The Homeric palace,
described at some length in at least three instances, is a building
not merely large and commodious, but of somewhat imposing magnificence.
The palace of Alcinous, for example, is pictured for us as gleaming
with the splendour of the sun and moon, with walls of bronze, a
frieze of _kuanos_ (blue glass paste), and golden doors, with lintels
and door-posts of silver, while the approaches to it are guarded
by dogs wrought in silver. The whole reminds one rather of the
description of one of the vast Egyptian temples of the Eighteenth
or Nineteenth Dynasty than of what one would have imagined the
palace of an island chieftain. The Palaces of Priam at Troy, and
of Odysseus at Ithaca, less gorgeously adorned in detail, are not
less stately, and even the abode of Menelaus in comparatively
insignificant Sparta is described as 'gleaming with gold, amber,
silver, and ivory.' The minor appointments of these splendid homes
are in keeping with their structural magnificence. Great vessels
of gold, silver, and bronze are in common use, the richly dyed
and wrought robes of the chiefs and their wives and daughters are
stored in chests splendidly decorated and inlaid, and the adornments
of the women are of costly and beautiful fabric in gold and silver.
In the manners and customs of the inhabitants of these stately
houses there is a certain patriarchal simplicity.
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