Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/88

jo A History of Art in Ciiald.ea and Assyria. political or judicial debate, like the public places of the Graeco- Roman world. But in the East the municipal life of the West has never obtained a footing. The monarchy and patriarchal te have been her two forms of government ; she had no need of wide spaces for crowds of voters or for popular tribunals. Nothing more was required than a place for gossip and the retailing of news, a place where the old men could find themselves surrounded by a circle of fellow townsmen crouched upon their heels, and, after hearing plaintiffs, defendants and their witnesses, could give those awards that were the first form of justice. Nothing could afford a better rendezvous for such purposes than the gate of a fortified city or village. Hollowed in the thickness of a wall of prodigious solidity it gave a shelter against the north wind in winter, while in summer its cool galleries must have been the greatest of luxuries. Husbandmen going to their fields, soldiers setting out on expeditions, merchants with their cara- vans, all passed through these resounding archways and had a moment in which to hear and tell the news. Those whom age or easy circumstances relieved from toil or war passed much of their time in the gates talking with all comers or sunk in the sleepy reverie in which orientals pass so much of their lives. All this is painted for us with the most simple fidelity in the Bible. u And there came two angels to Sodom at even ; and Lot seeing them, rose up to meet them." 1 When Abraham buys a burying place in Hebron he addresses himself to Ephron, the owner of the ground, "and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city." 2 So too Boaz, when he wishes to marry Ruth and to get all those who had rights over the young Moabitess to resign them in his favour, " went up to the gate, and sat him down there .... and he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, sit ye down here. And they sat down." 3 And these old men were called upon to witness the acts of resignation performed by Ruth's nearest relatives. 4 So too, in later ages, when the progress of political life led kings to inhabit great separate buildings of their own, the palace gates became for the courtiers what the city gates were for the 1 Genesis xix. i. 2 Genesis xxiii. 10. 3 Ruth iv. i and 2. 4 See also 2 Kings vii. 1. — Ed.