The opinion appears to prevail among certain writers, that the private dwellings of the Hellenes, or at least of the Athenians, were always mean and insignificant.[261] This imaginary fact they account for by supposing, that nobles and opulent citizens were deterred from indulging in the luxuries of architecture by the form of government and the envious jealousy of the common people. But such a view of the matter is inconsistent with the testimony of history. At Athens, as everywhere else, things followed their natural course. In the early ages of the commonwealth, when manners were simple, the houses of the greatest men in the state differed very little from those of their neighbours. As wealth, however, and luxury increased, together with the developement of the democratic principle, individuals erected themselves mansions vying in extent and splendour with the public edifices of the state;[262] and as the polity degenerated more and more into ochlocracy, the dwellings of the rich[263] increased in size and grandeur, until they at length outstripped the very temples of the gods. A similar process took place at Sparta, where shortly after the Peloponnesian war, the more distinguished citizens possessed suburban villas, which seem to have been of spacious dimensions and filled with costly furniture.[264] ----- Footnote 261: But even from a fragment of Bacchylides we may infer the magnificence of Grecian houses; for the poor man who drinks wine, he says, sees his house blazing with gold and ivory: χρυσῷ δ᾽ ἐλεφαντί τε μαρμαίρουσιν οἶκοι. Athen. ii. 10. Men had by this time advanced considerably from the state in which they are supposed to have built their huts in imitation of the swallow’s nest. Vitruv. ii. 1. Footnote 262: Plat. Repub. iv. t. vi. p. 165. Dion Chrysost. i. 262. ii. 459. Dem. cont. Mid. § 44.—Lucian. Amor. § 34. Footnote 263: Dem. Olynth. iii. § 9. De Rep. Ord. § 10. Footnote 264: Xenoph. Hellen. vi. 5. 27. ----- Upon these points, however, I dwell, not from any belief that they are honourable to the Greek character, but because they are true. It would have been more satisfactory to find them preserving, in every period of their history, the stern and lofty simplicity of republican manners, far outshining in the eyes of the philosopher the palaces of Oriental kings glittering with gold and ivory and jewels, insomuch that the cottage of Socrates, erected in the humblest style of Athenian domestic architecture, would be an object, were it still in existence, of far deeper interest to the genuine lover of antiquity than the mansions of Meidias or Callias, or even than the imperial abodes of Semiramis, Darius, and Artaxerxes.