DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0106
64 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
palace. There the good queen Arete " sits at the hearth
in the light of the fire, weaving yarn of sea-purple stain.
Her chair is leaned against a pillar and her maidens sit
behind her." And the king's throne tilts cosily against
the same pillar, as he sits and drinks his wine like an
immortal, while his Phaeacian lords occupy seats ranged
against the wall from end to end of the megaron.1 In all
probability the hall floor at Mycenae, while cemented and
painted in the main, was provided with' the broad paved
border (noted above) expressly to support the chairs ranged
along the wall. Certainly anything less solid, and espe-
cially a decorated cement, would soon have been the worse
for wear if heroic society was always as stirring as we find
it at Ithaca.
Among other correspondences not a few, we note but
one more. At the foot of the great staircase at Mycenae,
Stone there are stone benches extending the length of
Benches twQ ^^ Qf the fafo CQmt ^ . an(J before ^g
palace at Pylos Homer introduces us to a family council,
the aged Nestor with his six sons and their guest Tele-
machus gathered about him, "before the lofty doors,
upon the smooth stones, — white, glistening with polish."2
Not only do the stone benches of Mycenae restore one
more feature to the real world behind the Homeric tran-
script, but they serve to elucidate an obscurity in the poet's
language. Hitherto we have been asked to believe that
Nestor's smooth stones were polished by rubbing them with
oil; the evidence of these actual marble benches, as of the
hewn-stone antae at Tiryns, goes to show that this polish
(&/U«£ap) was simply a fine lime-dressing or whitewash.3
1 Odyssey, v. 305.
2 &itwr:'A.j3oeT« a\fi<paros. — Od. iii. 406 f. Cf. viii. 6, and Iliad, xviii. 563.
» Cf. Helbig, Das Horn. Epos, p. 98.
palace. There the good queen Arete " sits at the hearth
in the light of the fire, weaving yarn of sea-purple stain.
Her chair is leaned against a pillar and her maidens sit
behind her." And the king's throne tilts cosily against
the same pillar, as he sits and drinks his wine like an
immortal, while his Phaeacian lords occupy seats ranged
against the wall from end to end of the megaron.1 In all
probability the hall floor at Mycenae, while cemented and
painted in the main, was provided with' the broad paved
border (noted above) expressly to support the chairs ranged
along the wall. Certainly anything less solid, and espe-
cially a decorated cement, would soon have been the worse
for wear if heroic society was always as stirring as we find
it at Ithaca.
Among other correspondences not a few, we note but
one more. At the foot of the great staircase at Mycenae,
Stone there are stone benches extending the length of
Benches twQ ^^ Qf the fafo CQmt ^ . an(J before ^g
palace at Pylos Homer introduces us to a family council,
the aged Nestor with his six sons and their guest Tele-
machus gathered about him, "before the lofty doors,
upon the smooth stones, — white, glistening with polish."2
Not only do the stone benches of Mycenae restore one
more feature to the real world behind the Homeric tran-
script, but they serve to elucidate an obscurity in the poet's
language. Hitherto we have been asked to believe that
Nestor's smooth stones were polished by rubbing them with
oil; the evidence of these actual marble benches, as of the
hewn-stone antae at Tiryns, goes to show that this polish
(&/U«£ap) was simply a fine lime-dressing or whitewash.3
1 Odyssey, v. 305.
2 &itwr:'A.j3oeT« a\fi<paros. — Od. iii. 406 f. Cf. viii. 6, and Iliad, xviii. 563.
» Cf. Helbig, Das Horn. Epos, p. 98.