quarreling, and a tame quail is hopping about and watching for a
crumb. There are in fact a great many people in a relatively small
space; everything is busy, chattering, noisy, and confusing to an
intruding stranger.

24. Modifications in the Typical Plan.--These are the essential
features of an Athenian house. If the establishment is a very
pretentious one, there may be a small garden in the rear carefully
hedged against intruders by a lofty wall.[*] More probably the
small size of the house lot would force simplifications in the
scheme already stated. In a house one degree less costly, the
Gyneconitis would be reduced to a mere series of rooms shut off in
the rear. In more simple houses still there would be no interior
section of the house at all. The women of the family would be
provided for by a staircase rising from the main hall to a second
story, and here a number of upper chambers would give the needful
seclusion.[+] Of course as one goes down the social scale, the
houses grow simpler and simpler. Small shops are set into the
street wall at either side of the entrance door, and on entering
one finds himself in a very limited and utterly dingy court with
a few dirty compartments opening thence, which it would be absurd
to dignify by the name of "rooms." Again one ceases to wonder
that the male Athenians are not "home folk" and are glad to leave
their houses to the less fortunate women!

[*]Such a luxury would not be common in city houses; land would be
too valuable.

[+]Houses of more than two stories seem to have been unknown
in Athens. The city lacked the towering rookeries of tenements