THE HOMES OF THE LOWLY AND OF THE MIGHTY
=26. The Great _Insulæ_--Tenement Blocks.=--Perhaps another age will
imagine that most Romans have lived in vast marble palaces, moving
through spacious halls amid stately pillars and spraying fountains.
Nothing like this is the case for the great majority. A census report
declares “there are some 44,000 tenement blocks (_insulæ_) in the city
and only about 1750 separate ‘mansions’ (_domus_).”[14] Such figures
can merely imply that an overwhelming proportion of “the toga-wearing
race, the Lords of the world” (to quote Virgil’s threadbare line) are
flat-dwellers.
Considering the extreme congestion of population, no other solution
than this is possible if Rome is to remain Rome. There is a great
profit in building these huge, ungainly “islands,” the tenement blocks.
Everywhere around the city we meet the gangs of laborers mixing the
concrete whereof the structures are mostly constructed, or setting the
wooden molds to shape the material as it solidifies; or else tearing
down and carting away the wreckage of insulæ that have begun to decay.
Such property employs a great amount of capital. Nearly every senator
has his men of business caring for his housing investments and rentals,
and the “realtor” is a very familiar personage.
Rightly is it complained also that many insulæ are put up in a cheap
and absolutely dangerous manner, and at best are dark, dirty, and
unsanitary. The very name implies that they should be built with a free
space all around them. The old law of Twelve Tables (450 B.C.) required
a passage way (_ambitus_) of at least two and a half feet on either
side, but this law was recklessly disregarded until the great fire of
Nero enabled the government to enforce a fairly scientific building
code. Even now, however, the tenement houses are often hemmed in on
all sides by miserable black alleys hardly accessible to the public
scavengers.
This struggle to use every scrap of ground is completely matched by the
effort to build as high as possible. “The immense size of Rome,” wrote
Vitruvius, about 1 A.D., “makes it needful to have a vast number of
habitations, and as the area is not sufficient to contain them all on
the ground floor, the nature of the case compels us to raise them in
the air.”
There are no passenger elevators in Rome; furthermore, the concrete
construction does not permit the safe erection of extremely high
buildings without unusual precautions, and with such narrow streets
tall structures obstruct both light and air; nevertheless, the real
estate interests grumbled loudly when Augustus limited the height of
dwellings to seventy feet. Hadrian has just vexed them still more by
a decree that if an owner allows his insula to fall into dangerous
repair, he must either sell it, or rebuild it thoroughly. For all that,
many insulæ seem to be towering rookeries, ready to collapse at any
flood or earthquake.
=27. A Typical Insula.=--Upon Mercury Street, which we have just
examined, stands a very average insula, built about forty years ago,
and, therefore, loyally named the _Flavia Victoria_ for the then
reigning dynasty. It belongs to the widow of the rich eques Gaius
Macer, and is managed by the lynx-eyed procurator, or bailiff, who
superintends her estate. Despite the fact that it is safer than some
of its neighbors, the tenants complain on rent days that the upper
stories are built so largely of wood as to be in peril of fire, and
that one of the outer walls is so cracked that it has to be propped up
with heavy timbers.
The _Flavia Victoria_ is just under the legal building height,
and contains five stories. On the street there are several shops of
the usual kind, also several separate entrances whereof the doorways,
flanked with pillars, give access to certain extra-select flats above;
but most of the tenants have to go in through the central portal under
the eyes of a porter.
Upon entering they find themselves in a fairly ample square court, upon
which open many windows of the tiers of rooms in the upper stories.
There is a fountain in the court, but the pavement below is decidedly
slimy and dirty. Quantities of half-naked small children are scampering
about in noisy play. The windows, however, like those facing upon the
streets, often have balconies on which simple boxes of flowers are
blooming. The blue Italian sky above and the bars of intense sunlight
upon the flag-stones make the filthiness of the court and the dinginess
of the yellow stuccoed walls less obnoxious. Dirt and even the numerous
fleas lose part of their terrors amid picturesque surroundings in a
mild climate.
