Aristophanes, 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 sleeping-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, a 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:

Mention 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 their 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 other 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 may 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 for 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 his 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 little 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]

We 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 composition 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 also 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 specimen 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, quivers 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, the 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 piece 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]