Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1886 — A Grecian Bathing-Room. [ARTICLE]

A Grecian Bathing-Room.

Among the rooms which cluster about the megaron at Tiryns is one of quite unique interest. This is a small chamber —in size some ten feet by twelve—whereof the floor is formed of a single gigantic slab of stone weighing about twenty tons, and the walls were wainscoted with solid and close-fitting i flanks. A gully at the corner, evidenty made for the exit of water, at once suggested that this was once a bathroom, and no other theory seems tenable. That Homer’s heroes, like Greeks of later times, betook themselves to the baths before they they went to dine in the hall is well known to all scholars, and here again excavation gives material confirmation to the poet’s words. But it does more than confirm, it also explains. Homer speaks of the chiefs as repairing to the cuzesta asaminthol , and the commentators have variously interpreted the phrase in the light rather of their own ingenuity than of comparative archaeology. But a fragment of a large terracotta vessel, evidently used in bathing, has come to light at Tiryns, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the bathing ciistoms of the Homeric Greeks differed but little from those which the representations on vases show to have prevailed in historical times. In the midst of the floor of the bath-room was placed a large vessel full of warm water. In this, after laying aside his clothes, the bather sat, or over it he cowered, while a bathing man ladled over him the water, which, falling on the floor, ran away by the sink in a corner of the room. After the washing came rubbing and oiling. It is, however, to be observed that the place of the bathing man is in the Homeric descriptions supplied by a woman, sometimes even a high-born lady. At Pylos, Polvcasta, youngest daughter of Nestor, bathes and dresses young Telemachns. Helen bathes Odysseus when he comes to Trov as a spy, and recognizes him in bath by personal marks, as does old Nurse Eufyclea at a 4 later period* It seems to be a mark of the extreme modesty of the same hero that he declines to be bathed by the maidens of Nausica. Thus always, when we compare Homeric and later Hellenic customs, we find strong likenesses and sharp contrast, presenting to the historian and anthopologist one of the most fascinating of fields for study, a field which they can not as yet be said to have half occupied.— The Quarterly Review.

The Rev. J. L. Scudclerof Minneapolis is in error when, in trying to prove that women are more fond of dancing than men, he says: “Women will dance with each other by the hour, but men never dance except with women.” We have seen in a dancing hall in Rome men dancing with each other by the dozens of couples in preference to the partnership of young women who danced equally well. This was undoubtedly evidence of the most undiluted love of dancing for its action ami the rhythm alone; but we take it that the love in* grained in the human heart for this historic exercise is the same whether in man or woman.— N. Y. Sun.