=28. The Flats in an Insula.=--From the courtyard several staircases,
often dark and dank, rise to the tenements above. The _Flavia Victoria_
is a fair-sized insula, and just as in European flat buildings later,
can contain many social strata under one ample roof. In the apartments
on the first floor, there are really comfortable suites, each with
a series of rooms--living room (_atrium_), dining room, kitchen,
bedrooms, and the like, chambers not large indeed, but sufficient for a
modest household keeping perhaps ten slaves. The walls are covered with
bright frescoes, and the floors with very fair mosaics. Such a superior
apartment can bring some 10,000 sesterces ($400) per year, and a good
many flats rent for even more.[15]
The rentals fall rapidly as the tenants scale higher. In the second
floor the apartments are much smaller; there is merely a living room
and a few smaller chambers. The appointments are correspondingly
mean and dingy, while the annual rent is only 2000 sesterces ($80);
and between the prosperous grain factor on the third floor and the
hard-working brickyard superintendent on the fourth there is never the
least sociability.
=29. The Cheap Attic Tenements and Their Poor Occupants.=--Both unite,
however, in despising the wretched creatures who plod wearily up to the
dirty, vermin-infested sleeping pockets upon the fifth or sixth stages,
where, under the roof tiles, the hot sun beats pitilessly. If we care
to thrust ourselves into the tiny chambers of the unfortunate Codrus,
the bath attendant, we will find, perhaps “a bed too small for the
dwarf Procula, a marble slab whereon are set six small food jars and a
small drinking cup, a statue of Chiron [some decaying heirloom], and an
old chest of Greek books gnawed by the unlettered mice.”[16]
Vainly do Codrus and his wife complain to the bailiff that the roof is
collapsing over them. He merely laughs and bids them “sleep at ease,”
although a deadly crash is threatened any night. They have another
peril, because fire may at any time break out in Ucalegon’s flat below
and leave them cut off, possibly while in their beds, and with no
chance of escape after the alarm spreads.
Such poor tenants never stay in one place long. Rome is a city of
inveterate flat-hunters. The first of July (the Calends) is the
regular moving day. Every tenant who cannot or will not pay his rent,
has to go forth seeking even cheaper and more squalid quarters. There
are endless family processions bearing off the few poor chattels.
The satirists make ungenerous fun of their plight, telling how a
wretched man has to march away followed by “his carroty-headed wife,
his white-haired mother and his giantess of a sister.” Between them
they carry off “a three-legged bed, a two-footed table, a lamp, a
horn-cup, a rusty brazier, some cracked dishes, some jars of very stale
pickled fish,” also a supply of cheese and onions, and “a pot of resin
belonging to the poor fellow’s mother and used by the beldame for
anointing herself.”
[Illustration: TENANTS PAYING RENT TO A LANDLORD’S
AGENT.]
Such luckless plebeians, of course, may delude some house agent in a
distant part of the city into giving them a dark garret in the vain
hope that they can pay their rent; “but really,”--says the bailiff with
a shrug, “they belong at the Aricine bridge--the haunt of the beggars.”
Unfortunately a large fraction of Rome is little better off than this.
Poverty stalks everywhere. There are plenty of fetid insulæ which do
not contain a single family that can be sure of next week’s dinners.
Nevertheless there are mitigations; as will be seen, the government
takes great pains that in Rome nobody will actually starve; and again,
there are so many free circuses and gladiatorial shows that a man has
abundant diversion from his troubles. There is a magnificent water
supply, and the kind Italian sun prevents heavy fuel bills. Poverty,
therefore, does not imply the acute misery which it does in the North.
Nevertheless, the most fortunate insula dweller probably dreams of the
day when he can crown his inevitable ambition. “When can I cease to
live in a _cenacula_ (flat) and live in a _domus_?”[17]
=30. A Senatorial “Mansion” (_Domus_).=--Publius Junius Calvus is a
senator of ancient lineage, whose domus lifts itself arrogantly near
the summit of the Esquiline, at the head of Mercury Street, looking
down upon the tiles of the humble insula _Flavia Victoria_.
