THE ROMAN TOWN HOUSE
We have taken a general survey of the city of Rome, its open places,
streets, and public buildings. We may now look at the houses in which
the Romans lived, and at the furniture to be expected inside them.
Mention has already been made of the large and lofty tenement houses
or blocks, often mere human rookeries, which were let out in lodgings
to those who did not possess sufficient means to occupy a separate
domicile of their own. These buildings, which were naturally to be
found in the busier streets and more thickly inhabited quarters, were
not, however, the habitations most typical of the romanized world.
They were created by the special circumstances of the city, and might
recur in other towns wherever the conditions were similar. The cramped
island part of Tyre, for example, possessed houses even loftier than
those of Rome. Where there was sufficient room--that is to say, where
there was no large population crowded into a space limited by nature
or by walls of defence--the ordinary house was of a very different
character. It was built on a different plan and seldom ran to more
than two stories, if so high. We shall shortly proceed to describe
such a house; but it is first desirable to say something more of the
tenement "block" in the metropolis. It is to be regretted that no such
building has actually come down to us; we are therefore compelled to
form our notions of one from the scattered references and hints of
literature. Nevertheless if these are read in the light of customs
still observable in Rome itself and in other parts of Italy, the
picture becomes fairly definite.
A block--or "island," as it was called--might be a building of four or
five stories, surrounded by four of the narrow streets, lanes, or
alleys which formed a network in the city. Whether managed by the
landlord, by his agent, or by a tenant who sub-let at a profit, it was
divided into lodgings, which might consist either of a single room or
of a suite. Some such rooms and flats were "ordinary," others were
described (as they are still in the advertisements of modern Rome) as
"suitable for a gentleman," or, to use the exact language of the day,
"suitable for a knight." Access to the respective quarters of the
house was to be gained, not solely through a main door, but by
separate stairs leading up directly from the streets and lanes. It
would appear that each tenant had his own key, corresponding, though
hardly in convenience of size, to our latch-key. Whereas it will be
found that the ordinary private house of one storey was for the most
part lighted by openings in the roof and by wide courts, this
arrangement could manifestly be applied only partially to the tall
tenement buildings. There might, it is true, exist in the middle
interior of such a block an open space or "well," with galleries
running round it at each floor, so that the inner rooms could obtain
light from that quarter. It is also to be assumed that stairs ran up
to these galleries, so that the inward rooms or flats were made
accessible in this way. Mainly, however, the light came from windows
opening on the street. If we glanced up at these from below we should
find them narrower than ours at the present day--since we have
discovered how to produce large and entirely diaphanous sheets of
glass--but probably not narrower than those of a century ago. They
were either mere openings with shutters, or, in the better houses,
were glazed with transparent material. In the brighter part of the
year they contained their boxes of flowering or other plants, and were
often provided with a shade-awning not unlike those so familiar in
Paris.
The roof of such a building was either gabled and covered with tiles
or, though perhaps less often, it was flat. The flat roof sometimes
formed a terrace, on which the plants of a "roof-garden" might be
found growing either in earthenware tubs or in earth spread over a
layer of impermeable cement. The lowest floor, level with the street,
commonly consisted of shops, which were open at full length in the
day, but were shuttered and barred at night. As with the shops which
are now built into the sides of large hotels and the like, they had no
communication with the interior of the building. Regularly, however,
they possessed a short staircase at the back or side leading to an
upper room or _entresol_, where, in the poorer instances, the
shopkeeper might actually reside. To the aristocratic Roman, with his
contempt of petty trade, "born in the shop-loft" was a contemptuous
phrase for a "son of nobody."
