed by the study of their professional arts, or passed in intemperance and difficulties.

Nevertheless, even among them there were different grades, some aiming at the higher walks of tragedy and comedy; while others were content to declaim rude, low songs, seated on waggons like mountebanks during the Lenæan festival.^[925] Nor must this fashion be at all regarded as Prothespian, since it prevailed down to a very late period. And as in every thing the Greeks aimed at excellence and distinction, so even here we find that there was a contest between the poets who wrote the comic songs sung by these humble performers from their waggons.^[926]

The various classes of actors known to the ancients were numerous. Among the lower grades were the Magodos, and the Lysiodos,^[927] who though confounded by some, appear clearly to have been distinct; the former personating both male and female characters; the latter female characters only, though disguised in male costume. But the songs, and every other characteristic of their performances, were the same. The spirit of the coarse satirical farces they acted forbids my explaining their nature fully.

There were even several authors who attained a “bad eminence” in this department of literature, which especially affected the Ionic dialect, as Alexander, the Ætolian,^[928] Pyretos of Miletos, a city noted for its dissolute characters, and Alexos, who obtained 237on this account an opprobrious sobriquet. The most remarkable, however, of this vicious brood would appear to have been Sotades^[929] the Maronite, and his son Apollonios who wrote a work on his father’s poems. Sotades was probably the original imitated by Pietro Aretino, who obtained in modern times a like reputation, though timely penitence may have snatched him from a similar end. The ancient libeller, enacting the part of Thersites, fastened with peculiar delight on the vices of princes, not from aversion to their manners, but because such scandal paved the way to notoriety. Thus at Alexandria, he covered Lysimachos with obloquy, which, when at the court of Lysimachos, he heaped upon Ptolemy Philadelphos. His punishment, however, exceeded the measure of his offences. Being overtaken in the island of Caunos by Patrocles, one of Ptolemy’s generals, the obsequious mercenary caused him to be enclosed in a leaden box and cast into the sea.^[930]

The Magodos, then, was a wandering farce actor, not unlike the tumbling mountebanks one sometimes sees in France and southern Europe. He travelled about with an apparatus of drums, cymbals, and female disguises, sometimes impersonating women, sometimes adulterers or the mean servants of vice; and the style of his dancing and performances corresponded with the low walk he selected, being wholly destitute of beauty or decorum. It seems necessary, therefore, to adopt the opinion of Aristoxenos, who considered the art of the Hilarodos as a serious imitation of tragedy; that of the Magodos as a comic parody, brought down to the level of the grossly vulgar. The latter art would appear to have derived its name from the charms, spells, or magical songs chanted by the mountebanks who likewise pretended to develope the secrets of pharmaceutics.

238Superior in every way to the Magodos and Lysiodos was the Hilarodos,^[931] who, though a wandering singer like the Italians and Savoyards of modern Europe, affected no little state, and was evidently treated with some respect. His costume, in conformity with the popular taste, displayed considerable magnificence, consisting of a golden crown, white stole and costly sandals, though in earlier ages he appeared in shoes. He was usually accompanied by a youth or maiden who touched the lyre as he sung. The style of his performances was decorous and manly. When a crown was given him in token of approbation by the audience, it was bestowed on the Hilarodos himself, not on the musician.

A class of actors existed, also from very remote times, among the Spartans. They were called Deikelistæ,^[932] and their style of performing showed the little value set upon the drama at Sparta. The poetry of the piece, if poetry it could be called, was extempore and of the rudest description, and the characters were altogether conformable. Sometimes the interest of the play turned upon a man robbing an orchard, or on the broken Greek of an outlandish physician, whom people respected for his gibberish. This weakness, prevalent of course at Athens also, is wittily satirised by Alexis in his Female Opium Eater.

239The Deikelistæ, however, were not confined to Laconia, but, under various names were known in most other parts of Greece. Thus, at Sicyon, they obtained the appellation of Phallophori, elsewhere they were called Autocabdali, or Improvisator; while in Italy, (that is, among the Greek colonists,^[934]) they were known by the name of Phlyakes.^[935] By the common people they were called the wise men (σοφίσται), upon the same principle that actors in France are known by the name of artistes. The Thebans, renowned for the havoc they made in the language of Greece, denominated them the Voluntaries, alluding proleptically perhaps to the “voluntary principle.” Semos, the Delian, draws an amusing picture of these Improvisatori. Those performers, he says, who are called Autocabdali made their appearance on the stage, crowned with ivy, and poured forth their verse extempore. The name of Iambi was afterwards bestowed, both on them and their poems. Another class who were called Ithyphalli,^[936] wore those masks, which on the stage were appropriated to drunkards, with crowns of ivy and flowered gloves upon their hands. Their chitons were striped with white, and over these, bound by a girdle at the loins, they wore a Tarentine pelisse descending to the ankle. They entered upon the stage by the great door appropriated to royal personages, and, advancing in silence across the stage, turned towards the audience and exclaimed,—

240The Phallophori made their appearance unmasked, shading their face with a drooping garland of wild thyme, intermingled with acanthus-leaves, and surmounted by an ample crown of ivy, with violets appearing between its glossy dark foliage. Their costume was the caunacè. Of these actors, some entered through the side-passages, others through the central door, advancing with measured tread, and saying,—

