BOOK IV.
CHAPTER I.
PRIVATE DWELLINGS.
The opinion appears to prevail among certain writers, that the private dwellings of the Hellenes, or at least of the Athenians, were always mean and insignificant.[261] This imaginary fact they account for by supposing, that nobles and opulent citizens were deterred from indulging in the luxuries of architecture by the form of government and the envious jealousy of the common people. But such a view of the matter is inconsistent with the testimony of history. At Athens, as everywhere else, things followed their natural course. In the early ages of the commonwealth, when manners were simple, the houses of the greatest men in the state differed very little from those of their neighbours. As wealth, however, and luxury increased, together with the developement of the democratic principle, individuals erected themselves mansions vying in extent and splendour with the public edifices of the state;[262] and as the polity degenerated more and more into ochlocracy, the dwellings of the rich[263] increased in size and grandeur, until they at length outstripped the very temples of the gods. A similar process took place at Sparta, where shortly after the Peloponnesian war, the more distinguished citizens possessed suburban villas, which seem to have been of spacious dimensions and filled with costly furniture.[264]
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 with, 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 in Petronius that Trimalchio had his court guarded by a painted mastiff, over which in good square characters were the words “Beware of the dog.”[274]
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 stone, as in the palace of Nestor at Pylos, which, to render them more shining, would appear to have been rubbed with oil.[279] Similar seats are found to this day before the houses of the wealthy at Cairo and other cities of the East, where in the cool of the evening old men habitually take their station, and are joined for the purpose of gossip by their neighbours. In the larger towns of Nubia an open space planted with dates, palms, or the Egyptian fig-tree, more shady and spreading than the oak, and furnished with wooden seats, collects together the elders, who there enjoy what the Englishman seeks in his club, and the Greek found in his lesche—the pleasure of comparing his opinions with those of his neighbours.
When, in after times, this plain porch had been succeeded by a magnificent peristyle or colonnade, the primitive custom of sleeping in the open air was abandoned; but here the master of the house with his guests took their early walk to enjoy the morning sun. It was customary among all ranks at Athens to rise betimes, as it generally is still in the warm countries of the South. Socrates and his young friend, the sophist-hunter,[280] coming to the house of Callias, soon after day-break, find its owner taking the air with several of his guests in the colonnade, the young men moving in the train of their elders, and making way for them as they turn round to retrace their steps. There was usually at Athens a similar peristyle on both sides of the house—one for summer the other for winter, and a door generally opened from the women’s apartment into that communicating with the garden, where the ladies enjoyed the cool air in the midst of laurel copses, fountains, and patches of green sward,[281] interspersed with rose-trees, violet-beds, and other sweet shrubs and flowers.
The town-houses of Homeric times had generally no aulè, but the porch opened directly into the street, since it is here that, in the description of the shield, we find the women standing to behold the dancers and enjoy the music of the nuptial procession.[282] Afterwards, as the taste for magnificence advanced, the whole façade of the corps de logis[283] was richly ornamented, while the outer gates were purposely left open, that the passers-by might witness the splendour of the owner. Occasionally, likewise, the great door, leading from the portico into the house, was concealed by costly purple hangings,[284] which, being passed, you entered a broad passage, having on either side, doors[285] leading into the apartments on the ground floor, and conducting to an inner court, surrounded by a peristyle, where the gynæconitis,[286] or harem, commenced.