Meanwhile the more representative houses of the strictly Roman part of
the Roman world--that is to say, the dwellings of Romans or of
imitators of Romans, wherever they might be settled, as distinct from
the Greek and Oriental houses or from the various kinds of primitive
huts to be found among the Western provincials--were of three chief
kinds. These were the town house, the country seat, and the country
homestead. There was, of course, nothing to prevent a wealthy Roman
from building his town house exactly like a country seat, or vice
versa, if he had so chosen, but from considerations of purpose, apart
from those of local space and view, it would have been altogether
irrational to take either course. The conditions of his life in town
and country differed even more widely than they do with us. The
average Roman, moreover, was a lover of variety in respect of his
habitation. We find in a somewhat later epigrammatist that one grandee
keeps up four town houses in Rome itself, and moves capriciously
from one to the other, so that you never know where you will find
him. At different seasons or in different moods he might prefer
this or that situation or aspect. As for country seats of various
degrees of magnificence, a man might--like many modern nobles or
royalties--possess three, four, a dozen, or twenty. He might, for
example, own one or more on the Italian Lakes, one in Tuscany, one on
the Sabine or Alban Hills, one on the coast within a half-day's run of
Rome, one on the Bay of Naples, one down in the heel of Italy, and so
on. Pliny the Younger, who was born in the reign of Nero, was not a
particularly rich man, yet he owned several country seats on Lake Como
alone, besides others nearer to Rome on north and south, at the
seaside, or on the hills.
We may begin with a town house, and our simplest procedure is to take
a plan exhibiting those parts which were most usual for an
establishment of even moderate pretensions. Let it be understood that
it is but the symmetrical outline of a general scheme which was in
practice submitted to indefinite enlargement or modification. In the
house of Livia, the mother of Augustus, on the Palatine Hill at Rome,
and in various houses at Pompeii--such as those of the Vettii, of
"Sallust," of the "Faun," or of "The Tragic Poet"--there will be found
much diversity in the number and arrangement of the rooms, halls, and
courts. Nevertheless the main principle of division, the general
conception of the portions requisite for their several purposes, was
practically the same. Some of the differences and enlargements may be
illustrated after we have considered our first simple outline. Before
we undertake this, however, it may be well to warn any one who may
have visited or be about to visit Pompeii, that he must exclude from
his thoughts all those small premises of a room or two which face so
many of the streets. These were mostly shops, with which we are not
now dealing. He must also exclude all the public edifices. This done,
he must remember that we now possess only portions of the walls
without the roofs, and that in such circumstances apartments always
appear to be much smaller than they are by actual measurement, or than
they appear when they contain their furniture and appointments
properly disposed. Finally, he must not take a Pompeian house, even
the most spacious, as a fair example of either the size or splendour
of the great houses in the metropolis. Pompeii was but a small place,
with a population of no great wealth or standing, and its houses would
have cut but a provincial figure among those of the same date on the
Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, or Quirinal Hills. Nevertheless they are
extremely useful to us in reconstructing the type. It is that type and
not the exception which we now consider.
A town house might either be detached or it might stand in a street,
like one of the tenement-blocks, with shops let into the less
important parts of the outer wall of the ground floor. Much would
naturally depend upon the means and dignity of the owner. In any case
the interior portions would belong to the private residence. As a rule
the exterior of the ordinary house was little regarded. No
architecture was wasted upon it; decoration and other magnificence
belonged to the interior. Provided a house possessed a more or less
imposing doorway its exterior walls might be left either to shops or
to a dull monochrome of stucco, pierced here and there, if necessary,
at 9 or 10 feet from the ground by barred slits, which cannot be
called windows, for the admittance of light. The general principle of
a Roman house, as of a Greek, was that of rooms surrounding spaces
lighted from within. Privacy from the outer world was not indeed so
scrupulously sought by the Romans as by the Athenians--principally
because of the more free position occupied by the Roman
women--nevertheless it was secured by the absence of ground-floor
windows opening on any thoroughfare.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--TYPICAL SCHEME OF ROMAN HOUSE.]