Calvus, although a member of the upper aristocracy, is not
extraordinarily wealthy. He does not, like some of his friends, possess
simultaneously three large city houses, often moving from one to
another according to season and mood. He has only four country villas,
one far in the North by the Italian lakes, one in the Etruscan hills,
one fairly close to Rome, and a fourth on the delightful Bay of Naples.
His city residence is inferior in magnificence not merely to those of
many senators but even of many equites (second-class nobles) and of
a whole cohort of rich, upstart freedmen. Nevertheless, it is a fine
mansion, which has been in the Calvian family for many generations, and
it is crammed with treasured heirlooms. Calvus, unlike certain noble
colleagues, is happily married and rejoices in two half-grown sons and
a daughter. For them a _familia_ of only one hundred and fifty slaves
suffices, although the noble Gratia sometimes complains to her husband:
“Our staff is disgracefully small.”
The Calvi are really an extremely old family in what is now becoming a
city of upstarts. Publius’s forebears have lived for centuries on the
Esquiline and their domus has been rebuilt many times. In Punic War
days it probably consisted only of a central atrium, with an opening
in the ceiling to admit light and emit smoke, and a few dark cell-like
chambers radiating from the great living room. This hall rightly
received its name of the “black place” (_ater_) from the soot from the
open hearth which was perpetually caked around the rafters. The walls
were of rubble, the floor of simple tiles or even merely of pounded
earth, and the roof was of thatch. Such a house could stow away the
many children and the relatively few servants of a senator who helped
to humiliate Carthage.
=31. The Plan of a Large Residence.=--Very different is the domus now
as we approach the lofty Ionic pillars before its portal, nevertheless,
the plan of the old house has not quite vanished in the stately
mansion. The Roman house is always (like the Greek) essentially the
typical _southern_ dwelling built around _courts_, and getting its
light thence, and with little dependence upon exterior windows. What
has happened now is that the old living room has expanded into a
magnificent light-bathed hall, with the sun streaming not through a
smoke-hole but an ample opening. The rooms leading from this court
have multiplied in number and vastly increased in size. Then through a
series of passages one enters a second court even larger and handsomer,
and with another array of dependent chambers.
In such a house the main apartments are on the first floor, but there
is a second story for the lodging of the retinues of slaves. In
the rear of all there is usually a garden. Every domus has its own
particular plan and pretentions but all conform to the general scheme
of two main courts, just as almost every house of another civilization
will demand its parlor and its dining room.
[Illustration: ATRIUM OF HOUSE IN POMPEII LOOKING TOWARDS
THE PERISTYLIUM: present condition.]
Calvus’s mansion is priced by the real estate experts at about
3,500,000 sesterces (say $140,000);[18] but there are not a few houses
of richer senators worth four times as much. The structure faces a
street which is reasonably clear of shops and where all the neighbors
are at least equites or else very wealthy freedmen. The building does
not rise as high as an insula; in fact it possesses only two stories:
the first broken by mere peepholes in the solid stuccoed walls, the
second by larger windows all heavily grated. One can guess part of the
reason for these bars from a placard hanging in the entrance:
NO SLAVE IS TO QUIT THE HOUSE WITHOUT
THE MASTER’S ORDERS. PENALTY 100 LASHES
=32. Entrance to the Residence.=--The entrance itself, however,
is handsome. The columns on either side are of fine Luna marble.
Pass between these, and you enter a vestibule, a considerable outer
chamber with fine pilasters let into the walls, where at this moment
a swarm of the Senator’s clients are mustering. Then you approach the
actual doors of the _ostium_. These stand open but every passer is
being scrutinized, and if questionable, is stopped by a janitor, a
highly responsible slave, who has a seat just inside. Many a janitor
is supported in his duty by a surly dog, but here there is merely a
life-like mosaic creature, wrought in the tiles of the pavement, with
CAVE CANEM (“Beware the dog”) written beneath him. Overhead in a gilt
cage however is swinging a tame magpie, and the creature croaks out his
“_Salve! Salve!_” as the guests press into the atrium.
=33. The Atrium and the View across It.=--The moment we are inside the
transformation of scene from the dusty, dingy street is startling. If
other persons do not obstruct the view, you can see clear down the long
vistas of the house from the entrance to the greenery of the garden.
