We observe that almost the entire crowd leaving the Agora goes
on foot. To ride about in a chariot is a sign of undemocratic
presumption; while only women or sick men will consent to be borne
in a litter. We will select a sprucely dressed gentleman who has
just been anointed in a barber's shop and accompany him to his home.
He is neither one of the decidedly rich, otherwise his establishment
would be exceptional, not typical, nor is he of course one of
the hard-working poor. Followed by perhaps two clean and capable
serving lads, he wends his way down several of the narrow lanes that
lie under the northern brow of the Acropolis[*]. Before a plain
solid house door he halts and cries, "Pai! Pai!" ["Boy! Boy!"].
There is a rattle of bolts and bars. A low-visaged foreign-born
porter, whose business it is to show a surly front to all unwelcome
visitors, opens and gives a kind of salaam to his master; while
the porter's huge dog jumps up barking and pawing joyously.

[*]This would be a properly respectable quarter of the city, but
we do not know of any really "aristocratic residence district" in
Athens.

As we enter behind him (carefully advancing with right foot foremost,
for it is bad luck to tread a threshold with the LEFT) we notice
above the lintel some such inscription as "Let no evil enter here!"
or "To the Good Genius," then a few steps through a narrow passage
bring us into the Aula, the central court, the indispensable feature
of every typical Greek house.


22. The Type and use of a Greek House.--All domestic architecture,
later investigators will discover, falls into two great categories--of