Before the actual door there was commonly an open recess or space a
little backward from the street, in which callers could wait until the
door was opened. This was the "vestibule," and in the case of the
larger houses of the nobles it was often adorned with honorary
statues, on horseback or otherwise, while above the door might be seen
the insignia of triumphs won by the family, a decoration in some
measure corresponding to the modern hatchment, except that it was
permanently fixed. This regularly remained as a mark of the house even
when it changed owners. It was in such a vestibule of his Golden House
that Nero erected his own colossal statue, destined afterwards to give
its name to the Colosseum. Over the larger vestibules there might be a
partial roof, but generally, and perhaps always at this date, they
were without cover.
Facing you in the middle of the vestibule are double or folding doors,
more or less ornate with bronze, ivory, and other work, and generally
bearing a large ring or handle to serve either as a knocker or to pull
the door to. Above them is a bronze grating or fretwork for further
adornment and to admit light and air. Some householders, more
superstitious or conventional than the rest, affected an inscription,
such as "Let no evil enter here," and over some humbler entrance you
might find a cage containing a parrot or magpie, which had been
trained to say "Good luck to you" in Greek. At either side of the
door, or of the actual entrance to the vestibule, is a column or
pilaster, either made of timber and cased with other woods of a more
beautiful and costly kind, or consisting of coloured marble with an
ornate capital. These "doorposts" were wreathed with laurel or other
foliage on festal occasions, such as when the occupant had won some
distinguished honour in the field, in the courts, or at the elections,
or when a marriage took place from within. At funerals small cypress
trees or branches would be placed in and about the vestibule. At one
side of it you might sometimes find a smaller door, to be used for the
ordinary going in and out when it was unnecessary or inconvenient for
the larger doors to be opened.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--ENTRANCE TO HOUSE OF PANSA. (Pompeii.)]
The doors themselves turn, not upon hinges of the modern kind, but
upon pivots, which move, often too noisily, in sockets let into the
threshold and lintel. The fastenings consisted of locks--often highly
ingenious--of a bar laid across from wall to wall, of bolts shot
across or upward and downward, and sometimes of a prop leaning against
the inside of the door and entering a cavity in the floor of the
passage. The floor of the entrance passage itself might be paved with
marble tiles, or made simply of a polished cement with or without
patterns worked in it; or it might consist of small cubes of stone,
white and black or more variously coloured, frequently worked into
figures, and now and then accompanied by an inscription just within
the threshold, such as "Greeting" or "Beware the Dog." In one Pompeian
house the floor bears the well-known mosaic likeness of a dog held
upon its chain. At the side of the passage there is often a smaller
room for the janitor. When there is none, he must be supposed to have
used a movable seat.
Passing through the passage, you find yourself in a rectangular hall,
upon which was lavished the chief display in the way of loftiness and
decoration. In the middle of the ceiling is an open space, square or
oblong, to which the tiles of the gabled roof converge from above, and
in the middle of the floor beneath is a corresponding basin, edged and
paved with coloured or plain marble. The basin is of no great depth,
and contains the water which has been poured into it from the
ornamental pipe-mouths of bronze or terra-cotta projecting, like
gargoyles, from the edge of the opening above. Sometimes the basin
contained a fountain. There is of course an outlet pipe for the
surplus water, but some of that overflow often ran into a covered
cistern, over which you would find a small circular well-mouth,
ornamented with sculptured reliefs. The opening in the ceiling may be
formed simply by the space between the four cross-beams, or it may be
supported by a pillar--of marble or of brick cased with marble--at
each corner, or it may rest upon a greater number of such pillars. It
is this opening which lets in the light and air to the hall, and it
should always be remembered that the Italian house had more occasion
to seek coolness and freshness than warmth. On a day of glaring
sunshine and heat it was always possible to spread under the opening
an awning or curtain of purple or other colour, of which the reflected
hues meanwhile lent a richness to the space below. If we take one of
the finer houses, we shall see, in glancing at the ceiling which
covers the rest of the hall, that it is divided into sunken panels or
coffers, which are adorned with reliefs in stucco and are painted, or
else are decorated with copper, gold or ivory. The height may be
whatever the owner wishes, but perhaps 25 feet would be a modest
average estimate. The floor in such a house will generally consist of
slabs of marble or of marble tiles arranged in patterns. In houses of
less show it may be made of the same materials as those described for
the entrance passage. To right and left are various chambers, shut off
by lofty doors or by portières or both. To these light is admitted
their doors and the gratings over them, from the high window-slits
already mentioned in the outer wall, or sometimes, when there is no
upper storey, from sky-lights. And here let it be observed that the
notion that the Romans of this date used very little glass is
altogether erroneous, as the discoveries at Pompeii and elsewhere
sufficiently prove.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--Interior of Roman House. (Looking from
Reception-hall to Peristyle.)]
