'Commoner than blackberries'

Quoted in HuffPo: 

It seems quite clear that the Greeks owed exceedingly little to foreign influence. Even in their decay they were a race, as Professor Bury observes, accustomed 'to take little and to give much'. They built up their civilization for themselves. We must listen with due attention to the critics who have pointed out all the remnants of savagery and superstition that they find in Greece: the slave-driver, the fetish-worshipper and the medicine-man, the trampler on women, the bloodthirsty hater of all outside his own town and party. But it is not those people that constitute Greece; those people can be found all over the historical world, commoner than blackberries. It is not anything fixed and stationary that constitutes Greece: what constitutes Greece is the movement which leads from all these to the Stoic or fifth-century 'sophist' who condemns and denies slavery, who has abolished all cruel superstitions and preaches some religion based on philosophy and humanity, who claims for women the same spiritual rights as for man, who looks on all human creatures as his brethren, and the world as 'one great City of gods and men'. It is that movement which you will not find elsewhere, any more than the statues of Pheidias or the dialogues of Plato or the poems of Aeschylus and Euripides.

- Gilbert Murray, The Legacy of Greece 

image credit
Pin It

The klismos chair, a brief history

I've been looking at ancient Greek furniture lately, and I was particularly drawn to the klismos, a chair with a sloped back and four curved legs.

image credit

For one thing, I remember translating klismos as "easy chair" in my first Greek reading class. Seeing what an austere, if graceful, thing it is, I'm amused that we talked about them as though they were La-z-boy recliners. I also love the idea that they're still part of modern furniture design. It's reassuring to classicists whenever we find a bit of the ancient world in an unexpectedly modern setting.

Recreation of a Greek klismos (credit)

Klismoi first appear in Homer and later in classical art like the vase-painting above. The curved back provides support and the curved legs are very stable, although they may spread out and break if too much weight is put on them.

Klismos chairs were revived in the eighteenth-century neoclassical period, first as props for historically-themed paintings and later as everyday furniture.

Neoclassical chair based on klismos (credit)

 Amazon lists several modern klismos chairs (shockingly expensive). "Design by Todd" considers how they could be used in a modern house, ultimately concluding that they are best employed as a "statement piece" or a "sculpture" -- too deep to sit in comfortably.

Oh well, it's better than a backless stool, right?

Pin It

Minoan flush toilets?

This review of Frank Joseph's The Lost Worlds of Ancient America made some pretty startling (to me) claims about Minoan civilization:

"Each palace had bathrooms with flush toilets. The rooms also had heat and running water suggesting that the Minoans had a considerable civil engineering capability. They understood water flow, elementary thermodynamics and heat transfer."

The claims about heat and running water are pretty decently supported, if I understand correctly. But this was the first time I had heard about the toilets! I took a few minutes to research this claim with the tools at hand (the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Google Books). As a result, I have a new perspective on my own research as seriously lacking in unintentional hilarity. Take this subheading from what I am sure is a very fine archeological report from Israel:

"The Toilets Excavated By Woolley 

The number of well-preserved bathrooms and restrooms found at Tell Atchana is extraordinary in comparison to that found at any other Middle or Late Bronze Age Levantine site...."

A footnote mentions a dispute as to whether the seat of a Minoan toilet was a true seat or a "squatting board". In all seriousness, I know someone has to study the history of toilets. I often experience a sincere envy towards those who study the really practical aspects of ancient life (as opposed to my own field, which is something like "guessing what ancient poets were thinking, what they thought the audience was thinking, and what they audience thought that the poet thought they were thinking.")

Basically, it seems that although some dispute the presence of toilets at Minoan palaces, most accept their existence. They appear to have resembled the outdoor latrines you often see in Roman archeological sites (only with fewer seats, one assumes) and used stone drains.



image credit Pin It