After which, skipping forward, they made a halt and showered their sarcasms indiscriminately on whomsoever they pleased, while the leader of the troop moved slowly about, his face bedaubed with soot.^[937]

The superior classes of performers, whether actors or musicians, seem to have been held in much estimation, and to have been still more extravagantly paid than in our own day. Thus Amœbæos, the Citharœdos, who lived near the Odeion at Athens, received, but at what period of the republic is not known, an Attic talent a day, as often as he played in public.^[938] Music, however, was always in high estimation in Greece, where the greatest men, though they did not seek to rival regular professors in skill, yet learned to amuse their leisure with it. Thus the Homeric Achilles plays on the lyre, the sounds of which could not only cure diseases of the mind but of the body. A similar belief existed among the Israelites, as we learn from the example of Saul.

Though talent must have been always respected in an actor, it appears to me that anciently they 241made comparatively little figure, while there were great poets to excite admiration. But, afterwards, when dramatic literature had sunk very low, the actor usurped the consideration due to the poet, as has long been the case in this country. They then contended for the prize in the tragic contests,^[939] and began to entertain a high opinion of their own merits. In fact, the ignorant being better calculated to feel than to judge, the actors often obtained the first prizes in the games, and were held in higher estimation than the poets themselves.^[940]

Thus persuaded of their own importance, they gradually exercised over the poor devils who composed plays for them, much the same tyranny as that in our own age complained of by the poetical servants of the theatre. That is, they despotically interfered with the framing of the plot, with the succession of the scenes, and procured episodes to be introduced, in order that they might show off their peculiar abilities. This is evident from a passage in Aristotle’s Politics,^[941] where he observes that the celebrated actor Theodoros would allow no inferior performer to appear before him on the stage, knowing the force of first impressions; from which it is evident that the author was compelled to yield to his caprice.

Antiquity has preserved the names of many celebrated actors, of whom several played a conspicuous though sometimes a dishonourable part in the great theatre of the world. Thus Aristodemos, who performed the first character alternately with Theodoros, became afterwards a traitor and betrayed the state to Philip. Such too was the case with Philocrates and Æschines, both actors,^[942] and both rogues. Satyros, a comedian of the same period, appears to have been a man of high character and honour, who in consequence obtained the friendship of Demosthenes.Demosthenes. 242But the Garrick of that age seems to have been Theocrines,^[943] who by many, however, is supposed to have afterwards degenerated into a sycophant. Callipedes is chiefly known to us from the anecdote which describes the check his vanity received from Agesilaos. Having acquired great reputation as a tragic actor, he appears to have considered himself as equal at least to any king, and therefore, meeting one day with Agesilaos, he ostentatiously put himself forward, mingled with the courtiers and took much pains to attract his notice. Finding all these efforts useless, his pride was wounded, and going up directly to the Spartan, he said,

“Dost thou not know me, king?”

“Why,” replied Agesilaos, “art thou not Callipedes, the stage-buffoon?”^[944]

The account transmitted to us of Æsopos is somewhat puzzling; he is described as one of the actors^[945] who performed in the tragedies of Æschylus, but is said to have been at the same time a fellow of infinite merriment who turned everything into a jest, a sort I suppose of comic Macbeth. Œagros obtained celebrity in the part of Niobe,^[946] in the tragedy of Æschylus or Sophocles; and Aristophanes enumerates among the pleasures of Dicasts the power, should such an actor appear before them in a court of justice, of requiring him by way of pleading his own cause, to give them a few choice speeches of his favourite tragic queen.

Among the most celebrated actors of antiquity was Polos, a native of Ægina, who studied the art of stage-declamation under Archias, known in his own age by the infamous surname of Phugadotheras, or the “Exile Hunter.”Hunter.”^[947] This miscreant it was, who, 243under the orders of Antipater, pursued Demosthenes to the temple of Poseidon in Calauria, where, to escape the cruelty of the Macedonians, the orator put a period to his own life.

Polos appears to have risen speedily to that eminence which he maintained to the last. A striking anecdote is related of the means by which he worked upon his own feelings, in order the more vehemently to stir those of his audience. On one occasion,^[948] having to perform the part of Electra, he took along with him to the theatre an urn containing the ashes of a beloved son, whom he had recently lost, and thus, instead of shedding, under the mask of the heroic princess, feigned tears over the supposed remains of Orestes, he sprinkled the urn which he bore upon the stage with the dews of genuine and deep sorrow. He eclipsed in reputation all the actors of his time, and was in tragedy what Theocrines, in the preceding age, had been in comedy. His salary, accordingly, was very great, amounting at one time to half a talent per day, out of which, to be sure, he was required to pay the third actor.

