ways of dieting and physicking the sick among the Scythians. Before the dinner, Melissa, wife of Periander, who had laid aside her richer habit, and assumed a very becoming but plainer one, sat down by her husband; and, during the dinner, Melissa distributed the garlands; sacrifice was offered; and, when the minstrels had played a tune or two, she withdrew. There is no reason to think that these minstrels were, like our hired bands of music at public dinners, those which attended large meetings, but females belonging to the family; for Montfaucon has copied from Boissard a marble representing a family dinner, with a Greek inscription. Here a woman, seated in a bee-hive chair at the end of a dinnerbed, is playing upon a lyre, which, if correctly copied, has a neck or finger-board like a guitar; which neck or finger-board (an Egyptian instance excepted) distinguishes, according to Burney, modern from ancient musical instruments. Eumetis, the daughter, though blushingly, stayed after her mother, seemingly for instruction by the conversation. This was a particular party of sages and philosophers, where curiosity and instruction interfered; but women were not excluded in more questionable society, for Hiero fined Epicharmus the comedian, because he spoke indecently in his wife's presence.

It would appear, that it was a common practice with the Greeks to dine in common, and to pay beforehand a certain sum for the meal. Invitations were usually made by distinct functionaries, and it is curious that the number of guests formed a subject of state regulations. In Athens it was limited to thirty, but in no case were women invited. The guests who attended dinners by invitation always made it a point to come in the best attire; they previously bathed, washed, and anointed themselves, put on a white dress, and were usually escorted by a train of footmen. The guest arrived, his first duty was either to embrace the master of the house, or to join his right hand with the right hand of his host; sometimes the salute amounted to a kiss, and the lips, hands, feet, or knees, were the various objects of this process, and there is no doubt that another mode of salutation consisted in the visitor taking hold of both the ears, as a cook would lift a pot. This last act seems to indicate a particular degree of allowed freedom; for it was chiefly practised by friends of the family, in the case of children. Until the dinner was brought up, the most teasing of all intervals even in the present day, the guests spent their time in viewing the house, its furniture, or any other curiosities which it contained. The guests next crowned their heads with garlands composed of flowers, these being furnished by the host in such abundance, as not only to enable the whole party to employ them as personal decorations, but to strew them on the couches and the floor. Myrtle formed the principal material for garlands, it being supposed to be a good antidote against the head-ache. With respect to the serving up of dinner, we have some specific descrip

tions which determine the mode employed by the Greeks of saccomplishing this important object. The dishes were brought in upon an engetheca, a sort of tray, the original of the Roman repositorium. There were three courses, called, from the tables being removed, first, second, and third table. The first, a provocative of appetite, consisted of bitter herbs; at Athens, of coleworts, eggs, and a mixture of honey and wine, probably of the sharpest kind. The second course was more plentifully furnished; the third consisted of sweets. Rous says, that the meat was served up in dishes of wood, or of bronze for the better sort; but Plutarch derides those who would not eat out of an earthen vessel. Plutarch mentions, as things of great rarity, udder, Italian mushrooms, Famian cakes, or snow in Egypt. Contrary to our practice, the entrails of animals, which Rous calls sausages, but never the brains, were favourite viands; and Athenæus, the great author on the subject, relates stories which attest it. Among these is a ragout called nyma, it was made of the meat of a pullet, or an Ꭹ other meat, cut small and minced, with the entrails added to it also minced, until the whole was brought to the consistency of a pudding or sausage. With this they mixed, according to Montfaucon, vinegar and blood, toasted cheese, parsley, cummin, thyme, coriander, and other odoriferous herbs or seeds, onions, poppies, dried raisins, honey, and pomegranate kernels.

