As regards the interior of the houses, we know very little about the arrangement and appointment of the rooms. Naturally these were liable to variations, since a small family might inhabit a modest little dwelling, or there might be larger houses, containing numerous apartments. The front door, which opened (sometimes outwards) into the street, at which those who desired entrance knocked with their fingers or the knocker, was opened by a slave, acting as porter, and generally led to a hall, through which, either direct or through a second door, an open hall surrounded with a colonnade (_Peristylium_) was reached, which in the dwelling-houses of the historic period corresponded to the open courtyard of the Homeric palace, and bears an analogy to the _Atrium_ of the Roman house. This space, which was uncovered in the middle, and surrounded by colonnades, was the usual dwelling-place of the family; sometimes they took their meals there, and the altar to _Zeus Herkeios_ generally stood there. Round about were apartments whose doors, and probably windows, too, opened into the central hall; for it was not customary to have ground-floor windows opening on the street, and the sides of the houses usually touched the walls of the neighbouring buildings, so that the rooms on the ground-floor could, as a rule, only obtain their light from the central hall. Some of these apartments were destined for the men, and others for the women, but there was no general room. If the house was built on a considerable space, and had only one storey, the men’s rooms generally opened direct on the central hall, while the women’s were placed behind these, and were separate from them, having a special door, and doubtless, too, a special corridor, through which the women could reach the street without passing through the men’s apartments. If the house was small it was built in two storeys, and the women’s apartments were then situated in the upper storey. This latter arrangement appears to have been the more frequent. We often find allusions to women looking down on to the street from the windows of the upper storeys, and we also often find women represented on vase pictures sitting at upper-storey windows. These window openings were closed either by bars or wooden shutters, since glass panes were unknown in the Greek period. Where there were a good many slaves, it seems that the male slaves slept in the men’s apartments, and the female in the women’s apartments, except in those cases where the master allowed certain couples to live together. In larger houses, which contained a great number of rooms, we must imagine not only special sleeping and dining apartments, along with guest-chambers, rooms for the slaves, store-rooms, work-rooms, library, bathroom, etc., but also a second hall in the centre of the women’s apartments, and gardens connected with this; though flower gardens seem to have been a late introduction at Athens--it is said, indeed, that they date from the time