liant colours.1 Beneath these they wore tunics of various kinds, which, though the fashion afterwards changed, were at first sleeveless, since we find the women, in Aristophanes, suffering the hair to grow under their arm-pits to avoid being discovered when, disguised as their husbands, they should hold up their hands to vote in the assembly.2 Like the women, they affected much variety and splendour in their rings, which were sometimes set with a stone with the portrait engraved thereon of some friend or benefactor, as Athenion wore on one of his the portrait of Mithridates.3 4 In his girdle and shoes, too, the Athenian betrayed his love of splendour. The hair worn long like that of the ladies," was curled or braided and built up in glossy masses on the crown of the head, or arranged artfully along the forehead by golden grasshoppers. But as all this pile of ringlets could not be thrust into the helmet, it was customary in time of war to cut the hair short, which the fashionable young men reckoned among its most serious hardships. Hats' were not habitually worn, though 1 6 Thucyd. i. 6. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 167. Tim. Lex. 188. Aristoph. Eccles. 332. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 879. Lucian. Amor. $ 3. 2 Aristoph. Concion. 60, et Schol. 3 Athen. v. 49.-Even slaves were in the habit of wearing rings set with precious stones, sometimes of three colours, of which several specimens are found in the British Museum. Thus, in Lucian, we find Parmenon, the servant of Polemon, with a ring of this kind on his little finger. Diall. Meret. ix. 2. Cf. Hemster. ad Poll. ix. 96. t. vi. p. 1193. 4 Poll. vii. 92, seq. 5 Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 329. 6 Athen. xii. 5. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 1328. Nub. 971. 7 It is very clear from a passage in Demosthenes (De Fals. Leg. § 72), that hats or caps were sometimes worn in the city. There are those indeed who suppose the word to mean a wig; but Brodæus disposes of this by inquiring whether sick persons would be likely to go to bed with their wigs on as men did with their πιλίδια. Miscell. i. 13. However, I must confess their wearing hats in bed is still less likely. The Boeotians appeared in winter with caps which covered the ears. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 545. On the form of which, see Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 9. 6, with the note of Schneid. t. iii. p. 191. on journeys or promenades undertaken during hot weather they formed a necessary part of the costume. Above all things the Athenian citizen affected extreme cleanliness and neatness in his person, and the same taste descended even to the slaves who in the streets could scarcely be distinguished by dress, hair, or ornaments, from their masters.1 Even the philosophers, after holding out a long time, yielded to the influence of fashion, and, lest their profession should suffer, became exquisites in its defence. Your truly wise man, says an unexceptionable witness in a matter of this kind, has his hair closely shaved, (this was an eastern innovation,) but suffers his magnificent beard to fall in wavy curls over his breast. His shoes, fitting tight as wax, are supported by a net-work of thongs, disposed at equal distances up the small of the leg. A chlamys puffed out effeminately at the breast conceals his figure, and like a foreigner he leans contemplatively upon his staff. 2 But the art of dress appears to have received its greatest improvements in Ionia, where, according to Democritos, the Ephesian, both the garments, at one time in fashion, and the stuffs of which they consisted, were varied with a skill and fertility of invention worthy of a polished people. Some persons, he says, appeared in robes of a violet, others of a purple, others of a saffron colour, sprinkled with dusky lozenges. As at Athens, much attention was bestowed on the hair, which they adorned with small ornamental figures. Their vests were yellow, like a ripe quince, or purple, or crimson, or pure white. Even their tunics, imported from Corinth, were of the finest texture, and of the richest dyes, hyacinthine or violet, flame-coloured or deep sea-green. Others adopted the Persian calasiris, of all tunics 1 Xenoph. de Rep. Athen. i. 10. 2 Athen. xi. 120. On the gorgeous dress of the painter Parrhasios. xii. 62. 3 We find mention made of Persian dresses variegated with the figures of animals. Philost. Icon. ii. 32. the most superb, and there were those among the opulent who even affected the Persian actœa, a shawlmantle of the costliest and most gorgeous appearance. It was formed of a close-woven, but light stuff, bedropped with golden beads in the form of millet-seed, which were connected with the tissue by slender eyes passing through the stuff and fastened by a purple thread.1 Duris, on the authority of the poet Asios, draws a scarcely less extravagant picture of the luxury and magnificence of the Samians, who, on certain festivals, appeared in public adorned, like women, with glittering bracelets, their hair floating on their shoulders, skilfully braided into tresses. The words of Asios preserved in the Deipnosophist are as follow: "Thus proceed they to the fane of Hera, "clothed in magnificent robes, with snowy pelisses, "trailing behind them on the ground. Glistening "ornaments of gold, like grasshoppers, surmount the "crown of their heads, while their luxuriant tresses "float behind in the wind, intermingled with golden "chains. Bracelets of variegated workmanship adorn "their arms, as the warrior is adorned by his shield "thongs." " This excess of effeminate luxury, attended as everywhere else by enervating vices, terminated in the ruin of Samos. Similar manners in the Colophonians drew upon them a similar fate, and so in every other Grecian community; for men never learn wisdom by the example of others, but hurry on in the career of indulgence as if in the hope that Providence might overlook them, or set aside, in their favour, its eternal laws. 1 Athen. xii. 29. 2 Athen. xii. 30. 75 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. 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; and as the polity 1 But even from a fragment of Bacchylides we may infer the magnificence of Grecian houses; for the poor man who drinks wine, he says, sees his house blazing with gold and ivory : χρυσῷ δ' ἐλέφαντί τε Athen. ii. 10. Men had by this time advanced considerably from the state in which they are supposed to have built their huts in imitation of the swallow's nest. Vitruv. ii. 1. 2 Plat. Repub. iv. t. vi. p. 165. Dion Chrysost. i. 262. ii. 459. Dem. cont. Mid. § 44.-Lucian. Amor. § 34. degenerated more and more into ochlocracy, the dwellings of the rich' 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.2 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,3 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.* 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 1 Dem. Olynth. iii. § 9. De Rep. Ord. § 10. 2 Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5. 27. 3 Cf. Athen. i. 28. 4 Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 272. |