198 THE HOMERIC PALACE. 



each other and yet distinct, and each under its 

 separate roof, appropriated to the Prince's sons and 

 sons-in-law, with their respective wives : not other- 

 wise than on the River Niger in the interior of Africa, 

 the wives of the chiefs at this day possess each her 

 own lodge, near the abode of their common husbands. 

 Of this kind appears to have been the lodging room 

 of Telemachus ; and likewise those sixty-two bed- 

 chambers, bordering on one another, constructed 

 around the palace of Priam. In it however no 

 mention is made of columns ; and since the walls 

 were entirely built of rough-hewn or cut stones ; 

 pilasters or buttresses of angular blocks, were sub- 

 stituted for columns, as well within as without the 

 structure. 



That the separate edifices, whether bedrooms or 

 receptacles were covered with pointed roofs is pro- 

 bable from their round form ; and also that appar- 

 ently the extremities of the house itself were joined 

 on both sides to the mid-hall — as in temples hereafter 

 to be mentioned, — for that rafters of this sort, even in 

 houses of greater size, were sufficiently known to the 

 poet and his auditors is plain from the comparison of 

 their intersertion to the gmpple of Ajax and Ulysses 

 in their wrestling match. In the more private recess 

 of the house lay Menelaus and Helena ; but Ulysses 

 and Penelope had their bedroom on the outside 

 among the range of apartments, as the female atten- 

 dant, having prepared their bed, returned to the 

 interior of the dwelling. In the porches, between 

 the external columns and the walls, horses and beasts 

 of burden at their stalls, and carriages, were kept in 

 their proper stations ; and where nothing of this kind 

 existed, as in Ithaca, there stood hand-mills; at 

 which, in the residence of Ulysses, twelve menial 

 girls incessantly laboured in grinding corn to feed 

 the suitors : they were so near the vestibule, where 

 he past the night, that he could hear the voice of one 

 of them praying ; and in a spot so open that, leaving 

 her mill-work, she looked round to the sky, but at 

 the same time was so protected from a shower, that the 