He must have led, moreover, a life of much temperance, otherwise he would scarcely have been able to accomplish what is related of him by Philochoros, who says, that, at seventy years of age, a little before his death, he performed the principal parts of eight tragedies in four days. His devotion to his art did not, however, carry him so far as that of the comic poets, Philemon and Alexis, who breathed their last upon the stage at the moment that the crown of victory was placed upon their heads, and so were literally dismissed for the last time from the scene amidst the shouts and acclamations of the admiring multitude.^[949] But the passion of the Greeks for the arts of imitation did not confine itself to the enacting of human character and human feelings. Every species of mimicry found its patrons among them. 244There were, for example, persons who, by whistling, could imitate the notes of the nightingale; and Agesilaos, being once invited to witness the performances of one of these artists, replied somewhat contemptuously, “I have heard the nightingale herself.”^[950] Others, as Parmenion, could counterfeit to perfection the grunt of a pig,^[951] though it is probable, that actors of smaller dimensions were called upon to perform in the comedy of Aristophanes, where the Megarean^[952] brings on the stage his daughters in a sack, and disposes of them as porkers, having first carefully instructed them in the proper style of squeaking. Other actors obtained celebrity^[953] through their power of imitating by their voice the grating or rumbling of wheels, the creaking of axletrees, the whistling of winds, the blasts of trumpets, the modulations of flutes, or pipes, or the sounds of other instruments. It was customary, too, among this class of performers, to mimic, doubtless, in pastoral scenes, the bleating of sheep, and the bark of the shepherd’s dog, the neighing of horses, and the deep bellowing of bulls. They could imitate, moreover, but by what means is uncertain, the pattering of hail-storms, the dash and breaking of water in rivers or seas, with other natural phenomena. It was customary, likewise, as in modern times, to introduce boats and galleys rowed along the mimic waters of the stage, an example of which occurs on an Etruscan Chalcidone, where we behold a little vessel of extraordinary form, with a mariner at bow and stern, paddled along a bank adorned with flowers, while on a platform, occupying the 245boat’s waist, two naked dancers are exhibiting their saltatorial powers.^[954]

Very singular figures were also introduced upon the stage, as wasps, frogs, and birds, of sufficiently large dimensions to be enacted by men; and still stranger personages occasionally made their appearance, as where, in a kind of practical parody of the story of Andromeda,^[955] a whale emerges on the sea beach to snap off an old woman. In another drama the transformation of Argos was represented, after which this luckless male duenna strutted like a peacock before the audience. Io, moreover, was changed into a cow, and Euippe, in Euripides, into a mare. What there was peculiar in the appearance of Amymone it is not easy to conjecture; but she was, possibly, represented in the act of withdrawing the trident of Poseidon from the rock, from which gushed forth three fountains. The rivers, and mountains, and cities introduced^[956] were, doubtless, personifications, such as we still find in many works of art. The giants were simply, in all probability, huge figures of men, made to stalk about the stage, like elephants, with an actor in each leg; and the Indians, Tritons, Gorgons, Centaurs, with other personages of terrible or fantastic aspect, owed their existence, perhaps, to masks, if we may so speak, representing the whole figures.

In what form the Seasons, the Pleiades,^[957] or the nymphs of Mithakos, made their appearance on the stage, we are, I believe, nowhere told, though we possess some information respecting the costume and figure of those other strange persons of the drama, the Clouds,^[958] which came floating in through the Parodoi, enveloped, some in masses of white fleecy gauze, like vapour, others in azure, or many-tinted robes, 246or in drapery like piled-up flocks of wool, to represent the various aspects of the skies; while a hazy atmosphere was probably diffused around them, as around the other gods, by the smoke of styrax or frankincense, burnt in profusion on the altars of the theatre. Here and there, through these piles of drapery, a mask with ruddy pendant nose, like the tail of a lobster, peered forth, and a human voice was heard chanting in richest cadence and modulation the lively anapæsts of the chorus.

In the tragedy of Alcestis, the grim, spectral figure of Death was beheld gliding to and fro through the darkness, in front of the palace of Admetos, while personifications still, if possible, more strange and wild, made their appearance in other dramas,—as Justice, Madness, Frenzy, Strength, Violence, Deceit, Drunkenness, Laziness, Envy.^[959]

Plato, who entertained peculiar notions^[960] respecting the dignity of human nature, banished the theatre from his Republic, because he thought it unbecoming a brave man, who had political rights to watch over and defend, to demean himself by low stage impersonations; and, from his account of what he would not have his citizens do, we learn what by others was done. Sometimes, he observes, the actor was required to imitate a woman, (though this task often devolved upon eunuchs,) whether young or old, reviling her husband, railing at and expressing contempt for the gods, either puffed up by the supposed stableness of her felicity, or stung to desperation by the severity of her misfortunes and sorrows. Other female characters were to be represented, toiling, or in love, or in the pangs of labour; which shows that there was scarcely an act or passage in human life not occasionally imitated on the stage.

Slaves of course performed an important part in the mimic world of the theatre; and with these, Plato, by some unaccountable association of ideas, 247classes smiths, and madmen, and vagabonds, and low artificers of every kind, and the rowers of galleys, and rogues, and cowards, below which his imagination could discover nothing in human nature.

