The jambs were generally of wood;[360] but likewise sometimes of brass or marble. The doors were fastened at first by long bars passing into the wall on both sides;[361] and by degrees smaller bolts, hasps, latches, and locks and keys succeeded. For example the outer door of the Thalamos in Homer was secured by a silver hasp, and a leathern thong passed round the handle and tied, perhaps, in a curious knot.[362] Doors were not usually suspended on hinges, but turned, as they still do in the East, upon pivots inserted above into the lintel and below into the threshhold.[363] In many houses there were in addition small half-doors of open wood-work,[364] which alone were commonly closed by day, in order to keep the children from running out, or dogs or pigs from entering. The doors usually consisted of a frame-work, with four or six sunken panels, as with us; but at Sparta, so long as the laws of Lycurgus prevailed, they were made of simple planks fashioned with the hatchet.[365] In the great Dorian capital the custom was for persons desirous of entering a house to shout aloud at the door,[366] which, at Athens,[367] was always furnished with an elegant knocker.[368] Door-handles, too, of costly materials and curious workmanship,[369] bespoke even in that trifling matter the taste of the Greeks. ----- Footnote 360: Sagitt. de Jan. Vet. p. 29, sqq. Footnote 361: Sagitt. de Jan. p. 67. Footnote 362: Odyss. α. 441. Schol. et Eustath. ad loc.—δ. 862. ρ. 186. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 155. Footnote 363: Sagitt. de Jan. Vet. p. 41. Footnote 364: Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 3. p. 11. It should perhaps be remarked, that when houses were built on a solid basement the door was sometimes approached by a movable pair of steps. Id. ibid. tav. 8. p. 39. tav. 43. p. 228. Footnote 365: Plut. Lycurg. § 13. Agesil. § 19. Footnote 366: Plut. Inst. Lac. § 30. Cf. Theocrit. Eidyll. xxix. 39. Footnote 367: Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 133. Footnote 368: Sometimes in form of a crow. Poll. i. 77. Footnote 369: See Donaldson’s Collection of Doorways, pl. 8. -----