Bread, however, was the chief and most necessary kind of food, and the word denoted sometimes every sort of meat and drink. An inferior sort of bread was made of meal, salt and water, and as some authorities state, oil: barley-meal was a chief ingredient in the food of the Greeks, who also ate pretty generally a compound of rice, cheese, eggs, and honey, which was wrapped in fig-leaves. The poor used to scoup out their bread, and fill the hollowed part with a sort of sauce. This did generally for their supper. Poultry and game, though to a very limited extent, were known to the Greeks; swine's flesh was the first animal meat eaten by them, beef succeeded, and in Homer's time we find that the soldiers roasted the flesh of sheep, goats, swine, oxen, and wild animals. The invention of boiling appears in no part of the Iliad or Odyssey to have been known by Greeks or Trojans. Salads and cheese are described by Plutarch, as articles in use by the Greeks; and vegetables were no doubt common amongst them, but those most preferred as luxuries, were called the Martinæan radish, the Theban turnip, and the Ascræan beet. So far as Homer's evidence goes, no fish seems to have been consumed by the warriors of whom he sings. Ulysses, however, appears to have consented to let down a line on the principle of Walton; but it certainly was a case of necessity, for he was exhausted in other provisions. Plutarch, however, seems to be acquainted with an era when the Greeks had the good sense to give up their fastidious reluctance to the finny tribes; and he tells us that a dinner upon the sea

shore was, he says, the most delicious of all; and he shows us that fish were cut into pieces and boiled. He adds, that Antigonus reproached Antagoras the poet, when he was attired like a cook, boiling eels in his tent, by asking him whether Homer ever did so? The Greeks were great lovers of eels, dressed with beets, which hence had a distinctive name; and they also ate salt fish, of which the neck and belly were the favourite parts: and from the days of Homer, salt was used in almost every kind of food. Athenæus makes, among the choicest dainties, not only the eel, but the Sicilian lamprey; the belly of the thynnus, a fish taken at Pachinus, a promontory in Sicily; the Simethian mullet; shell-fish from Pecorus, and herrings from Lipara.

trace.

Both Homer and Plutarch are authorities in favour of a very sensible partiality to wine having been entertained by the Greeks from the earliest times, the history of which it is in our power to At dinner a piece of the viands was thrown into the fire, a religious offering to the gods; reading took place during dinner ; and from what Plutarch says, it would appear that the intellectual provision which was thus brought to intermingle with that for the body, was calculated much better to amuse than to instruct. Indeed that very knowing biographer is quite angry at the contemplation of the doings which passed in the dinner-room, under the innocent denomination of reading. Paring nails was deemed the height of vulgarity; but spitting, coughing, and speaking loud were not disapproved. When the ancient Greeks had greased their fingers (for they had no forks), they rubbed them with soft bread, and threw the pieces to the dogs: but, afterwards, towels, &c. were used. Numerous superstitious omens were ascribed to accidental incidents which occurred during the dinner. After dinner, they again washed their hands. In this last operation they added, says Athenæus, some sort of stuff for scouring the hands, and, lastly, perfumed them with odours. With respect to the Dorians, who formed a highly respectable race of the Greek nation, their habits are occasionally noticed in this work; but it will be recollected that in our review of Muller's Dorians, a few volumes back, we have devoted an ample space to the descriptions of the manners and customs of that people.

Before we conclude the theme of the domestic life of the Greeks, we feel that we should have been guilty of a very unpardonable omission were we not to notice the all-important feature in every society, which will be instantly recalled to every reader's mind by the mention of the word "marriage." As the customs of the Greeks in this grand affair of life were peculiar, they deserve the more to be laid before the reader. Amongst the early Greeks, woman was regarded in accordance with the impulse of an innocent race, and, according to the reasoning of a cultivated one, (both of which characters composed the Dorians) as a member of the creation quite as elevated in the scale as man; but when the