But it was these very characters, with their low wit, buffoonery, and appropriate actions, that constituted the most effective materials of the comic poet, whose creed was, that

They accordingly hesitated at no degree of grotesque buffoonery and extravagance, introducing not only low sausage-sellers with their trays of black-puddings and chitterlings suspended on their paunches,^[961] and drunkards lisping, hiccuping, and reeling about the stage,^[962] but even libertines and profligates carrying on their intrigues in the view of the spectators. An example of this kind of scene occurs on an Etruscan bronze seal dug up near Cortona, which represents an adulterer in conference with his mistress, together with the Leno who brought them together.^[963]

Into the various questions which have been raised respecting the origin and constitution of the chorus it is not my intention to enter. It undoubtedly appears, however, to have arisen amid the festivities of the vintage, when, after the grapes were brought home and pressed and the principal labours of the season concluded,^[964] the rustics delivered themselves up to wild joy and merriment, chanting hymns and performing dances in honour of Dionysos, the protecting god of the vine. At first the number of the persons engaged in these dances could not have been fixed, since it is probable that all the vintagers, both male and female, joined in the sports, as they had previously joined in the labour. And this free and unformal character the Dithyrambic or Dionysiac chorus must have preserved, as long as it remained a mere village pastime. But when afterwards, advancing from one step to another, it assumed something of an artificial form and several chorusses arose which contended with each other for a prize, the performers must have undergone some kind of training,^[965] both in singing and dancing, and then the number of the individuals constituting the chorus was possibly fixed. There appears to be some reason for thinking, that these exhibitions were more ancient than the congregation of the Athenians in one city, and that originally every tribe had its own 249chorus,^[966] since we find that afterwards, when all the inhabitants of Attica came to regard themselves as one people, the Choreutæ were chosen from every tribe five.

By what gradations, however, the village chorus was transformed into the Dithyrambic, the Dithyrambic into the Satyric, and the Satyric again into the Tragic, it now appears impossible to ascertain; but it seems to be quite clear,^[967] that in many ancient tragedies the number of the chorus was fifty,^[968] as, for example, in the “Judgment of the Arms,” by Æschylus, in which silver-footed Thetis appeared upon the stage accompanied by a train of fifty Nereids.^[969] Again, according to certain ancient authors,^[970] in the Eumenides of Æschylus, the chorus of Furies at first amounted to fifty, which, rushing tumultuously, with frightful gestures and horrid masks,^[971] into the orchestra, struck so great a terror into the people, particularly the women^[972] and children, that their number was afterwards reduced by 250law. I am aware that several distinguished scholars think very differently on this subject; some maintaining, that the chorus of Furies always consisted of fifteen, while others reduce their number to three. But, though both these opinions have been supported with much learning and ingenuity, it seems difficult to admit either the one or the other. In the first place, since every thing connected with the stage was in a state of perpetual fluctuation, since the masks and costume were repeatedly altered, since the number of the actors was augmented, since almost every arrangement of the theatre, and every characteristic of the poetry, underwent numerous modifications; the chorus, also, it is probable, submitted to the same alterations or reforms till it settled in that tetragonal figure^[973] and determinate number which it afterwards preserved, as long as the legitimate drama existed in Greece.

In one point of view the history of the chorus is extremely remarkable. At first, and for some time, it constituted in itself the whole of the spectacle exhibited at the Dionysiac festivals, where its songs and dances, accompanied by such rude music as the times afforded, satisfied the demands of the popular taste, and were consequently supposed to be everything that the god required. By degrees, as experience suggested improvements either in the music, in the manner of dancing, or in the materials and composition of the odes, the movements, singing, and appearance of the Chorus, assumed a more artificial form, which was necessarily carried forward many steps in the career of amelioration by the institution of rival bodies of Choreutæ, who, from the natural principle of emulation, endeavoured to excel each other. Next, a detached member of its own body, mounted on a table, enacted the part of a stranger or messenger come to announce something which it imported the servants of Dionysos 251to know. This table was doubtless placed directly in front of the altar of Bacchos, on the steps of which the leader of the chorus was probably mounted in after ages, to hold communication with the stranger; and, as this altar ripened through many gradations into the Thymele, so the aforesaid table rose through innumerable changes into the Logeion. It may be remarked, moreover, that the slope of a hill,^[974] when any such existed near the village, would naturally be chosen on such occasions to afford the peasants an opportunity of standing behind each other on ascending levels, and thus, without inconvenience, beholding the show; and where such natural aid did not present itself, they probably threw up embankments of turf in the semicircular form, which experience proved to be most convenient, and, out of this rude contrivance, grew those vast and magnificent structures, which afterwards constituted one of the noblest ornaments of Greece.

The single actor, detached in the manner we have said from the Chorus, speedily acquired greater importance, and the aid of poetry was called in to frame and adorn his recitals; and as, during the songs and dances of the Chorus, he necessarily remained idle, the idea soon suggested itself that a second actor^[975] would be an improvement, upon which dialogue and the regular drama sprang into existence.

Among the principal duties of the Chorus was the performance of certain dances, simple enough at the outset, but, in process of time, refined and rendered so intricate by art, that it required no little learning and ability to execute all their varied movements with dignity and grace. Somewhat to assist the eye and memory, the whole pattern, as it were, of the dance seems to have been chalked out on the floor 252of the orchestra;^[976] while the greatest possible pains were taken in drilling the Choreutæ to open, file off, and wheel through their labyrinthine evolutions, without confusion. The manner in which these persons usually entered the orchestra, that is to say, ranged in a square body, three in front and five deep, or five in front and three deep, has suggested to some the notion that they represented a military Lochos;^[977] but besides that this is inconsistent with their Dionysiac origin, they did not always preserve this arrangement, but, on some occasions, came rushing in confusedly, while on others they traversed the Parodos in Indian file.