The apartments of palaces displayed, even in very early times, the taste of the Greeks for splendour and magnificence. The walls were covered with wainscoting inlaid with gold and ivory, as we still find in the East whole chambers lined with mother-of-pearl.[287] At first, the gold was laid on in thin plates, which, in process of time, led to the idea of gilding.[288] Even Phocion, who affected great simplicity and plainness, had the walls of his house adorned with laminæ of copper,[289] probably in the same style as that subterraneous chamber discovered, during the last century, in the excavations made at Rome. It appears, too, that, occasionally, the walls of the apartments at Athens, as at Herculaneum and Pompeii were decorated with paintings in bright colours,[290] probably in the same style, though as much superior in beauty and delicacy of execution, as art, in the age of Pericles, was superior to art in the days of Nero. Still the paintings discovered in the excavated Italian cities,—sometimes[291] grotesque and extravagant, as where we behold the pigmies making war upon the cranes, winged geniuses at work in a carpenter’s or shoemaker’s shop, or an ass laden with hampers of wine, rushing forward to engage a crocodile, whilst his master pulls him back by the tail—sometimes rural and elegant, consisting of a series of wild landscapes, mountains dotted with cottages, sea-shores, harbours, and baths, Nymphs and Cupids angling on the borders of lakes, beneath trees of the softest and most exquisite foliage,—may enable us to form some conception of the landscapes with which Agelarcos[292] adorned the house of Alcibiades.
The halls and saloons on the ground-floor were paved with marble or mosaic work,[293] which often, if we may judge from the specimens left us by their imitators, represented pictures of the greatest elegance, containing, among other things, likenesses of the loveliest divinities of Olympos.[294] These mosaics were wrought with minute shards of precious marbles of various colours, interspersed with pieces of amber,[295] and, probably, also, of glass, as was the fashion in Italy, where whole hyaline floors have been found consisting either of one piece or of squares so finely joined together, that the sutures were invisible to the naked eye. No mention, I believe, is made in Greek authors of lining the walls of apartments with glass, or even of glass windows,[296] which, however, were common in the cities of Magna Græcia in the age immediately succeeding that of our Saviour. It is extremely probable, however, that as the Greeks were as well acquainted as the Romans with the properties of the lapis specularis;[297] they likewise made use of thin plates of this stone, or talc, or gypsum, as they still do in Egypt for window-panes. So much, indeed, seems inferable from a passage of Plutarch,[298] as, also, that transparent squares of horn were employed for the same purpose, as oyster-shells and oiled paper still are in China. Previously, however, the windows[299] (sometimes square and situated high in the wall, sometimes reaching from the ceiling to the floor) were closed with lattice-work[300] in iron, bronze, or wood, over which, in bad weather, blinds of hair-cloth or prepared leather were usually drawn.
The ceilings at first consisted merely of the beams, rafters, and planks, forming the roof, and supporting the layers of earth or straw that covered it; but, by degrees, the wood-work was carefully painted, and arranged so as to form a succession of coffers and deep sunken panels. Sometimes the whole ceiling consisted of chamfered, or fretted cedar work,[301] or of cypress wood, or was covered with paintings in blue and gold, and supported on columns[302] lofty and deeply fluted for the purpose, as has been ingeniously conjectured,[303] of receiving spears into the semi-cylindrical cavities thus formed. If this idea be well founded, we have a very satisfactory reason of the origin of fluting columns, and it appears to be perfectly consistent with Homer’s account of Odysseus’s chamber, where a number of lances are spoken of standing round a pillar.[304]
The principal apartments, according to the fashion still prevailing in the East, were furnished with divans,[305] or broad immovable seats, running along the walls, which are now stuffed soft atop with cotton, and covered with scarlet or purple, bordered by gold fringe a foot deep. In the Homeric age they would appear to have been of carved wood, inlaid with ivory and gold, and studded with silver nails.[306] For these divans they had a variety of coverings, sometimes skins, at others purple carpets, in addition to which they, as now, piled up, as a rest for the back or elbow, heaps of cushions, purple above, and of white linen beneath.[307] By degrees, these seats became movable and were converted into couches or sofas, manufactured of bronze, or silver, or precious woods, veneered with tortoiseshell.[308] In the palaces of oriental sultans they are sometimes made of alabaster, encrusted with jewels. Somewhere in the more retired parts of the Domos were the picture-gallery and library, of neither of which have we any exact description. The former, however, faced the north, and the latter the west. If the libraries of the Greeks at all resembled in form and dimensions those found at Pompeii, they were by no means spacious; neither, in fact, was a great deal of room necessary, as the manuscripts of the ancients stowed away much closer than our modern books,[309] and were sometimes kept in circular boxes, of elegant form, with covers of turned wood. The volumes consisted of rolls of parchment, sometimes purple at the back,[310] or papyrus, about twelve or fourteen inches in breadth, and as many feet long as the subject required. The pages formed a number of transverse compartments, commencing at the left, and proceeding in order to the other extremity, and the reader, holding in either hand one end of the manuscript, unrolled and rolled it up[311] as he read. Occasionally these books were placed on shelves, in piles, with the ends outwards, adorned with golden bosses,[312] the titles of the various treatises being written on pendant labels.