manners of the East began to corrupt the simplicity of the Greek people then the treatment of women, the real thermometer of the degrees of civilisation in all societies, was changed, and they were rated in an inferior rank. The wife, indeed, shared the husband's bed-but his table was not to be profaned by her presence; she did not call him by his name, but addressed him by the title of lord, and lived secluded in the interior of the house. Aristotle, however, reckons it unbecoming for a man to meddle with any thing in-doors, or even to know what was done there. The wife had, therefore, the care of the ménage, and superintended the spinning, weaving, embroidery, and needle-work carried on in the house. In the heroic ages, they drew waters (afterwards consigned to slaves), kept sheep, fed cows and horses; even loosed (and watered, as did Andromache,) the horses from their husbands' chariots; conducted the men to bed and the bath; perfumed, dressed, and undressed them; and performed almost all the laborious offices of the house. There was a particular forum, called women's market, or circles, because Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides show that the primitive fora were mostly of that form. Here were sold every kind of delicacy except meat. Newly married women were confined so closely, that they could not go beyond the street-door; but, after they became mothers, they could go to this forum and elsewhere, attended by aged women, their companions at home: if the mistresses were young, their former governesses, or old men, or eunuchs. In these excursions, their faces were covered with veils, but so thin, that they could see through them. But the women were not always mere housewives; some of them were famous for their drawings; and Plutarch says, that the lady who is studious of geometry will never affect the dissolute motions of dancing; and she that is attracted by the sublime ideas of Plato and Xenophon will look with disdain upon lascivious tales (the Milesian, the substitutes for novels) and schools of Venus, and contemn the soothsayings of ridiculous astrologers. All these accomplishments and offices grew out of their education; for, according to their stations in life, they were staught to read, write, sew, spin, prepare the wool of which the clothes were made, and superintend the ménage-sometimes music and literature. As they assisted in the sacred ceremonies, they were taught to sing and dance. Their mothers instructed them to be prudent, hold themselves upright, keep in their shoulders, be extremely sober, and avoid embonpoint. Plutarch adds of the girls of his era, that they generally worked at netting or girdles; and that some of the most ingenious made riddles. The chaperon was the nurse, who always resided in the family which - could afford it; and girls rarely slept alone, or sat alone. Indeed, they were locked up, and subjected to a severe diet. Their waists were constricted, to give them a fine and light form, The Spartan

girls were used to gymnastics, and made hoydens by education purposely.

Though the Athenian women nourished their children themselves, yet they did not nurse them, and nurses, both the wet and dry species, were common. The Lacedæmonian women were preferred in these capacities, because they never swathed the children; but they accustomed the little creatures to any food, taught them not to be afraid in the dark, and generally brought them up in such a way as to save them from ill temper. The children, it is stated by Plutarch, were not weaned until they were able to walk. They were dressed like their parents, and in clothes of a similar form: their hair alone differed; that of boys was long, because they did not cut it till adolescence. Sometimes they wore it long and curled, like that of young girls: thus the hair of Taras, upon the Tarentine coins, is tied behind, and towards the top of the head. Plutarch says, that children were taught how to put on their shoes and clothes, and to take their meat in their right hands, and hold their bread in the left. Although we could pursue the account of the manners of the Greeks still farther and not tire the reader, yet there remains a whole section upon Italy still to be noticed, and which it is impossible for us to sacrifice without committing a most deliberate violation of a conscientious duty.

The Roman orders of architecture, as described in this work, are modifications to a great extent of those of Greece, and pass under nearly the same name. It is of importance, therefore, for the amateurs or artists, to whom this branch of the arts is particularly an object of attention, to be aware of the twofold nature of these orders, if it were only to obtain an illustration of the characteristic distinctions which obtained between the Greeks and the Romans. The author descends next to details, and, in his descriptions of the houses, avails himself extensively of the recent discoveries at Pompeii. The Roman villas form a very peculiar feature in this history of architecture, and good descriptions of their various appendages are also given, these consisting of apiaries, ponds, aviaries, stables, warrens, &c. The temples and theatres of Rome are carefully presented to us in all their wonderful details and contrivances, as are likewise the amphitheatres, (a full account of the gladiators included), the circus, the forum, the baths, bridges, citadels, towns, walls, and gates, &c. The trades of the Romans form the next series of subjects for illustration, and a highly curious profusion of rare learning is displayed in treating of them. Amongst the mechanical pursuits which were carried on by this singular people, the reader will be not a little surprised to find so many with which, from experience, he is acquainted. They had their fullers, glass-manufacturers, horsebreakers, husbandmen, plumbers, shipwrights, and weavers.