The musicians,^[978] in the Greek theatre, took their station upon and about the steps of the Thymele, which answers as nearly as possible to the position of the orchestra in our own theatres. Here, also, stood the Rhabduchi,^[979] or vergers of the theatre, whose business it was to see that order was preserved among the spectators.

With respect to the dances^[980] performed by the Chorus, they were so numerous, long, and intricate, that it would be here impossible to enumerate and describe the whole. They appear to have conceived the idea of representing almost every passion and action in human life by that combination of movements and gestures which the term pantomime, borrowed from their own language, expresses much better than our word dancing.^[981] A taste, in some respects 253similar, still prevails among the Orientals, whose Ghawazi and Bayadères, though relying rather upon routine and impulse than on the resources of art, perform at festivals and marriages, and before the ladies of the harem, little love-pieces and pastoral scenes, which evidently belong to the class of mimetic dances described by ancient authors.

In tragedy, such as it existed in the polished ages of Greece, the movements were slow and solemn, and, no doubt, full of dignity. The spirit of comedy required brisk and lively, and frequently tolerated, audaciously wanton dances; while the Chorus of the Satyric Drama would appear to have been rude and clownish rather than indecent, indulging in grotesque movements, ludicrous and extravagant gestures, and that rustic and farcical style of mimicry which may be supposed to have prevailed among the rough peasantry of Hellas.

In classing the various dances, it will, perhaps, be sufficient if we divide them into lively and serious,^[982] joining with the latter all such as attempted to embody a symbol or an allegory.

In certain dramas of Phrynichos the Chorus represented a company of wrestlers,^[983] who contrived by the quick, flexible, and varied movements of the dance, to imitate all the accidents of the palæstra. Sometimes they personated a party of scouts in the active look-out for the enemy, each with his right hand curved above the brow: this was one form of the Scops.^[984] On other occasions the dancer mimicked the habits of the 254Scops, or mocking-owl, twirling about the head, and appearing to be absorbed in an ecstasy of imitation, until taken by the fowler. The performance of a piece like this, by a numerous Chorus, sometimes breaking off into a brisk gallopade, sometimes maintaining the same position, jigging, pirouetting, and ducking the crest, must, no doubt, have appeared infinitely comic; and yet it could have been nothing in comparison with the Morphasmos,^[985] in which, not the characteristic peculiarities of a single owl, but those of the whole animal creation were “taken off.” Thus we may suppose that the Hegemon of the Chorus started as a baboon, his next-door neighbour as a hog, a third as a lion, a fourth as an ass, and so on, each man accommodating his voice to the character he had, pro tempore, assumed, and gibbering, grunting, roaring, braying, as he leaped, or gamboled, or bounded, or scampered about the orchestra. Anon the frisky foresters were transformed into slaves, who would seem to have been introduced to the audience pounding something, perhaps onions and garlick, in a mortar.

The Oclasma,^[986] a dance borrowed from the Persians, reminds one strongly of the performances of the negroes in the interior of Africa, the whole Chorus alternately crouching upon its heels, and springing aloft, like the frogs of Aristophanes about the fens of Acheron. Not, perhaps, un-akin to this, were those three frenzied dances, alluded to rather than described by the ancients,—that is to say, the Thermaustris,^[987] which seems to have consisted of a series of violent bounds, like the performances of the Hurons and Iroquois;^[988] the Mongas, which, from the name, probably represented the friskings and caracollings of a jackass; and the Kernophoros,^[989] or dance of the first-fruits, wherein the Chorus appeared upon 255the stage, some bearing censers, others fruit-baskets, evidently in a character resembling that of Bacchanals.

To this species of dance belonged, also, the Hecaterides, in which the performer interpreted his desires or passion by furious gestures of the hands. The Eclactisma was a female dance,^[990] requiring the exertion of great force and agility, its characteristics consisting in flinging the heels backwards above the level of the shoulders. Corresponding, in some measure, to the Eclactisma, was the Skistas,^[991] in which the dancer bounded aloft, crossing his legs several times while in the air. There was a dance, evidently of a very extraordinary description, which they performed to an air called Thyrocopicon,^[992] or “knocking at doors,” possibly representing the frolics of such wild youths as anticipated the scape-graces of our own day. The Mothon was a loose dance, common among sailors; the Baukismos, Bactriasmos, Apokinos, Aposeisis, and Sobas,^[993] were laughable, but lewd dances,^[994] resembling the Bolero and Fandango of the Spaniards.^[995]

