This, and indeed almost every other passage referring to the practical arts of antiquity, is very incorrectly translated. From a comparison of various original descriptions of palatial buildings, a tolerable idea of the highest efforts of architecture during the Homeric and succeeding ages may be obtained. They appear universally to have been placed so as to enclose a court, along the sides of which ran an open corridore, formed by pillars; for the word corresponding to column does not once occur in the Iliad. These pillars, as may still be seen in Egyptian buildings, were united by flat epistylia or architraves, for the phrase, 'arched columns,' is nonsense. During the times of the Iliad, no division of stories appears to have been practised; and the expression lofty chamber, so often occurring, seems to imply that the whole was open to the roof; for the apartments, with the exception of the great hall, do not otherwise induce the idea of great magnitude. In the Odyssey again, to this mode of division distinct reference is made, a circumstance which, with many others respecting the arts, points to a later as the age of that poem. The roof itself may be inferred from incidental remarks to have been pointed, composed of wooden beams inclined towards each other, and supported in the central angle by columns or shafts of wood; for wherever the word occurs in the early poetical literature of Greece, an internal member is implied, and from the casual introduction, one of necessity, not ornament, the only adjunct being lofty or tall, exactly corresponding with the distinction here supposed. It is evident, then, that we must examine elsewhere for the origin of ornamental architecture in Greece. And the only other department of the art refers to buildings for sacred purposes. But even here, mighty and graceful as are the existing ruins, many ages elapse before we reach the era of the temple--where The whole so measured true, so lessen'd off, By fine proportion that the marble pile, Form'd to repel the still or stormy waste Of rolling ages, light as fabrics look'd, That from the magic wand aerial rise.