If we proceed now to the court[313] dividing the Domos from the Thalamos we shall perceive, on both sides of the door leading out of the Andron, flights of steps ascending to the upper chambers where, in the heroic ages, the young men and strangers of distinction usually slept. Thus, in the palace of Ithaca, Telemachos had a bed-chamber on the second story, whence the poet is careful to observe he enjoyed a good prospect.[314] In later times, however, there were, on the ground floor, suites of apartments, denominated Xenon, appropriated to the use of guests, who there lived freely and at ease as in their own houses.
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, therefore, when Theocritus[319] speaks of a “maiden from the Thalamus,” and Phocylides, with the suspicious caution of a more vicious age, advises that young women be kept in “well-locked Thalamoi,” it is clear that the female apartments generally are meant. These were, in Sparta, called οα̈ (which, as is well known, in the common language of Greece, 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 property, such as arms, gold, silver, the wardrobe of both sexes, and even oil and wine. Among the Romans, or, indeed, among the Greeks, of a later age,[324] this step would scarcely have been taken, lest the ladies should have grown too assiduous in their attention to the skins. But in remoter ages these sordid fears had no existence. Accordingly, we find the prudent Odysseus, who apprehended, perhaps, the tricks of his domestics, stowing away his casks of choice old wine in the Thalamos, doubtless, considering it safer there, under the keeping of Euryclea, than it would have been anywhere else in the palace.[325]
In later and more civilized ages, the Thalamos was still used for the same purposes; for, in the establishment of Ischomachos, a pattern of Attic economy, we find that the more valuable portion of the family wardrobe, with the plate and other costly utensils, was there deposited. Corn, according to the suggestions of common sense, they laid up in the driest rooms, wine in the coolest. The apartments into which most sunshine found its way were appropriated to such employments and to the display of such furniture as required much light.[326] Their dining-rooms, where, also, the men usually sat when at home, they carefully contrived so as to be cool in summer and warm in winter, though, in severe weather, a good fire was often found necessary.[327] The same judicious principle commonly regulated the erection of their habitations, which were divided into two sets of apartments, suited to the two great divisions of the year. As we have already remarked, the principal front looked towards the south, that it might catch the rays of the wintry sun, whose more vertical summer beams were excluded by broad verandahs, or colonnades.
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 employed it to excess, bathing as frequently as five or six times a day, and in water so hot as to half scald themselves.[333] Immediately afterwards, to prevent the skin from chapping, they anointed their bodies with oils and perfumed unguents.[334] Occasionally, instead of plunging into the water, they sat upright, as is still the custom in the hammāms of the East, while the water was poured with a sort of ladle on their head and shoulders.
