The GREEK VASE has come to be a synonym for beauty of form. Not that every Greek vase is perfect--by no means--but that the Greeks had come to feel and were able to express perfection of form in it as it had not been done before, and as it has not been better done since. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--_Egyptian Kylix._] So much interest hangs around this expression of the potter's art, that we give more space to the subject than to many other branches of the art. Keeping this perfection in mind, the manner of life of those Greeks, out of which the Greek vase grew, becomes of value, and is indeed of most interest. How did the Greeks live, and why was the Greek vase made? That the finest houses or palaces of the chiefs of the Heroic or Homeric period were larger, and more marked by barbaric splendor, than were the dwellings of the great in the days of Pericles, is admitted. We give from Mr. Bryant's translation of the Iliad a brief description of Hector's return to Troy from the battle-field: "And now had Hector reached the Scean gates And beechen tree. Around him flocked the wives And daughters of the Trojans eagerly; Tidings of sons and brothers they required, And friends and husbands. He admonished all Duly to importune the gods in prayer, For woe he said was near to many a one." He passed onward in search of Andromache: "And then he came to Priam's noble hall, A palace built with graceful porticoes, And fifty chambers near each other walled With polished stone, the rooms of Priam's sons, And of their wives; and opposite to these Twelve chambers for his daughters, also near Each other; and with polished marble walls, The sleeping-rooms of Priam's sons-in-law And their unblemished consorts. There he met His gentle mother on her way to seek Her fairest child Laodice." That the description is glorified, we need not doubt, for that is the province of poetry; and poor is the poet who does not see the beauty through the squalor, the sunshine through the cloud. The Greek house of the time of Pericles was much smaller and less splendid than this. It is a curious fact to know that most of what remains to us of the _living_ Greeks and Egyptians has been saved for us by the dead. Not a complete house of the living exists; while those of the dead have been unearthed not only in Greece, but in parts of Italy, which in many places was colonized by Greeks, and in which Greek customs and Greek art had a strong hold. [Illustration: FIG. 28.--_Egyptian Bottle, Side and Front View._] The Egyptians honored their dead, the Greeks honored their dead, and the Romans honored their dead. Let them have our thanks; for, because of that, things of interest and beauty are left to us.