Before us is the atrium, a magnificent court, paved with elaborate
mosaics, and with four elegant Corinthian columns in pink marble
upholding the roof around a wide light-well. Under this light-well is
a complicated fountain, where bronze tritons and dancing nymphs are
shooting great jets into a white marble basin in which grow luxurious
water plants. On the inner sides of the atrium, and on either of the
numerous doors opening into the same, stand statues, bronze or marble,
upon carved stone pedestals.
[Illustration: PLAN OF A ROMAN MANSION
(_Domus_): strictly conventionalized.]
Many of the doorways around this elegant hall are closed by heavy
curtains, of rich saffron, purple, olivine, or blue, the hues being
selected to blend marvelously with the tints of the columns. Where the
walls are not a sheen of marble, they are spread with elaborate and
wonderfully decorative frescos--of which more hereafter. On special
pedestals of honor are fine art objects, valuable bric-a-brac, tripods,
vases, silver cups, war trophies. The mosaics on the floor (could we
stop to gaze) are more beautiful than any carpet. In brilliant jewel
work, for it is little else, has been wrought out a series of pictures
showing the campaigns of Alexander. There is another series giving the
legend of Perseus. The sunlight, the spray from the fountain, the
sheen of the marbles, the brilliance of the frescos, all combine in an
effect that is dazzling.
=34. The Rooms in the Rear and the _Peristylium_.=--But this hall is
merely the beginning, not the end of the domus. In the rear of the
atrium there is the master’s office, the _tablinum_, a very large
alcove, a handsome apartment where he will receive those guests who are
come strictly on business. This and the atrium, however, are merely the
public rooms of the house; the real living rooms are beyond, although,
by a survival of old custom, the symbolic marriage couch of the master
and mistress stands on a back wall by the tablinum. The heavy curtains
have been swept aside from the broad passageways (_fauces_) which lead
into the second court--the _peristylium_.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A ROMAN MANSION, LOOKING FROM
THE ATRIUM INTO THE PERISTYLIUM: restored.]
Here the atrium is duplicated--but on a much more elaborate scale.
There is another column-girdled court; but the pillars are taller and
of an exquisite blue-veined marble. A huge curtain swings on its cords
ready for expansion as the sun grows hot. Beneath the light-opening,
there is not merely a second fountain, but a real plat of greensward,
a _viridarium_, with a bright bed of rare flowers and even a few
tropical plants. There is another phalanx of statues. Under the
long quadrangular colonnades around the court are spread out deeply
upholstered couches, easy chairs, small tables, and other appurtenances
for luxurious existence. The ceilings of the colonnades and of the
rooms leading thence are covered with metallic fretwork gilded in a
soft sheen, while the intense light filters down gratefully between the
columns, and sinks to a pleasant twilight in the niches and nooks in
the walls of the peristylium.
[Illustration: SCENE IN A PERISTYLIUM.]
=35. The Dining Room (_Triclinium_) and the Chapel.=--From this second
court to left and to right open doors which lead to the master’s
and mistress’s sleeping chambers, and those of their children, their
guests, and their upper servants. The rooms are small, but are always
daintily frescoed.
[Illustration: ROMAN TYPE OF HOUSE AT POMPEII, LOOKING
ACROSS THE ATRIUM: present condition.]
Far more important than these chambers is the great dining room
(_triclinium_). Calvus’s friends tell him he really ought to rebuild
his residence and provide a special “summer dining room” on the north
side of the house, and a warmer “winter dining room” on the south
side as in all the newer mansions.[19] However, his triclinium is
very handsome; with good pilasters of Hymettus marble, fine statuary,
sideboards loaded with rare old plate, and a ceiling fretted with ivory
and arranged so that it can be partly opened at the climax of a feast
to drop garlands and to spray down unguents upon the guests.
In the rear of the house there are also a smaller breakfast room, and a
special hall (_oecus_) for the display of even additional art objects,
likewise a library, and a private bathroom, both to be described later;
while in the rear of the peristylium is one of the most important rooms
assuredly in the entire mansion--the kitchen (_culina_), where Gratia’s
proudest possession, a truly superior cook, prepares dinners that atone
for the sorrowful fact that “we have only one dining room.”
