and the hearth; and precisely similar is the Homeric --megaron--,
with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof. We
cannot say the same of ship-building. The boat with oars was an
old common possession of the Indo-Germans; but the advance to the
use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken
place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical
terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians except such
as are also general among the Indo-Germanic family. On the other
hand the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common
midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the
introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the
Cretan Syssitia; and the earliest Romans further agreed with the
Cretans and Laconians in taking their meals not, as was afterwards
the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting
posture. The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces
of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is
certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the
appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood,
"the rubber" (--trypanon--, -terebra-), and the "under-layer"
(--storeus--, --eschara--, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-,
--tetamai--). In like manner the dress of the two peoples
is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with
the --chiton--, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller --himation--.
Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change,
the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two
principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,--a fact
which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the
earliest names for warriors (-pilumni--arquites-),(8) and is in
keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly
adapted to a close struggle. Thus, in the language and manners of