DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0109
CHAPTER IV
THE PRIVATE HOUSE AND DOMESTIC LIFE
We have now to pass from the stately halls of the heroic
Basileus to the dwellings of his people.
About the palace which crowned the castle steep, at
Mycenae at least, there was room left for the Chief's
immediate retainers — for the royal household in the wider
sense; and of these abodes not a few may now be studied
in their ruins. Of first importance among them is a house
adjoining the polygonal tower in the south-west wall (G).
Like the palaces, this dwelling has two distinct parts. The
first part is made up of court, porch and hall;
the second, of three underground chambers, above house on
Palace plan
which there seems to have been a second floor
for the women. The two sections have a common outer
court, from which a wooden staircase communicated with
the basement rooms. In the middle of the hall there is a
square hearth, but there are no inside pillars and no ante-
chamber as distinguished from the vestibule. In other
respects the construction is that of the palaces : walls of
rubble masonry, coated with clay mortar and then with
lime plaster and finally frescoed; sandstone bases for the
wooden jambs; concrete floors in court and hall, and so
on. Obviously, then, the house is not only contemporary
with the palaces, — we have already noted (p. 27) that it is
far more ancient than the polygonal tower, — but it must
have been the residence of an important personage.
THE PRIVATE HOUSE AND DOMESTIC LIFE
We have now to pass from the stately halls of the heroic
Basileus to the dwellings of his people.
About the palace which crowned the castle steep, at
Mycenae at least, there was room left for the Chief's
immediate retainers — for the royal household in the wider
sense; and of these abodes not a few may now be studied
in their ruins. Of first importance among them is a house
adjoining the polygonal tower in the south-west wall (G).
Like the palaces, this dwelling has two distinct parts. The
first part is made up of court, porch and hall;
the second, of three underground chambers, above house on
Palace plan
which there seems to have been a second floor
for the women. The two sections have a common outer
court, from which a wooden staircase communicated with
the basement rooms. In the middle of the hall there is a
square hearth, but there are no inside pillars and no ante-
chamber as distinguished from the vestibule. In other
respects the construction is that of the palaces : walls of
rubble masonry, coated with clay mortar and then with
lime plaster and finally frescoed; sandstone bases for the
wooden jambs; concrete floors in court and hall, and so
on. Obviously, then, the house is not only contemporary
with the palaces, — we have already noted (p. 27) that it is
far more ancient than the polygonal tower, — but it must
have been the residence of an important personage.