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, and passed over the hand of the attendant; or with a handful of the fine fibres of the Mekka palm-tree combed soft, and filled with fragrant and saponaceous earths, which are rubbed on the skin till the whole body is covered with froth. Similar means were employed in the baths of Greece, and the whole was afterwards cleansed off the skin by gold or silver stlengides, or blunt scrapers somewhat curved towards the point.[337]
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 ran very little risk. The price was usually moderate, though in some cities, as for example at Phaselis, they were in the habit of doubling their charges to foreigners, which drew from a witty sophist a very cutting remark; for his slave disputing with the keeper of the bath, and contending that his master ought not to be charged more than other persons, the sophist, who overheard the dispute, exclaimed, “Wretch, would you make me a ‘Phaselitan for a farthing?’”[342]
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 to the common opinion, that it was furnished with a chimney,[347] and that the smoke was not permitted to find its way through an aperture in the roof. Thus much might be inferred from a passage in the Wasps, when the old dicast, in love with the courts of law, is endeavouring to escape from the restraint imposed on him by his son, by climbing out through the chimney. It is clear that he has got into some aperture, where he is hidden from sight, for hearing a noise in the wall, his son Bdelycleon, cries out, “What is that?” upon which the old man replies, “I am only the smoke.” It is plain, that he would not, like a Hindù Yoghi, be balancing himself in the air, otherwise the young man must have beheld him sailing up towards the roof. But the matter is set entirely at rest by the Scholiast, who observes, that the καπνοδόχη was a narrow channel like a pipe through which the smoke ascended from the kitchen. This explanation has been confirmed by the discoveries of Colonel Leake,[348] who on the rocky slopes of the hill of the Museion and Pnyx, found the remains of a house partly excavated in the rock, in which the chimney still remained.
The same convenience, also, existed in the Roman kitchens,[349] though they would appear to have been unskilfully constructed in both countries, since the cooks complain of the smoke being borne hither and thither by the wind, and interfering with their operations. However, this may have arisen from the numerous small furnaces which, as in France, were ranged along the wall for the purpose of cooking several dishes at once. The chimneys having been perpendicular, as in our old farm-houses, were furnished with stoppers to keep out the rain in bad weather.[350]
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 doors they opened inwards as with us.[356] In the former case it was customary when any one happened to be going forth, to knock, or call, or ring a bell, in order to warn passengers to make way.[357] These doors were constructed of various materials,[358] according to the taste and circumstances of the owner, sometimes of oak, or fir, or maple, or elm; and afterwards as luxury advanced they were made of cedar, cyprus, or even of citron wood, inlaid as in the East, with plates of brass or gold.[359] Mention is likewise made of doors entirely composed of the precious metals; of iron also, and bronze and ivory.
The jambs were generally of wood;[360] but likewise sometimes of brass or marble. The doors were fastened at first by long bars passing into the wall on both sides;[361] and by degrees smaller bolts, hasps, latches, and locks and keys succeeded. For example the outer door of the Thalamos in Homer was secured by a silver hasp, and a leathern thong passed round the handle and tied, perhaps, in a curious knot.[362] Doors were not usually suspended on hinges, but turned, as they still do in the East, upon pivots inserted above into the lintel and below into the threshhold.[363] In many houses there were in addition small half-doors of open wood-work,[364] which alone were commonly closed by day, in order to keep the children from running out, or dogs or pigs from entering. The doors usually consisted of a frame-work, with four or six sunken panels, as with us; but at Sparta, so long as the laws of Lycurgus prevailed, they were made of simple planks fashioned with the hatchet.[365] In the great Dorian capital the custom was for persons desirous of entering a house to shout aloud at the door,[366] which, at Athens,[367] was always furnished with an elegant knocker.[368] Door-handles, too, of costly materials and curious workmanship,[369] bespoke even in that trifling matter the taste of the Greeks.
The materials commonly used in the erection of a house were stones and bricks. In the manufacture of the latter[370] the ancients exhibited more skill and care than we; they had bricks of a very large size, and half bricks for filling up spaces, which prevented the necessity of shortening them with the trowel. Of these some were simply dried in the sun, used chiefly in building the dwellings of the poor.[371] At Utica in Africa there were public inspectors of brick-kilns,[372] to prevent any from being used which had not been made five years. In several cities on the Mediterranean bricks were manufactured of a porous earth, which when baked and painted, as it may be conjectured, on the outside, were so light that they would swim in water.[373] To diminish the weight of bricks, straw was introduced into them in Syria and Egypt, which was altogether consumed in the baking. In roofing such of their houses as were not terraced they employed slates, tiles, and reed-thatch.[374] Possibly, also, the wealthy may have tiled their houses with those elegant thin flakes of marble, with which the roofs of temples were occasionally covered.