14 
THE NATIOXAL GEOGRAPHIC ^lAGAZIXE 
THEATRAL AREA, KNOSSUS, REsiuRED (NEAR MODERN CANDIAj 
with puffed sleeves, excessively slender 
waists and flounced skirts, and their hair 
elaborately dressed and curled, they 
were as far as possible removed from 
our ideas of Ariadne and her maids of 
honor, and might almost have stepped 
out of a modern fashion-plate. 
"Mais," exclaimed a French savant, 
on his first view of them ; "mais ce sont 
des Parisiennes" (see also page i6). 
The domestic quarter of the palace 
still reveals in some of its rooms the 
environment of luxury and beauty in 
which the Minoan royalties lived. The 
Queen's megaron may be taken as typi- 
cal. A row of pillars rising from a low, 
continuous base divides the room into 
two parts. The upper surface of the 
base on either side of the pillars is of 
stucco molded so as to form a long 
couch, which was doubtless covered with 
cushions when the room was in use. 
Light was furnished in the daytime, ac- 
cording to Cretan palace practice, not by 
windows, but by light-wells, of which 
there are two, one on the south and one 
on the east side. 
In one of these light-shafts the bril- 
liant white stucco surface which re- 
flected the light into the room is deco- 
rated with a modeled and painted relief, 
of which a fragment has survived, repre- 
senting a bird of gorgeous plumage, with 
long, curving wing and feathers of red, 
blue, yellow, white, and black. Near the 
light-well, on the other side of the line 
of pillars, outside nature was brought 
within doors by a beautiful piece of 
fresco painting, which shows fishes 
swimming through the water and dash- 
ing off foam-bells and ripples in their 
rapid course. 
Along the north wall of the room ran 
another gay fresco, representing a com- 
pany of dancing girls on a scale of half 
life-size. One of the dancers is clad in 
a jacket with a vellow ground and blue 
and red embroidered border, beneath 