The Heducomos was a dance expressive of the outbreaks of joy, and the Knismos,^[996] represented the pinching, struggling, and quarrels of lovers. The Deimalea was a Laconian dance performed by Satyrs and Seileni, skipping and jumping about in a circle.^[997] Another Spartan dance^[998] was the Bryallika, of a ludicrous and licentious character, performed by women in grotesque masks, whence a courtezan at Sparta was denominated, Bryallika. The name of Hypogypones,^[999] was bestowed on certain performers who imitated old men, flourishing their sticks about 256the stage, as we are informed they did in the play of Simermnos.^[1000] Akin in spirit to these were the Gypones,^[1001] who made their appearance in transparent Tarentine robes, and mounted on stilts probably in the form of goats’ feet, to give them a resemblance to the Ægipanes, worshipped as gods of the woods. A peculiar dance in honour of Artemis took its rise in the village of Carya in Laconia, where its invention was attributed to Castor and Polydeukes. No description of it, so far as I know, has come down to us; but the maidens by whom it was performed probably bore, and steadied with one hand, a basket of flowers on their heads, thus forming the model of those architectural figures, still from them called Caryatides.^[1002] The representation of this performance was, doubtless, a favourite subject among Spartan artists or such as were employed by the Spartans, as may perhaps be fairly inferred from the circumstance, that the device on the ring, which, in return for a comb, was presented by Clearchus to Ctesias to be shown to his friends at Lacedæmon, was a dance of Caryatides.^[1003]

Amid the laxity of morals which prevailed in the later ages of Greece, the Pyrrhic,^[1004] once supposed to be peculiar to warriors, degenerated into a dance of Bacchanals, with thyrsi instead of spears, or carrying torches in one hand, while with the other they sportively cast light reeds at one another. The story told in this mimetic performance referred to remote antiquity, and was both curiously and elaborately intricate, comprehending all the adventures of Bacchos and his merry crew during the Indian expedition, and assuming towards the conclusion a tragical form, developing the sad story of Pentheus.^[1005]

Among the dances of a grave character are enumerated 257the Gingra performed like the Podismos to slow and solemn music, the Lion and the Tetracomos,^[1006] a warlike measure performed in honour of Heracles and supposed in its origin to have had some connexion with the Tetracomoi of Attica, that is, the Peiræeus, Phaleron, Oxypeteones, and Thymotadæ.^[1007] We read, moreover, of dances in which the performers represented certain historic or mythological personages, such as Rhodope, Phædra, or Parthenope.^[1008]

The Anthema,^[1009] or Flower-dance, appears to have been chiefly performed in private parties by women, who acted certain characters and chanted, as they moved, the following verses:

The Athenians, however, seem to have imagined that there was nothing in nature which might not be imitated in the dance, by the turns and mazes of which they accordingly sought to represent the movements of the stars.^[1010] A similar fancy, if Lucian may be credited, possessed the Indian Yoghis, who every morning and evening before their doors saluted the sun, at his rising and setting, with a dance resembling his own,^[1011] which, as that luminary no otherwise dances than by turning on its axis, must have been a performance resembling that of the whirling derwishes, whose broad symbolical petticoats are meant, I presume, to represent the disk of the sun. But the dance most difficult of comprehension is that upon which they bestowed the name of 258κόσμου εκπύρωσις,^[1012] or the “Conflagration of the World.” Of the figure and character of this performance antiquity, I believe, has left us no account, though it probably represented, by a train of allegorical personages and movements, the principal events which, according to the Stoics, are to precede the delivering up of the Universe to fire.^[1013] Scaliger,^[1014] who does not attempt to explain this strange exhibition, observes, however, pertinently, that it was a dance in which Nero might have figured, his burning of Rome deserving in some sort to be regarded as a rehearsal of this piece.

There existed among the Spartans^[1015] an elegant dance denominated Hormos, or the Necklace, performed by a chorus of youths and virgins who moved through the requisite evolutions in a row. The line was headed by a young man who executed his part in the firm and vigorous steps proper to his age, and which he would afterwards be expected to preserve in the field of battle. A maiden immediately followed, but, instead of imitating his masculine manner, confined herself to the modest graceful paces and gestures of her sex, and this alternation and interweaving, as it were, of force and beauty, suggesting the idea of a necklace composed of many coloured gems, gave rise to the appellation.

The dance of the Crane,^[1016] among the Athenians, in some respects resembled the above. It was, according to tradition, first invented by Theseus, who 259landing at Delos on his return from Crete, offered sacrifice to Apollo and dedicated the statue of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, after which he joined the young men and women whom he had delivered, in performing a joyous dance^[1017] about the altar of Horns erected by Apollo, from the spoils of his sister’s bow. The Choreutæ, engaged in executing the Geranos, or Crane, formed themselves into one long line with a leader in van and rear, and then, guided by the design on the floor of the orchestra, described by their movements the various mazes and involutions of the Cretan labyrinth, until, having traversed all its intricate passages, they emerged at once, like their great countryman and his companions, into light and safety. Other dances there were, which, however curious they may have been, cannot now be described from the scanty materials left us: such were the dance of Heralds, or Messengers, the dance of the Lily,^[1018] the Chitonea, the Pinakides, the dance of the Graces,^[1019] and that of the Hours, in which the performers floated about with a circle of light drapery held over the head by both hands.^[1020]