Off the peristylium, too, one notes what amounts to a miniature chapel.
Before a temple front composed of short columns mounted on a kind of
table are set several little images of beautiful fairy-like creatures
of both sexes. These are the family _lares_, the honored guardians of
the old house of the Calvi. Once they stood in the atrium, but in later
days although withdrawn to the more private peristylium, they have not
ceased to be dear. Calvus discusses with his philosopher friends, “Are
there really any gods?”; but he never fails to cast his incense night
and morning upon the small gilt brazier which smokes before his family
lares. In the kitchen, also, there is a second little niche and still
other images of the lares, where they receive bits of food and innocent
prayers from all the servants--even more devotedly than from the lordly
folk in the peristylium.
=36. The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters.=--Another passage beside
the kitchen leads us into what can be just glimpsed as one enters the
atrium--the rear garden set in by high walls. Land is too valuable
in Rome for Calvus to permit himself much more than a short graveled
walk under a few fine old box trees, but by an intensive gardening
that another age might style “Japanese” there is laid out a miniature
brooklet, a cascade plunging into a little pool containing tame
lampreys, and some small pines, which have been forced into the
semblance of a tiny forest. A broad marble seat now strewn with
cushions, a good statue of a dancing Pan, the rushing music of
the water, and the breeze rustling the foliage--all these make the
tumultuous, squalid street and the dirty garrets of the _Flavia
Victoria_ seem very far away.--In reality they are barely a stone’s
throw down the hill.
[Illustration: CORNER IN A GARDEN IN REAR OF A ROMAN
HOUSE.]
Where do Calvus’s slaves keep themselves? Undoubtedly in the very
cramped barracks of the second story, a section of which looks down
from an upper tier of columns above the court of the peristylium. Even
lordly Romans spend little time in their chambers and need only small
bedrooms. For the slaves there is extremely little accommodation; any
kind of a sleeping pocket, very truly called a “cell” (_cella_) will
answer, where a stool, a blanket, and a thin mat on the floor suffice
for all save the upper servants.
Under the house there are ordinary cellars for the storage of
provisions. Somewhere, too, is a strong room, with barred windows, and
heavy door, and inside, fastened upon the floor, a set of stocks and
manacles. Lucky is the day when, in a slave-familia of this size, this
lock-up has not at least one backsliding occupant.
=37. The Floors and Windows.=--Inquiring about certain details of such
a mansion we discover that like most other Roman houses, it is built of
concrete, faced with brick or coarse stone and stucco, and then with
as many interior surfaces as possible, covered with slabs of marble
or decorative frescos. The roof is of brick tiles; the floors in the
humbler chambers, where mosaic is unnecessary, are partly of concrete
and partly of small pieces of stone and tile roughly fitted together
and then pounded down by a rammer (_pavimentum_). Two or three rooms
most used in winter have a special and very luxurious device--part of
their floors are made of hollow tile pipes, and through these hot air
from a furnace can be forced to warm them precisely as is done at the
baths.[20]
Little thus far has been said about the windows. These open mainly upon
the courts, and they are so few that very many rooms, especially those
used by the slaves, seem disagreeably dark, although in the long, hot
season this drawback somewhat vanishes. Most of the windows are closed
merely by board shutters swinging in leaves, and rather handsomely
paneled; but shutting them results in a state of artificial night.
For certain rooms used by the master and mistress there is a much
better arrangement. Numbers of small pieces of glass are set in bronze
lattices and inserted in the windows. Glass cannot be made that is
strictly transparent, but it is highly translucent. Such rooms are
delightfully illuminated all day long. Certain other wealthy houses
use windows set with translucent talc (soft magnesium silicate), but
these openings are hardly as satisfactory. Glass is slowly coming into
general use, and the window panes will improve as glass-makers learn
how to blow larger sheets and to make their product more transparent.
