Social life was very simple. Princes tended flocks and built houses; princesses carried water and washed clothes. Agamemnon, Odysseus, and other heroes were not ashamed to be their own butchers and cooks. The Homeric knights did not ride on horseback, but fought from chariots. They sat at table instead of reclining at meals, as did the later Greeks. Coined money was unknown. Trade was by barter, values being reckoned in oxen or in lumps of gold and silver. Men bought their wives by making gifts of cattle to the parents. The art of writing is mentioned only once in the Homeric poems, and doubtless was little used. [Illustration: A CRETAN CUPBEARER (Museum of Candia, Crete) A fresco painting from the palace of Gnossus. The youth carries a silver cup ornamented with gold. His waist is tightly drawn in by a girdle, his hair is dark and curly, his profile is almost classically Greek.] LAW AND MORALITY The times were rude. Wars, though petty, were numerous and cruel. The vanquished suffered death or slavery. Piracy, flourishing upon the unprotected seas, ranked as an honorable occupation. It was no insult to inquire of a seafaring stranger whether he was pirate or merchant. Murders were frequent. The murderer had to dread, not a public trial and punishment, but rather the personal vengeance of the kinsmen of his victim. The Homeric Greeks, in fact, exhibited the usual defects and vices of barbarous peoples. HOMERIC GEOGRAPHY The _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ disclose a considerable acquaintance with peninsular Greece and the coasts of Asia Minor. Cyprus, Egypt, and Sicily are also known in part. The poet imagines the earth as a sort of flat shield, with Greece lying in the center. [9] The Mediterranean, "The Sea," as it is called by Homer, and its continuation, the Euxine, [10] divided the world into two equal parts. Surrounding the earth was "the great strength of the Stream of Ocean," [11] a river, broad and deep, beyond which lay the dark and misty realm of the mythical Cimmerians. The underworld of Hades, home of the dead, was beneath the surface of the earth. [Illustration: Map, THE WORLD according to HOMER (900 B.C.)] [Illustration: Map, GREEK CONQUESTS AND MIGRATIONS] 24. EARLY GREEK RELIGION THE OLYMPIAN COUNCIL We may learn from the Homeric poems what were the religious ideas held by the early Greeks. The greater gods and goddesses were not numerous. Less than a score everywhere received worship under the same names and in all the temples. Twelve of the chief deities formed a select council, which was supposed to meet on the top of snow-crowned Olympus. The Greeks, however, did not agree as to what gods and goddesses should be included in this august assemblage. ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITIES