ABSTRACT
Greek houses were made of sun-dried bricks, rather than stone, and this means that few traces of them have survived to the present day. In particular, it can be difficult to find evidence of houses built in the countryside, because the land on which they were built may have been cleared and used for agriculture. Houses seem to have been built of brick on stone foundations. Sometimes the outside of the house was plastered with lime, which was colored white. The roofs were covered with clay tiles, or thatch, and windows would have had wooden shutters, rather than glass. Democratic politics require a clear view of what is going on, but the Greeks could only build rooms as wide as the longest roof beam. Nowadays, competitors at the Olympic Games are well-housed in athlete's villages. However, in the ancient Greek world, the site of the Olympic Games at Olympia was well-known for having poor facilities.