=38. Frescos, Beautiful and Innumerable.=--From the house itself
we can turn to its ornamentation and furniture. The use of marble
columns and of great slabs of marble veneer has been repeatedly
mentioned. Africa, Egypt, and Greece as well as Italy have been
ransacked by Roman contractors for their treasures of stone.[21] Even
this private mansion of the Calvi boasts its green and black monolithic
pillars, as well as its ceiling of gilded fretwork.
Where the sheen of polished marble does not meet the eye almost
invariably there are bright _frescos_. These are the _Roman wall
paper_. Even in the poorest insulæ we have met them, cheap hackneyed
things, garish in color, the work not of artists but of common
craftsmen. Yet most of even these are not without a certain decorative
beauty and their number is enormous.[22] In the humble tenements the
pictures often consist of pillars painted upon the walls, with gardens
and landscapes represented as if seen between the portico, so the
lodgers may have the pretence of looking upon the greenery reserved for
the mighty.
In a fine domus, however, the frescos, infinite in number, often
approximate real works of art. There is no time to discuss their types
and history; it is sufficient to say the decorative effect is amazingly
effective. Some rooms have their walls covered with a variety of bright
conceits and patterns,--balconies, perches, tapestries of fruit and
flowers, garlanded columns and flying sprites and maidens. Another
room has pictures of all the possible handicrafts and trades; but with
cupids working the forges and wine presses, or chaffering as merchants.
Gratia’s boudoir is full of amorous scenes of brides adorning
themselves and of lovers’ meetings. In the triclinium there are elegant
pictures of still life--fishes, fruit, birds; and in the peristylium
and atrium are elaborate landscapes, scenes from Greek mythology, and a
series of pictures depicting the voyages and adventures of Æneas.[23]
There are no picture frames, but a skilful use of colored lines and
sometimes of a painted setting of columns and architectural pediments
makes each scene stand out to great advantage.
The colors of all these frescos are very brilliant but they are never
painfully crude. Where the walls are not covered by painting or marble
they are tinted a soft brown or gray; and where the columns are not of
naturally shaded marble they also are gently tinted to a neutral tone,
although the lower third is usually painted a bright red or yellow.
The numerous statues about the house are all in their turn given a kind
of flesh color, with some other hue laid upon their drapery. Perhaps
in the open, under the light of a northern summer these features would
appear barbaric and offensive; under the gentle radiance diffused from
the apertures of the atrium and the peristylium they create a scene of
marvelous beauty, fascinating, and generally restful to the eye.
=39. The Profusion of Statues and Art Objects.=--So much for the
wall decorations, and we must turn to the statues. The mansion seems
to swarm with slaves, yet they are hardly more numerous than the
sculptures in bronze and marble. Many of these are good copies of the
best masterpieces of Greece. The splendid athlete in the atrium is from
an original by Praxiteles; the Penelope in the peristylium follows
precisely the noble work of Scopas. Many others are simply graceful and
ornamental but less pretentious works by lesser geniuses, often adapted
in detail by the clever copyists.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT BUST--POMPEY THE GREAT.]
The whole quantity of art objects in such a house is enormous. The legs
and arms of the chairs and every knob and handle upon the furniture
are chased or carved with an amazing skill. The veriest knick-nacks
and articles for everyday life have been transformed into things of
beauty. In the triclinium is a long series of statuettes presenting the
myths of Bacchus--the god himself, the drunken Silenus, the satyrs,
bacchants, and all the other revelers. It would be easy, indeed, to
reconstruct a good part of the standard Græco-Roman mythology from
the statues, statuettes, and reliefs, no less than from the frescos
scattered about the mansion and garden.
=40. Family Portrait Busts.=--However, there is one lengthy array
of sculptures in the atrium that does not bear the hand of Greece.
These are the portrait busts of the Junii Calvi. There they stand, a
full score of them; all the more distinguished members of the great
house since sculpture became a facile art in Rome.
[Illustration: TYPICAL ROMAN PORTRAIT--MARC ANTONY.]
It is an array of cold, hard, yet withal terribly efficient faces.
