Mazois, Pal. de Scaur. p. 98. ----- The ceilings at first consisted merely of the beams, rafters, and planks, forming the roof, and supporting the layers of earth or straw that covered it; but, by degrees, the wood-work was carefully painted, and arranged so as to form a succession of coffers and deep sunken panels. Sometimes the whole ceiling consisted of chamfered, or fretted cedar work,[301] or of cypress wood, or was covered with paintings in blue and gold, and supported on columns[302] lofty and deeply fluted for the purpose, as has been ingeniously conjectured,[303] of receiving spears into the semi-cylindrical cavities thus formed. If this idea be well founded, we have a very satisfactory reason of the origin of fluting columns, and it appears to be perfectly consistent with Homer’s account of Odysseus’s chamber, where a number of lances are spoken of standing round a pillar.[304] ----- Footnote 301: Athen. ix. 67. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 353. Cf. Gog. Origine des Loix, t. v. p. 443. Poll. Onom. x. 84. Comm. p. 1552. Maz. Pal. de Scau. p. 102. Tibull. iii. 3. 16. Luc. de Dea Syr. § 30. Cynic, § 9. Eurip. Orest. 1361. Footnote 302: Odyss. δ. 45, seq. Luc. Somn. seu Gall. § 29. Footnote 303: By Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Hom. § 47. Cf. Feith. Antiq. Homer, iii. 11. 6. Footnote 304: Odyss. α. 127, seq. ----- The principal apartments, according to the fashion still prevailing in the East, were furnished with divans,[305] or broad immovable seats, running along the walls, which are now stuffed soft atop with cotton, and covered with scarlet or purple, bordered by gold fringe a foot deep. In the Homeric age they would appear to have been of carved wood, inlaid with ivory and gold, and studded with silver nails.[306] For these divans they had a variety of coverings, sometimes skins, at others purple carpets, in addition to which they, as now, piled up, as a rest for the back or elbow, heaps of cushions, purple above, and of white linen beneath.[307] By degrees, these seats became movable and were converted into couches or sofas, manufactured of bronze, or silver, or precious woods, veneered with tortoiseshell.[308] In the palaces of oriental sultans they are sometimes made of alabaster, encrusted with jewels. Somewhere in the more retired parts of the Domos were the picture-gallery and library, of neither of which have we any exact description. The former, however, faced the north, and the latter the west. If the libraries of the Greeks at all resembled in form and dimensions those found at Pompeii, they were by no means spacious; neither, in fact, was a great deal of room necessary, as the manuscripts of the ancients stowed away much closer than our modern books,[309] and were sometimes kept in circular boxes, of elegant form, with covers of turned wood. The volumes consisted of rolls of parchment, sometimes purple at the back,[310] or papyrus, about twelve or fourteen inches in