If from the dances we now pass to the Choreutæ,^[1021] by whom they were performed, we shall find that they generally made their appearance in the orchestra with golden crowns upon their heads, and habited in gorgeous raiment, frequently interwoven or embroidered with gold.^[1022] The Chorus, however, like the actors, must have constantly varied its costume, to suit the exigencies of the drama; sometimes to perform the part of senators, sometimes of Nereids, sometimes of female suppliants, 260sometimes of urn-bearers, sometimes of clouds, or wasps, or birds. When in the tragedy of Æschylus they were required to personate the Furies, their exterior was the most frightful that can well be imagined,—their long but scanty robes consisting, as has been conjectured, of black lamb-skins, slit up below and exposing their tawny withered limbs to sight, while their blood-stained eyes, livid tongue hanging out, and hair like a mass of knotted serpents, easily accredited the belief of their being infernal existences. Thus habited, with fingers terminating in black claws,^[1023] and grasping a burning torch, they burst upon the view of the spectators, like so many hideous phantoms conjured up by an imagination diseased with terror.

The costume of the actors,^[1024] which some modern writers suppose to have been extremely monotonous,^[1025] was in reality, however, as rich, varied, and characteristic as the masks of which we shall presently have to speak. Gods, heroes, kings, chiefs, soothsayers, heralds, rustics, the hetairæ, and their mothers; gay youths, flatterers, libertines, procurers, cooks, satyrs, slaves, &c., had each and all their appropriate dresses and ornaments, modified, no doubt, from time to time by the change in public taste, and the fancy of the poets. The divinities had almost to be wholly framed by the Dionysiac artificers. Conceived to be of superhuman stature, it was necessary that the actors who represented them should, in the first place, be lifted up on Cothurni,^[1026] or half-boots, the soles of which were many inches high,^[1027] their limbs and bodies were enlarged 261by padding, their arms lengthened by gloves, while their countenances, which might be ignoble or even ugly, were concealed by masks of exquisite ideal beauty, rising above the stately forehead in a mass of curls, which at once corresponded with the nobleness of their features and augmented their colossal height: add to all this robes of purple, or scarlet, or azure, or saffron, or cloth of gold, floating about the person in graceful folds, and training along the floor, and we have some faint idea of the celestial personages who with gemmed sceptres and glittering crowns made their appearance on the Grecian stage.

The queens and heroes,^[1028] who were constantly beheld grouped in converse, or in action, with these sublime dwellers of Olympos, were clad in a costume scarcely less majestic; the former, for example, in times of prosperity, issued forth from their palaces in white garments, with loose sleeves reaching to the elbow, and closed on the upper part of the arm by a succession of jewelled agraffes,^[1029] their tresses confined in front by a golden sphendone, or fillet, crusted with gems, while their robes terminated below in long sweeping trains of purple.^[1030] But when their houses were visited by misfortune, the 262milk-white pelisse was exchanged for one quince-coloured or blue, while the purple train was converted into black. The costume of the kings,^[1031] likewise varied by circumstances, consisted usually of an ample robe of purple, or scarlet, or dark green, descending to the feet, a rich cloak of cloth of gold, or of some delicate colour, adorned with gold embroidery, and a lofty mitre on the head.^[1032] When any of these characters, as Tydeus or Meleager, was engaged in hunting or war, he wore the scarlet or purple mantle called Ephaptis,^[1033] which in action was wrapped about the left arm. Athenæus, in describing the horsemen of Antiochos, observes, that these Ephaptides^[1034] were embroidered with gold and adorned with the figures of animals. Bacchanals and soothsayers, like Teiresias, generally appeared upon the stage in an extraordinary garment, denominated Agrenon,^[1035] formed of a reticular fabric of wool of various colours. Dionysos himself,^[1036] in whose honour the theatre with all its shows was created, descended from Olympos in a saffron-coloured robe compressed below the bosom by a broad flowered belt, and bearing a thyrsus in his hand.^[1037] This girdle, in the case of other gods, or heroes, was sometimes 263replaced by one of gold.^[1038] Persons overtaken by calamity, especially exiles, wore garments dirty-white, or sad-coloured, or black, or quince-coloured, or bluish. The costume of Philoctetes, Telephos, Œneus, Phœnix, Bellerophontes, was ragged. The Seileni appeared in a shaggy Chiton, and the other personages of the Satyric drama in the skins of fawns, or goats, or sheep, or pards, and, sometimes, in the Theraion or Dionysiac garment, and a flowered cloak and a scarlet Himation. Old men were distinguished by the Exomis,^[1039] a white Chiton of mean appearance, having no seam or arm-hole on the left side—young men by the Campulè,^[1040] a scarlet or deep purple Himation,—the parasites by bearing the Stlengis and flask (as country people by the Lagobalon) and by black or sad-coloured robes, except in the play of the Sicyonians, where a person of this class, being about to be married, sported a white garment,—the cook by an Himation double and unfulled,—priestesses by white robes,—comic old women by such as were quince-coloured or dusky, like a cloudy morning sky in autumn,—the mothers of the hetairæ wore a purple fillet about the head,—the dresses of young women were white and delicate,—of heiresses the same with fringes. Pornoboski wore garments of various colours, with flowered cloaks, and carried a straight wand, called ἀρéσκος.^[1041] There were, likewise, female characters which wore the Parapechu and the Symmetria, a chiton reaching to the feet, with a border of marine purple.