Slightly battered is the broad homely countenance of that tough old
Calvus who was Scipio’s legate at Zama. Here also is the sharp shrewd
face of his great-grandson who was prætor under Sulla; here the more
refined and intellectual lines of the grandson of the last named
worthy who won Octavius’s thanks at Actium for gallantry with his
bireme, and afterward was a famous governor of Syria; here the high
forehead of that courageous Stoic, the present master’s grandfather,
who bade Nero do his worst, and who calmly “opened his veins” when the
centurion arrived with the tyrant’s order to commit suicide. There are
also displayed the busts of several distinguished women of the family
including that Junia who was the bosom friend of the Empress Livia.
In addition to these, there are the portrait busts of the present
Publius Calvus, of his wife Gratia, and of his three children. They
are all executed with remarkable verisimilitude and without the least
flattery. Customs with the hair often change, and the headdress of
Gratia is made detachable so that if her style of headdress alters, the
portrait may be promptly brought up to date. Young Sextus the second
boy had a birthday yesterday; his statue is still hung with wreaths;
flowers too hang around the likeness of Gnæus Calvus, Publius’s
brother, who lately died while proprætor of Bætica (South Spain).
=41. Death Masks (_Imagines_).=--The sight of these busts is a constant
incentive to both the young Calvi to remember their lordly lineage;
but they have a still prouder treasure. The enormously rich freedman
Vedius just down the street would give twenty million sesterces for
the social preëminence implied by the possession of the great cupboard
all bound with gilt and bronze bands which stands in the tablinum.
Here, carefully labeled, are kept several scores of waxen death
masks, blackened, marred, and ugly enough now, but all taken when the
successive heads of the family lay in their last slumber.
Many of these date from before the production in Rome of sculptured
portrait statues. Here, for example, is the mask of the Calvus who
helped win the consulship for the plebeians; and here of him who
seconded Appius Claudius in the Senate when he turned away the glozing
envoys of Pyrrhus. When alien upstarts complain of “noble pride,”
it is easy for a Calvus to toss his head: “Have we not something to
be proud of!”--and later, it will be duly explained how these waxen
_imagines_ appear very conspicuously at public funerals (p. 175).
=42. Couches, Their General Use.=--One cannot, however, sit or lie down
upon statues or portrait busts, and the domus is well provided with
conventional furniture. In general the Romans prefer to _recline_ when
men of a later age may prefer to _sit_. Visitors sprawl down on couches
for a little conversation, and the regular method of writing is not at
a desk but lying on a couch with the right leg doubled and the tablet
held on the knee. Long habit makes this attitude quite comfortable.
There are many special kinds of beds for reading, dining, and for
sleeping. Of course the latter are the most elaborate, and in Calvus’s
and Gratia’s chamber the wooden bed is so high that it has to be
reached by a footstool. The legs are of bronze, elaborately turned and
carved, the frame is veneered with tortoise shell and the supports at
the sides of the sloping pillow-rest are set with plates of silver.
As for the thick mattresses they are of the finest down and the ample
blankets are dyed purple and embroidered with gold thread. The couches
in the triclinium are lighter and lower although of very fine cabinet
work,[24] but they have to be made larger for they must accommodate
three diners. The reading couches (_lectuli_--“little beds”) are still
lighter and simpler, although of elegant design, and those scattered
under the peristylium are overlaid with plates of gold leaf.
[Illustration: ROMAN LAMPS: collection in Naples
Museum.]
=43. Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables.=--Excluding the couches the
furnishings of a Roman domus seem much simpler than those used in
a later age. There are few carpets, no great loss in view of the
beautiful mosaic floors, although there are rich, heavy portières
across many passages. The chairs, frequently of light and elegant
workmanship, are as a rule simple and often backless. Some, however,
are splendidly inlaid with silver, and there are a few great
_cathedræ_, ponderous arm chairs with lofty backs.
[Illustration: ALTAR WITH DESIGN OF A CURULE CHAIR.]
In the atrium, moreover, there stands an object surveyed with great
pride by Calvus’s children--their father’s _sella curulis_, the
folding, backless arm chair with a seat of leather straps which the
senator had occupied while prætor. Presently (they hope) he will sit
again thereon before the admiring Senate house, this time presiding as
the veritable consul. The “curule chair,” despite its gold and ivory
arms and cushions covered with purple Alexandrian fabrics, is anything
but a comfortable seat through a tedious official ceremony; but who
thinks of personal comfort when reckoning the glories of its public
occupancy!
