Homer and His Age

ouse of classical times. Manifestly the dwelling of a military-prince in the heroic age would be evolved to meet his needs, which were not the needs of later H

women also, at least in the house of Odysseus, have their separate chambers, which the men seem not to enter except on invitation, though the ladies fr

were accommodated in dwellings similarly arranged. Though the Icelanders owned no Over-Lord, and, indeed, left their native Scandinavia to escape the sway of Harold Fairhair, yet each wealthy and powerful chief lived in the manner of a Homeric "king." His lands and thralls, horses and cattle, occupied his attention when he did not chance to be on Viking adventure-"bearing bane to alien men." He always carried sword and sp

s by introducing the arrangements of their own into the tale of past times. But, in any case, one Icelandic house of the tenth or eleventh century might differ from another in certain details. It is not safe, therefore, to argue that difference of detail in Homer's accounts of various houses means that the varying descriptions were c

an a hundred wooers-"sorning" on her, in the old Scots legal phrase-making it impossible for her to inhabit her own hall, and desirable to keep the w

reece, with the men's hall approached by a door from the courtyard; while a door at the upper end of the m

Homeric house except that of Odysseus, in which the circumstances were unusual. A later critic, Ferdinand Noack, has demonstrated that we must take other Homeric houses into consideration. {Footnote: Homerische Pal?ste. Teubner. Leipzig, 1903.} The prae-Mycenaean house is, according to Mr. Myres, on the whole of the same plan as the Hellenic house of historic days; between these comes the Mycenaean and Homeric house; "so that the Mycenaean house stands out as an intrusive phenomenon, o

t which entirely suits our argument. But it is not so certain, that the house of Odysseus is severed from the other Homeric houses by the l

use they have no occasion, or only rare occasion, to do so; and some houses may have had upper sleep

ope has a chamber, in which she sleeps and does woman's work, upstairs; her connubial chamber, unoccupied during her lord's absence, is certainly on the ground floor. The women's rooms are severed from the men's hall by a courtyard; in the courtyard are chambers. Telemachus has his {Greek: Thalamos}, or chamber, in t

ack, p. 39.} does n

e, of the minstrel, and of honoured guests. The place of honour was not on a dais at the inmost end of the hall, like the high table in college halls. Mr. Myres holds that in the Homeric house the {Greek: prodomos}, or "forehouse," was a chamber, and was not identical with the {Greek: aethousa}, or portico, though he admits that the two words "are used indiffe

to which no man goes uninvited. Odysseus when at home has, with his wife, a separate bedroom; an

enelaus and Alcinous in the Odyssey? Noack argues that the house of Odysseus is unlike the other Homeric houses, because in these, he reasons, the women have no separate quarters, and t

ds houses and domestic life, belongs to an age apart

ngs to "the latest stratum," and is the "copy" of the general "worker-up," whether he was the editor employed by Pisistratus or a laborious amateur. This theory is opposed by Sittl, who makes his point by cutting out, as interpolations, whatever passages do not suit his ideas,

nt passage is the earlier, deciding, of course, as may happen to suit their own general theory. In our opinion these passages are traditional formulae, as in our own old ballads and in the Chansons de Geste, and Noack also takes this view every now and then. They may w

a), in an upper chamber. They sleep mucho domou; that is, not in a separate recess in the house, but in a recess of the great hall or megaron. Thus, in the hall of Alcinous, the whole space runs from the threshold to the muchos, the innermost part (Odys

er fragrant, lofty chamber," so she had a chamber, not in the hall. But, says Noack, this verse "is not original." The late poet of Odyssey, IV. has cribbed it from the early poet who composed Odyssey, XIX. 53. In that passage Penelope "comes from her chamber, like Artemis or golden Aphrodite." Penelope had a chamber-being "a lone lorn woman," who could not sleep in a hall where the Wooers sat up late drinking-and the latest poet transfers this chamber to Helen. But however late and larcenous he may have been, the poet of IV. 121 certainly did not crib the words of the poet of XIX. 53, for he says, "Helen came out of her fragrant, high-roofed chamber." The hall was not precisely "fragrant"!

re not described as leaving the hall when they go to bed; they sleep in "a recess of the lofty house," the innermo

ding to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply that the thalamos, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak,

ir own. The girls, of course, could not sleep in the hall; and, in the absence of both Penelope and Odysseus from the hall, ever since Telemachus was a baby, Telemachus could have slept there. But it will be replied that the Wo

liad has to mention the chambers of the young ladies they are "upper chambers," as is natural. But as Noack wants to prove the house of Odysseus, with its u

to distinguish the bed-chamber from the doma, which is the hall. Noack objects that when Odysseus fumigates his house, after slaying the Wooers, he thus treats the megaron, AND the doma, AND the courtyard. Therefore, Noack argues, the megaron, or hall, is one thing; the doma is another. Mr. Monro writes, "doma usually means megaron," and he supposes a slip from an

looking to his gear; Helen and the maids are all there (Iliad, VI. 321-323). Is this quite certain? Are Helen and the maids in the {Greek: talamos}, where Paris is polishing his corslet and looking to his bo

of these inquir

rth "from the chamber," {Greek: talamos} (III. 141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or did not Helen dress "in the chamber"? In the same Book