We now come to the masks,^[1042] a subject upon which 264much has been written, though very little has been explained. The primary difficulty connected with them is, to determine whether they were so constructed as to resemble a speaking-trumpet,^[1043] which, by narrowing the stream, and compressing, as it were, the particles of the voice, cast it forth condensed and corroborated upon the theatre,^[1044] which it was thus enabled to penetrate and fill, even to its utmost extremities. My own opinion, after bestowing much attention upon the subject, is, that the mask was in reality so constructed as to communicate additional force and intensity to the voice; but whether by roofing or encircling the artificial mouth by metallic plates, or thin laminæ of the stone called Chalcophonos,^[1045] it is now scarcely possible to determine. Be this, however, as it may, there existed in some theatres other contrivances for conveying and augmenting the volume of the actor’s voice; these were the Echeia,^[1046] vases generally of metal, finely toned, and arranged according to the musical scale, in a succession of domed cells,^[1047] running in diverging lines up the hollow face of the theatre. They rested with one edge upon a smooth and polished pavement, the mouth outward, and the external edge reposing on the summit of a small, blunt obelisk,^[1048] while a low opening in each cell enabled the resonances, or echoes, thus created, to issue forth, and fill the air with 265sound,^[1049] which, however the fact may be accounted for, produced no isolated reverberations, no confusion.

The materials wherewith the masks were constructed varied, no doubt, considerably in different ages;^[1050] but that they were ever manufactured of bronze or copper is scarcely credible, if we reflect upon the weight of so voluminous an apparatus, covering the entire head and neck, composed of either of those metals. Such metallic specimens as have come down to us are to be regarded simply as model-masks, or as works of art, designed by the statuary as ornaments. The intention, at first, of this disguise being to give additional boldness and self-confidence to the actor, by concealing from his neighbours the shamefacedness which a raw performer would sometimes naturally feel while strutting about in imperial robes, and pouring forth the sesquipedalia verba of Pelias and Telephos, they were contented to cover the face with a piece of linen, having openings for the eyes and a breathing-place.^[1051] To this appears to have succeeded a mask manufactured from the flexible bark of certain trees,^[1052] shaped, of course, and coloured to resemble the human countenance. The next step was to employ wood, some kinds of which, while possessing the advantage of extreme lightness, might be wrought with all the delicacy and fineness of a statue, while, better than any other material, it would receive that smooth and polished enamel by which were represented the texture^[1053] and complexion of the skin. Specimens of masks of this kind have been found among nations in a very rude state; among the 266inhabitants, for example, of Nootka Sound, whose dress, we are told,^[1054] “is accompanied by a mask representing the head of some animal: it is made of wood, with the eyes, teeth, &c., and is a work of considerable ingenuity. Of these masks they have a great variety, which are applicable to certain circumstances and occasions. Those, for example, which represent the head of the otter or any other marine animals, are used only when they go to hunt them. In their war expeditions, but at no other time, they cover the whole of their dress with large bear-skins.”

But while the above improvements were going on in the national theatre,^[1055] the rustic drama continued to preserve its original simplicity, the actors to prevent their being recognised, shading their brows with thick projecting crowns of leaves, and daubing their faces^[1056] with lees of wine. Thus disguised they chanted their songs upon the public roads, sitting in a waggon,^[1057] whence the proverb, “he speaks as from the waggon,” i. e. he is shamelessly abusive, which was in fact the case with the comic poets.

The masks were divided into three kinds, the Tragic, the Comic, and the Satyric. Those belonging to Tragedy were again subdivided into numerous classes, representing every marked variety of character, and every stage of human life from childhood to extreme old age. In the highly varied range of countenances thus brought into play, the mask-maker enjoyed abundant opportunities of exhibiting his skill. The hair, of course, was real and adjusted on the mask like a wig,^[1058] differently fashioned 267and coloured according to the age, habits, and complexion of the wearer. In some cases it was gathered together and piled up on the forehead,^[1059] in a triangular figure,^[1060] adding many inches to the actor’s stature; at other times it was combed smoothly downwards, from the crown, twisted round a fillet and disposed like a wreath about the head as we sometimes find it in the figures of Asclepios and the philosopher Archytas. Some characters were represented wholly bald, with a garland of vine-leaves or ivy wreathed about the brow,^[1061] others were simply bald in front, while a third class exhibited a bushy fell of hair, something like a lion’s mane. Young ladies displayed a profusion of pendant curls, kept in order by the fillet or sphendone, or gathered up in nets, or twisted about the head in braided tresses. In representing certain characters the eye-sockets were left open, so that the actor’s eyes could be seen moving and flashing within;^[1062] but on other occasions, when the part of a squinter was to be acted by a performer who did not squint or vice versa, as in the case of Roscius Gallus, the mask-maker must have represented the eyes by glass or some other transparent substance, through which the actor could see his way. This was necessarily 268the case in the part of the poet Thamyris,^[1063] who, like our own Chatterton, had eyes of different colours, one blue, the other black, which, as Aristotle informs us, was common among the horses of Greece.