Tables were used by the ancients chiefly at meals, not for reading and writing. The antique tables, either square with four legs, or circular or oval with three connected legs, afterwards with one leg, resemble our modern ones, but for their being lower. Mostly their slabs did not reach higher than the kline; higher tables would have been inconvenient for the reclining person. In Homeric and even in later times, a small table stood before each thronos. The use of separate dishes for each guest is comparatively new. Originally the meats were brought in on large platters, divided by the steward, and each portion put on the bare table. In want of knives and forks the fingers were used. The pastry was put in baskets by the tables. Whether the Homeric tables were as low as the later ones, when lying instead of sitting had become the custom, we must leave undecided, in want of sculptural evidence. The legs of the tables were carefully finished, particularly those of the tripods, which frequently imitated the legs of animals, or at least had claws at their ends. The four-legged tables were more simple in design. The material was wood, particularly maple; later on, bronze, precious metals, and ivory were introduced. For the keeping of articles of dress, valuable utensils, ornaments, bottles of ointment, and documents, larger or smaller drawers and boxes were used. Chests of drawers and upright cupboards with doors seem to have been unknown in earlier times; only in few monuments of later date (for instance in the wall-painting of a shoemaker's workshop at Herculaneum) we see something resembling our wardrobe. The wardrobes mentioned by Homer doubtless resembled our old-fashioned trunks. The surfaces showed ornaments of various kinds, either cut from the wood in relief or inlaid with precious metal and ivory. Some smaller boxes with inlaid figures or painted arabesques are shown from pictures on vases. The ornamentation with polished nails seem to have been very much in favor--a fashion re-introduced in modern times. The most celebrated example of such ornamentation was the box of Kypselos, in the opisthodomos of the temple of Hera at Olympia. It dates probably from the time when the counting by Olympiads was introduced, and served, according to Botticher, for the keeping of votive tapestry and the like. According to Pausanias, it was made of cedar-wood, and elliptic in shape. It was adorned with mythological representations, partly carved in wood, partly inlaid with gold and ivory, encircling the whole box in five stripes, one over the other. Locks, keys and bolts, known at an early period for the closing of doors, were later applied to boxes, as is sufficiently proved by the still-existing small keys fastened to finger-rings, which, although all of Roman make, were most likely not unknown to the Greeks. For doors these would have been too small.