Private life

The Chaleians, like the rest of the ancient Greeks, lived a simple life. The majority were land and animal farmers, and many must have lived off the sea as fishermen or merchants.

Their everyday life did not differ a great deal from that of the Greek villagers up until the 1960’s. It began at dawn and ended at dusk. Men lived and worked mainly in the open-air, while women stayed at home preparing food, weaving, and rearing children.

Their dress was simple, and only on holidays and festivities did they dress better. Their clothes were woven from linen or wool on a vertical loom at which the women worked standing. The threads of the warp were held stretched by clay loom-weights which were lenticular, conical or pyramidal in shape. Because their clothes were loose, they wore belts made of cloth, leather or rarely of metal, such as a bronze one dated in the geometric period. Also they held them at the shoulders with bronze fasteners, 8-shaped fasteners (fibulae) or with bone pins.

The women decorated themselves with jewellery which they kept in clay or wooden boxes, pyxides. Some jewellery served as charms, like the amulet with the figure of Ammon Zeus, or it was of practical use, such as bronze hair-rings which held the hair in a pony-tail or in ringlets.

Ancient Greeks used to anoint themselves with perfumed oils, which they imported in large clay vessels (pelikai), and they kept them in smaller clay or bronze pots, such as the aryballoi, the long and narrow alabastra and the lekythoi, and the clay or glass pots for balms. They also used perfumed ointments which were kept in pots (exaleiptra) and cosmetics, such as face powder and coloured paints for the lips and eye lids. They used round,  well-polished bronze mirrors, such as the one decorated with the head of Aphrodite.

Their diet was simple: milk, cheese, wheat bread, pies, pulses, fish, many vegetables and fruit, as well as dried nuts. Meat was quite rare. They slaughtered mainly for holidays and festivities, but they all ate meat at the public dinners which took place after sacrifices to the gods. The main drink was wine which they stored in large, clay jars.

They served it out of bronze or ceramic jugs, and they drank it out of ceramic or metal vessels (goblets and two-handled cups) and from the Roman period with glass vessels.
They prepared the food in marble mortars, and they cooked it in plain clay pots in the fireplace of the house, which was in the kitchen. The other rooms were furnished with couches, while the women and children lived in the women’s quarters. The houses were lit with bronze or clay oil-lamps and more rarely with torches and candles.