Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/183

 142 Primitive Greece; Mycenian Art. True, we hear of but a single court and one 7rp6Qvpov in the house of Odysseus at Ithaca ; but then Odysseus was no more than a laird ; with a powerful ruler, however, such as the king of Tiryns or Mycenae, who held lordship over the teeming plain of Argos, we may surely conclude that greater develop- ment was given to the palace, and that court and portal were at least doubled. The court of the house of Peleus, like that of Odysseus, contained an altar sacred to Zeus Herkeios, whereon the head of the family burnt fatted victims and poured libations.^ This same altar has been found at Tiryns, on the very spot where one would have been tempted to look for it. Again, great breccia blocks everywhere form the thresholds of entrances; they bring up to the mind the XaiVo^ ouSof, ** stone sill," a term which frequently drops out of Homers lips, and sufficiently proves the importance attached to that member of the construction in his day.- Then, too, is not the great hall whose facade we have figured, and of which we have given a longitudinal section, the Homeric megaron with its two vestibules (alQoutra and TrpoSojtto^) preceding it and adding to its conveni- ence ? ^ Apartments which served for gatherings, whether of men or women — and which might be called the drawing-rooms, did not the word sound too modern — were provided with a great hearth surrounded by pillars and seats, where people came to warm themselves or work by the light/ In the centre of the principal room of the Tirynthian palace appears a circle which marks the site of the hearth, and around it are indications of pillars. Of the part played by the bath in the life of the Homeric heroes it is unnecessary to speak.*^ The dust-travelled visitor, weary and spent after a long day's march, is led by female attendants to a room where he finds ** a well-polished bath," (aerajttivflov ev^etrrov), full of warm water ; ^ and here, in the proximity of the megaron, we find a chamber which has been purposely built to serve as bath-room, where, too, scraps of an ancient bath-tub have been collected. Besides public rooms where the stranger is admitted, the abodes of Nestor, ^ Iliad ; Odyssey, 2 In referring to the temple of Apollo in ** rocky Pytho," Homer never fails to mention its stone threshold. ^ On the meaning of the words a(0ov(ra and vpo^oftoc, see a paper by Percy Gardner entitled, " The Palaces of Homer " {Hellenic Studies), ^ Odyssey, ^ Helbig, Das Homerische Epos, ^ Odyssey,