167), we are told that this is a late interpolation. Mr. Leaf, who has a high opinion of this scene, "the Beguiling of Zeus," places it in the "second expansio

was his {Greek: talamos} or bedroom, also his dining-room? If so, the author of the song, though so "late," knows what Noack knows, and what the poets who assign sleeping chambers to wedded folks do not know, namely, that neither married gods nor married men have separate bedrooms. This is plain, for he makes Hephaestus stand at the front door of his house, and shout to

r of the lay is not "late," as

Odyssey, to have separate quarters, except in the house of Odysseus. Women's chambers do not exist in the Homeric

shroud in an upper chamber. But the whole arrangement of upper chambers as women's apartments is as late, says Noack, as the time of the poets and "redactors" (whoever they may have been) of the Odysse

s her amour with Hermes "in the upper chambers." The places where these two passages occur, Catalogue (Book II.) and the Catalogue of the Myrmidons (Book XVI.) are, indeed, bo

e Epics, except Books XXI., XXII., and XXIII. of the Odyssey, bear, as regards the house, the marks of a distinct

mber, that Zeus had not his separate chamber, and that the upper chambers of the daughters of the house in the Iliad are "late." Where, if not in upper chambers, did the young princesses repose? Again, the marked separation of the women in the house of Odysseus may be the

nterprising young men. What safer place could be found for them than in upper chambers, as in the Iliad? But, if their lovers were gods, we k

1), being apparently unacquainted with Dasent's researches, found similar lore in works by Dr. Valtyr Gudmundsson {Footnote: Monro, Odyssey, vol. ii. pp. 491-495; cf. Gudmundsson, Der Islandske Bottg i Fristats Tiden, 1894; cf. Dasent, Oxford Essays, 1858.} The roof of the hall is supported by four rows of columns, the two inner rows are taller, and between them is the hearth, with seats of honour for the chief guests and the lord. The fire was in a kind of trench down th

varies from Dasent in some respects.

long line or row of separate rooms united by wooden or clay corridors or partitions, and each covered with a roof. Later, this was considered unpractical, and they b

middle floor was lower than that of the two side naves. In these were placed the so-called saet or bed-places, not running the whole length of the {blank space} from gable to gable, but sideways, filling about a third part. Each saet was enclosed by broad, st

mbol of domestic happiness. The saet was occupied by the servants of the farm as sleeping-rooms; generally i

, or they covered themselves with deerskins or a mantle. The family had bed-clothes, but only in very wealthy houses were they also

rs of the family, including guests of a higher standing. These small dormitories were separated by partitions of planks into bedrooms with one or several beds, a

or even as far as a wood or another sheltered place in the neighbourhood, to enable the inhabitants to

esides as a sleeping-room when the farms were very

the provi

wn upon them, which developed a quantity of vapour. As the heat and the steam mounted, the peo

e the women used to sit with their handiwork all day. The men were allowed to come in and talk to them, also beggar-women and o

milarly situated rooms, one the common dining-hall, the other the common sleeping-hall, have been confused by writers on t

arate rooms for stores and other purposes. In the courtyard also, in the houses of Gunnar of Lithend and Gisli at Hawkdale, and doubtless in other cases, were the dyngfur, or ladies' chambers, their "bowers" (Thalamos, like that of Telemachus in the courtyard), where they sat spinning and gossiping. The dyngja was originally called búr, our "bower"; the ballads say "in bower and hall." In the ballad of MARGARET, her parents are said to put her in the way of deadly sin by building her a bower, apparently separate from the main

p, as in Homer, in

d not permit it-but in

the walls were hung wi

us. The heads of the fa

tered through the wain

d muchos; it was priva

appears not improbable

this kind; such a muc

Footnote: Story of

ver, slept with his

r, who lived with him, a

nto their own bride-chamber in the separate aisle of the hall "and gave over their souls into God's hand." Under a hide they lay; and when men raised up the hide, after the fire h

ngs. The parents might sleep in bedchambers off the hall or in upper chambers. Ladies might have bowers in the courtyard or might have none. The {Greek: laurae}-each passage outside the hall-yielded sleeping rooms for servants; and there were store-rooms behind the passage at the top end of the hall, as well as se

than that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of

laws, and everything else, Homer gives us an harmonious picture of a single and peculiar age. We find