Palace of Odysseus.—Of greater importance is what we are told of the palace of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as its arrangement (pl. jig. i) certainly illustrated the plan of the more elegant habitations of that period, as well as of the one immediately following. The gate opened upon an outer yard, wherein the rubbish of the house and the manure of the neighboring stalls were heaped. The dog-kennel was beside the entrance. Exactly opposite, between the stables and the servants' apart ments, an entry, closed by double doors, led to a square paved court. This was surrounded by a covered portico, on which the rooms on both sides opened. In the centre of the court was the altar of Zeus, guardian of the hearth. The apartment at the extreme left leading into the outer yard (designated by a circle) is supposed to have contained the kitchen. Under the portico, to the right, next to the stables, was the place for the wagons, and on the opposite side were the guest-chambers. The rooms opening on the court served various purposes; one was the bedroom of Telemachus, the king's son.
During the day the men occupied the large, pillared hall, which was connected with the front building by an entry having on its right a bath room, and on the left, by the side of a third apartment, a narrow passage leading to a side yard. The grand hall had a pavement of cement, and its walls were nicely smoothed and decorated with various brazen orna ments. Movable seats and small tables for the individual guests were arranged throughout the hall, for the Greeks at that period took their meals in a different manner from what was customary at a later date.
The hall also contained a fireplace, but its position can no longer be distinctly defined; however, the smoke escaped through an opening iu the middle of the ceiling which at the same time served for the admission of light. The timber of the roof was blackened by the smoke. Back of the men's hall was a smaller one for the queen, surrounded by store rooms and by the apartments of the female servants. Stepping into the side yard, we see the apartment in which the skilful king constructed with his own hands his marriage-bed against the trunk of an olive tree. A kind of second story with an arrangement of rooms was added to the rear part of the house; in these the distressed Penelope sought refuge from her suitors, and there Odysseus kept his secret store of weapons.
In our illustration (pl. 23, fig. 2) we have endeavored to present a diagrammatic sketch of the ground-plan of an ancient Greek palace in accordance with incidental statements in the Odysscy. That it was not, in reality, precisely as we have sketched it is shown by the excavated remains, which are supposed to be those of the royal castle at Ithaca, though only the enclosing walls and the foundation of a strong tower can be distinctly recognized. 'What Homer describes, in fact, is the country seat of an opulent chief of his day.
Citv houses had necessarily to be constructed differently Nv hen they were built inside the city-walls. The outer yard disappeared;
from the street one passed through a narrow passage into the court, or which still, according to ancient custom, had the altar in its centre and the chambers ranged along the sides. They opened into it and also communicated with one another.
In larger buildings a second more spacious passage led into another court (fig. 3), which in its turn was surrounded by the apartments for the women. Covered porticos surrounded one or both of these open spaces. The principal changes related to the distribution and use of the inner apartments, among which in later times we meet picture-galleries, libra ries, reception-rooms, etc. On one side of the second passage we gener ally find the spacious triclinium, or banquet-hall, while on the opposite side the stairs led into the upper story, which was generally erected above this middle wing. Beside the main entrance were rooms for the door keepers and guards, and perhaps also stalls. The apartments of the men and of the women, the andronitis and the gynayonitis, were more strictly separated than even during the patriarchal age.
The ancient wall around the court became the proper wall of the town residence, and was but little altered in its external appearance, for the Greeks knew little more of the use of windows than did the Asiatics. Their dwellings were closed toward the outside, as were those of the latter. Long rows of such walls of different heights, broken only by low doors and here and there by lofty barred peepholes, lined the narrow, irregular streets of the cities. The temples and market-houses and other public buildings alone afforded a pleasant sight to the eye. Here Grecian archi tecture unfolded its whole pomp and splendor. The sight of the Acrop olis from the sea is said to have been an overpowering one. Still, Demosthenes found occasion to reproach his wealthy fellow-citizens be cause their houses rivalled the state buildings.
Greek country-houses always retained some thing of their roomy comfort. Remains of some of them, which have been preserved in certain places of Central Syria, enable us to reconstruct the original building. They belong, however, to the period after the birth of Christ. Plate 23 presents their ground-plans, which can be accurately determined, and also an attempt to exhibit their former exte rior appearance. The plan of a part of the present El-Barah (fig. 9) confirms what has been said, and besides shows how long the original arrangements remained unchanged. It presents the dwellings of a small provincial city enclosed by walls, with only a door leading from the nar row street into the court, which extended to the front of the house. A portico, as shown in elevation on our Plate (fig. 4), formed the entrance of each habitation; the side-buildings were rarely found without such porticos. The dark lines indicate the streets.