Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/43

Rh Menelaus's palace, as described by the poet, is a very remarkable feature in the tale. It reads far more like a scene from the 'Arabian Nights' than a lay of early Greece. The lofty roofs fling back a flashing light as the travellers enter, "like as the splendour of the sun or moon." Gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and electrum, combine their brilliancy in the decorations. The guests wash in lavers of silver, and the water is poured from golden ewers. Telemachus is struck with wonder at the sight, and can compare it to nothing earthly.

The palaces of Sparta, as seen in Homer's vision, contrast remarkably with the estimate formed of them by the Greek historian of a later age. Thucydides speaks of the city as having no public buildings of any magnificence, such as would impress a stranger with an idea of its real power, but wearing rather the appearance of a collection of villages. It is difficult to conceive that the actual Sparta of a much earlier age could have contained anything at all corresponding to this Homeric ideal of splendour; and the question arises, whether we have here an indistinct record of an earlier and extinct civilisation, or whether the poet drew an imaginary description from his own recollections of the gorgeous barbaric splendour of some city in the further East, which he had visited in his travels. If this be nothing more than a poet's exaggerated and idealised view of an actual state of higher civilisation, which once really existed in the old Greek kingdoms, and