Chap. 11.

GRECIAN
aV
fratres Atlienls : aiitea specus ciant jiro domibiis." This, perlia])s, is no more than a tradi-
tionary fable. l*'al)les of this kind, however, often have some foundation in fact. We are
not always inclined to discard them, for we have little more than tradition for the early ex-
cellence of the Athenians in civilisation, a nation among the Greeks who first became a
body politic, and whose vanity caused them to assume the name of AuTox^oi'fs, from a
Ijelief, almost sanctioned by Plato, that their ancestors actually rose from the earth. How
strong the prevailing opinion was of the original superiority of the Athenians, may i)e
gathered from Cicero, in his oration for l-'laccus.
"
Adsunt," he says,
"
Athenienses, undc
humanitas, doctrina, religio, fruges, jura, leges ortte, atque in omnes terras distribute
putantur : de (piorum urbis jjossessione, propter pulchritudinem, etiam inter deos certamen
fuisse ])rodltiim est ; quB vetustate ea est, ut ipsa ex sese suos cives genuisse dicatur." IJut
we shall not attemjit, here, an early history of Greece ; for which this is not the place, and, if
accom))lisl)cd, would little answer our views. The Greeks exhibited but little skill in their
earliest edifices. The temple of Deliihi, mentioned by Homer, in the first book of the
Iliad (v. 404. et secj.
),
which Bryant sujiposes to have been originally founded by Egyptians,
was, as we learn from Pausanias (P/iocic. c. 5.), a mere hut, covered with laurel branches.
Even the celebrated Areojiagus was but a sorry structure, as we learn from Vitruvius
(lib. ii. cap. 1.),
who judged of it from its ruins. The fabulous Cadmus for we cannot
help following .Jacob IJryant in his conjectures upon this personage has been supposed
to have existed about 1519 b. c, to have instructed the Greeks in the worship of the
I'!lgyptian and Phrenician deities, and to have taught them various useful arts
; but this
carries us so far back, that we sliould be retracing our stejjs into Cyclojjean architecture, if
we were here to dwell on the period ; and we must leave the reader as is our own, and as
we apprehend will be the case with all who may succeed us to grope his way out of the
darkness as best he may.
137. The earliest writer from whom gleanings can be made to elucidate the architecture
of Greece is the father of poets. To Homer we are obliged to recur, little as we approve
of the architectural graiihic flights in which the poet is wont generally to indulge. Though
the Odyssey may not be of so high antiquity as the Iliad, it is, from internal evidence, of
great age, for the ])oem exhibits a government strictly patriarchal, and it sufficiently proves
that the chief liuildings of the period were the palaces of princes. "We may here, in
passing, observe, that in Greece, previous to Homer and Hesiod, the sculptor's art appears
to have been unknown, neither was practised the representation of Gods. The words of
Athenagoras {Let;, pro Christ, xiv.
)
are Ai S'ei/coj'ex
IJ-^XP^
/xtj-ttoi irKaffrixn, Kai ypatpiKT], ko.i
avhpiavroTTOir)riK7) r](rav, ouSe evo^ii(^ovTo. The altar, which was merely a structure for sacred
use, was nothing more than a hearth, whereon the victim was prepared for the meal
;
and it was not till long after Homer's time that a regular priesthood appeared in Greece.
In Sparta, the kings ])erformed the office. In Egypt, the dignity was obtained by inherit-
ance; as was the case in other places. The Odyssey places the altar in the king's palace
;
and we may reasonably assume that the spot was occasionally, perha|)s always, used as the
temple. From such premises, it is reasonable to conjecture that until the sacerdotal was
sei)arated from the kingly office, the temple, either in Greece or elsewhere, had no existence.
It may not be without interest to collect, here, the different passages in the Odyssey, which
l)ear upon the nature and construction of the very earliest buildings of importance.
Hetween the avKr] and the hofios there nuist have been a distinction. The former, from its
etyinology ao?, must have been a locus subdialis ; and though it is sometimes used {Iliad, Z.
247.) for the whole palace, such is not generally its meaning in the Odyssey. Theai/ATj was
the place in which the female attendants of Penelope were slain by Telemachus
(
Odyss. X.
446.), by tying them up with a rope over the SioKos or ceiling. Hence we arrive at the
conclusion that this bo\os belonged to the aidovaa or cloister, supposing, as we have done,
that the auArj was open at to]), and the aiQovcra is described {Iliad, T. 17G. ) as tpiSovKOS, that
is, sonorous or echoing, and as circumscribing the open part of the avK-r). The ^o\os was
sujjported by Kioi'ey, posts or columns, and in the centre of the o-jAt; stood the Po/j.os or altar.
If our interpretation be correct, the n^aoS/xai in this arrangement must be the spaces between
the columns or posts, or the intercoiumniations, as the woid is usually translated ; and the
passage in the Odyssey (T. .'37.), wherein Telemachus is said to have s.-en the light on the
walls, becomes quite clear. 'I'he passage is as follows:

Eu-try;; //.oi raix" f^iyx^Mv, xxXxi ti fziroSuai,

fptztyovr o^dxkjjcoi;
.
There seems no doubt that the word aiBovcra will bear the interpretation given, and the
arrangement is nothing more than that of the hypasthral, and even correspondent with the
Egyptian temple, particularly that of the temple at Edfou, described by Denon, and repr^;-
sented in his plate 34.
138. Before we quit this part of our subject, let us consider the description which
Honer
(
Odi/ss. H.
81.)
gives of the house of Alcinous as illustrative of Greek architecture-
This dwelling, which Ulysses visited, had a brazen threshold, ovSos. It was v\j/(pKprjs os.