Another cause which, in the eyes of the Athenians, imparted sanctity to their lands, was the practice of burying in them their dead. The spot selected for this sacred purpose seems usually to have been the orchard, where, amid fig-trees and trailing vines,[1075] often near the boundaries of the estate, might be seen the ancient and venerable monuments of the dead. All Attica, therefore, in their eyes, appeared holy as a sepulchre; and, as every one guarded his own ancestral ashes, to sell a farm cost a man’s feelings more than in countries where people inter those they love in public cemeteries; and this circumstance with many would operate like a law of entail.[1076] ----- Footnote 1075: Eurip. Bacch. 10, seq. Cf. Kirch. de Funer. Rom. iii. 17. Footnote 1076: Demosth. in Callicl. § 4. ----- But it is easy thus to present to the imagination a general picture of the country. What we want is to thrust aside the impediments, to dissipate the obscurity of two thousand years, and lift the latch of a Greek farmhouse, such as it existed in the days of Pericles. In the first place it was common in Attica to erect country-houses in the midst of a grove of silver firs,[1077] which in winter protect from cold, and in summer attract the breezes that imitate in their branches the sound of trickling runnels, or the distant murmur of the sea. Towards the centre of the grove, with a spacious court in front and a garden behind, stood the house,[1078] sometimes with flat, sometimes with pointed roof, ornamented with a picturesque porch, and surrounded with verandahs or colonnades. Occasionally opulent persons had on the south front of their houses large citron trees,[1079] growing in pots, on either side the door, where they were well watered and carefully covered during winter.[1080] In the plainer class of dwellings, numerous outhouses, as stables, sheds for cattle,[1081] henroosts, pigstyes, &c., extended round the court, while the back-front, generally in the East the principal, opened upon the garden or orchard. ----- Footnote 1077: Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 406. On the music of the pine-groves, the Schol. on Theocritus, i. 1, has an amusing passage: ἡ πίτυς ἐκείνη, ἡδὺ τι μελουργεῖ, κατὰ τὸ ψιθύρισμα. κ. τ. λ. Footnote 1078: Called in Latin pagus from πηγὴ, a fountain. Serv. ad Virg. Georg. 182. See also the note of Gibbon, t. iii. p. 410. Footnote 1079: Geop. x. 7. 11. These pots, like those in which the palm-tree was cultivated, were pierced at the bottom like our own. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 4. 3. Footnote 1080: As the orange-tree is still in Lemnos. Walp. Mem. i. 280. Footnote 1081: The stalls for cattle were built as often as convenient, near the kitchen and facing the east, because when exposed to light and heat they became smooth-coated. Vitruv. vi. 9. Cf. Varro. i. 13. -----