Much, however, would depend upon the taste of the individual; but in a plain farmhouse more attention appears to have been paid to substantial comfort, and something like rough John-Bullism, than to that cold finical elegance which certain persons are fond of associating with whatever is classical. An Attic farmer of the true old republican school was anything but a fine gentleman. He scorned none of the occupations or productions by which he lived. On entering his dwelling you found no small difficulty in steering between bags of corn,[1086] piles of cheeses, hurdles of dried figs[1087] or raisins, while the racks groaned with hams[1088] and bacon flitches. If they resembled their descendants,[1089] too, even their bedchambers were invaded by some species of provisions, for there in the present day you often behold long strings of melons suspended like festoons from the rafters. In one corner of the ground-floor stood a corbel filled with olive-dregs, recently pressed, in another a wool-sack or a pile of dressed skins.[1090] Yonder in the room looking into the garden, with the honey-suckle twining about the open lattice, were madam’s loom and spinning-wheel, and carding apparatus, and work-baskets; and there with the lark[1091] might you see her, serene and happy, suckling her young democrat, and rocking the cradle of a second with her foot, thriftily giving directions the while to Thratta, Xanthia or “the neat-handed” Phillis.[1092] ----- Footnote 1086: Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 45. Footnote 1087: Philost. Icon. ii. 26. p. 851. Footnote 1088: Cf. Athen. iv. 38. Footnote 1089: Walp. Mem. i. 281. Footnote 1090: Aristoph. Nub. 45, seq. et Schol.—Schol. Eq. 803. Footnote 1091: Plat. De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 40. Aristoph. Lysist. 18, sqq. Footnote 1092: Aristoph. Acharn. 272. Vesp. 824. Pac. 1138. Thesm. 286, seq. Suid. v. Θρᾶττα. t. p. 1330. a. ----- The kitchen must sometimes have been in fine disorder; geese and ducks waddling across the floor, picking up the spilled grain, or snatching away the piece of bread and honey which my young master had just put down on the stool to play at a game of romps with Thratta. Up in the dusky corner there, behind a huge armchair or settle, you may discern a very suspicious looking enclosure, from which, at intervals, issues a suppressed grunt; it is the pigsty.[1093] But be not offended; the practice is classical; and pigs, in my apprehension, are as pleasant company as geese and many other animals. Now, that geese were fed even about palaces, we have the testimony of Homer, whose Penelope, the _beau idéal_ of a good housewife, says— “Full twenty geese have we at home, that feed On wheat in water steeped.”[1094] ----- Footnote 1093: Ἐπὶ τῆς ἑστίας τρέφουσι χοίρους.—Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 844. Lysist. 1073, Poll. ix. 16. Footnote 1094: Odyss. τ. 536. Footnote 1095: Cf. Vict. Var. Lect. p. 891. -----