Besides the chairs there are everywhere the tables. These are numerous
but low and small. In the dining room they are round and barely two
feet in diameter; but what a wealth of art and taste has gone into
their making! All are of extremely fine wood, but the three reserved
for the regular couches of the dinner guests have their legs overlaid
with plates of magnificently embossed gold, and the material upon the
tops is composed of single thin slabs cross-sawn from the trunks of the
great citrus trees (a form of cypress) on Mount Atlas.
This wood can be finished to show an exquisite wavy pattern or
curly veins--“tiger citrus,” “panther citrus,” or “peacock-tail
citrus”--the experts call the varieties. Over really fine specimens
true connoisseurs go into ecstasies, and fortunes can be wasted. A
table somewhat larger than Calvus’s has been known to sell for 500,000
sesterces ($20,000); and there is a record price of twice that figure.
The tables in the present mansion are nowhere nearly so valuable; yet
they are among the most precious objects in the house. If there is a
fire, they will be rescued almost before anything else, always barring
the waxen _imagines_.
=44. Chests, Cabinets, Water Clocks, and Curios.=--Of course there are
many other articles of furniture like the great _arca_, the master’s
strong box in the tablinum; heavily locked and riveted down upon the
stone beneath. There are the elegant tall candelabra, of bronze or
even of silver, elaborately ornamented and swinging at night with such
batteries of olive-oil lamps as to make the marbles, frescos, and
mosaics give back an alluring glitter. There is the water clock in the
peristylium, a kind of glorified hour-glass, so adjusted as to record
small fractions of time, and beside which a special slave usually
stands all day long to call off the passage of each hour to the family.
There are great cabinets, chests, and cupboards full of plate, fine
blankets, and extremely elaborate wardrobes.
In addition to all these upon a kind of sideboard there stand forth
real or alleged objects of value or antiquity, a silver cup taken
at the capture of Syracuse; a tall black and red vase signed by the
master potter Callisthenes; and a statuette of a dancing girl which
is probably a true work of Lysippus. Conspicuous, too, is a silver
bowl, battered and discolored, and of extreme simplicity. Mock it
not, however, it is “the ancestral salt cellar” (as remarks Horace),
the one silver dish possessed by the good old Calvi, when in all the
Roman Senate there was only a single complete silver dinner service
to be exchanged from house to house when high officials entertained
ambassadors.
=45. Spurious Antiques.=--Publius Calvus is happy in possessing
undeniably genuine antiques. He can afford to laugh at the collection
of the rich freedman across the way. That poor fellow, anxious to
“keep in style” and to display an art collection, has fallen into the
clutches of unscrupulous dealers. He has filled his atrium with absurd
specimens such as “cups from the table of Laomedon, a double vase
that belonged to Nestor and a tankard used by Achilles.” His citrus
tables are of very thin veneer, and in his atrium his impossible wife
has actually on display a ponderous golden box in which her husband’s
first beard is deposited. It is also gossiped about that this crude
fellow actually pretended sickness lately, merely that he might receive
condoling friends in bed and display to them the gold chasings on the
bedstead, the magnificent scarlet coverlets, and proclaim his riches by
having the mattress steeped in expensive perfumes.
=46. Pet Animals.=--One thing more must be stated about the house
of the Calvi before passing to its human denizens. There are a great
many tame animals in evidence. Over the doorway one already notes
the caged magpie. From a dark corner within a large cage blinks a
morose-looking owl. The master’s fine greyhound has a litter of puppies
which are now scrambling around the peristylium with a special slave to
look after them. Behind a column is seen gliding a slinky civet. The
children delight in a small monkey tethered now in the garden. Gratia
especially has her own beloved lap dog and its personal slave-boy
custodian. She does not, however, imitate a certain female friend who
dotes upon snakes, and who has a whole cage of the creatures which she
often twines about her neck to scare her companions.
So much for the material aspects of a Roman insula and a Roman domus.
It is time to examine their inhabitants.