4. The Arts

The Achaeans leave to merchants and lowly scribes the art of writing, which has presumably been handed down to them from Mycenaean Greece; they prefer blood to ink and flesh to clay. In all of Homer there is but one reference to writing,⁵⁸ and there in a characteristic context; a folded tablet is given to a messenger, directing the recipient to kill the messenger. If the Achaeans have time for literature it is only when war and marauding allow a peaceful interlude; the king or prince gathers his retainers about him for a feast, and some wandering minstrel, stringing the lyre, recounts in simple.verse the exploits of ancestral heroes; this is, for the Achaeans, both poetry and history. Homer, perhaps wishing like Pheidias to engrave his own portrait upon his work, tells how Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, calls for such song in entertaining Odysseus. “Summon hither the divine minstrel, Demodocus; for to him above all others has the god granted skill in song. . . . Then the herald drew near, leading the good minstrel, whom the Muse loved above all other men, and gave him both good and evil; of his sight she deprived him, but gave him the gift of sweet song.”⁵⁹

The only art except his own that interests Homer is toreutics—the hammering of metals into plastic forms. He says nothing of painting or sculpture, but calls up all his inspiration to describe the scenes inlaid or damascened upon Achilles’ shield, or raised in relief upon Odysseus’ brooch. He speaks briefly but illuminatingly about architecture. The common dwelling in Homer is apparently of sun-dried brick with a footing of stone; the floor is ordinarily of beaten earth, and is cleaned by scraping; the roof is of reeds overlaid with clay, and slopes only enough to carry off the rain. The doors are single or double, and may have bolts or keys.⁶⁰ In the better dwellings the interior walls are of painted stucco, with ornamental border or frieze, and are hung with weapons, shields, and tapestries. There is no kitchen, no chimney, no windows; an opening in the roof of the central hall lets out some of the smoke that may rise from the hearth; the rest finds its way through the door, or settles in soot on the walls. Rich establishments have a bathroom; others content themselves with a tub. The furniture is of heavy wood, often artistically carved and finished; Icmalius fashions for Penelope an armchair set with ivory and precious metals; and Odysseus makes for himself and his wife a massive bedstead designed to last for a century.

It is characteristic of the age that its architecture ignores temples and spends itself upon palaces, just as Periclean architecture will neglect palaces and lavish itself upon temples. We hear of the “sumptuous home of Paris, which that prince had built with the aid of the most cunning architects in Troy”;⁶¹ of King Alcinous’ great mansion, with walls of bronze, frieze of blue-glass paste, doors of silver and gold, and other features that may belong rather to poetry than to architecture; we hear something of Agamemnon’s royal residence at Mycenae, and a great deal about Odysseus’ palace at Ithaca. This has a front court, paved in part with stone, surrounded by a palisade or plastered wall, and adorned with trees, stalls for horses, and a heap of steaming dung on which Odysseus’ dog Argos makes his bed in the sun.* A large pillared porch leads to the house; here the slaves sleep and often the visitors. Within, an anteroom opens upon a central hall supported by pillars, and sometimes lighted not only by the opening in the roof, but by a narrow clerestory or open space between the architrave and the eaves. At night braziers burning on tall stands give an unsteady illumination. In the center of the hall is the hearth, around whose sacred fire the family gathers in the evening for warmth and good cheer, and debates the ways of neighbors, the willfulness of children, and the vicissitudes of states.