Nevertheless, wherever there exists opulence, it will exhibit itself in the erection of stately dwellings; and accordingly we find that, prior even to the Trojan war,[265] commerce and increasing luxury had already inspired the Greeks with a taste for splendour and magnificence, which displayed itself especially in the architecture and ornaments of their palaces and houses of the great.[266] ----- Footnote 265: Cf. Athen. i. 28. Footnote 266: Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 272. ----- Homer, minute and graphic in his descriptions, delineates a very flattering picture of Greek domestic architecture in his time, when the chiefs and nobles had already begun to enshrine themselves in spacious edifices, elaborately ornamented with, and surrounded by, all the circumstances of pomp known to their age.[267] ----- Footnote 267: Il. β. 657, sqq. ----- In those days the greatest men did not disdain to apply themselves to agriculture, to have their dwellings surrounded by the signs and implements of the pursuit in which they were engaged.[268] And as in southern Italy the ancient nobles erected shops in front of their palaces or villas, in which the produce of their land was disposed of, so in the Homeric houses the same space was occupied by the farm-yard enclosed by strong and lofty walls, surrounded by battlements, within which were their heaps of manure, harrows, ploughs, carts, and waggons, and stacks of hay and corn;[269] and hither, too, in the evening were driven in their numerous flocks and herds, to protect them from the nightly marauders. The great entrance gates were in the heroic ages guarded by ban dogs,[270] which afterwards made way for porters,[271] and in still later times were succeeded by eunuchs.[272] ----- Footnote 268: A similar taste prevailed among the Merovingian princes of France: “The mansion of the long-haired kings was surrounded with convenient yards and stables for the cattle and the poultry; the garden was planted with useful vegetables; the various trades, the labours of agriculture, and even the arts of hunting and fishing were exercised by servile hands for the emolument of the sovereign; his magazines were filled with corn and wine, either for sale or consumption, and the whole administration was conducted by the strictest maxims of private economy.”—Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 356. Footnote 269: Hesych. v. αὐλῆς. Footnote 270: Feith. Antiq. Hom. iii. 10. p. 242. Footnote 271: Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 145. Footnote 272: Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 159. Cf. Aristid. t. i. p. 518. Jebb. -----