The walls of the hall are in the better instances either coated with
panels of tinted marble, or parcelled out in bright bands or oblongs
of paint, or decorated with pictures of mythological, architectural,
and other subjects worked in bright colours upon darkened stucco. To
our own taste these colours--red, yellow, bluish-green, and others--as
seen at Pompeii, are often excessively crude and badly harmonised. But
while it is true that the ancients appear to have been actually
somewhat deficient in colour-sense, it must be borne in mind that many
of the Pompeian houses were decorated by journeymen rather than by
artists, and, above all, full allowance must be made for the
comparatively subdued light in which most of the paintings would be
seen. The hall might also contain statuary placed against the walls or
against the supporting pillars, where these existed. At the farther
end from the entrance you will perceive to right and left two large
recesses or bays, generally with pilasters on either side. These
"wings" were utilised for a variety of purposes. One of them might
occasionally serve for a smaller dining-room, or it might hold presses
and cupboards. In noble houses one of them would contain certain
family possessions of which the occupants were especially proud. These
were the effigies of distinguished ancestors, which served as a
family-tree represented in a highly objective form. At our chosen date
there would be a series of portrait busts or else of portrait
medallions, in relief or painted, while in special receptacles,
labelled underneath with name and rank, were kept life-like wax masks
of the line of distinguished persons, which could be brought out and
carried in procession at the funeral of a member of the family. Though
there was no "College of Heralds" in antiquity, it was commonly quite
possible for a wealthy parvenu to get a pedigree invented for him. It
is true that by use and wont the "right of effigies" was confined to
those families which had held the higher offices of state, but there
was no specific law on the subject, and the Roman _nouveau riche_
could act exactly like his modern representative in securing his
"portraits of ancestors."
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--HOUSE OF CORNELIUS RUFUS. (Pompeii.)]
Having thus glanced to right and left, to the ceiling and the floor,
we now look at the end of the hall facing us. The middle section of
this is open, and is framed by a couple of high pillars or pilasters
and a cornice, which together formed perhaps the most distinguishing
feature of this part of the house. Between the pillars is an apartment
which may or may not be raised a step or two above the level of the
hall. This, unlike the hall itself, is of the nature of a
sitting-room, reception-room, or "parlour" (in the old sense of that
word), and contains appropriate furniture. In it the master receives a
guest, interviews his clients, makes up his accounts, and transacts
such other private business as may fall to his lot. At the back it may
be entirely closed, or it may contain a large window, through which we
can catch a vista of the colonnaded and planted court beyond. The
floor may here consist of a large carpet-like mosaic, such as that
famous piece, taken from the House of the Faun at Pompeii and now in
the Naples Museum, which represents a battle between Alexander and the
Persians. To one side of the entrance to this "parlour" there will
often stand on a pedestal the bust of the owner, as "Genius of the
home." On the other side there is a passage serving as the means of
access to the second or inner division of the house.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--PERISTYLE WITH GARDEN AND AL FRESCO
DINING-TABLE.]
On making our way through this passage we find ourselves in a space
still more open than the hall. It is commonly an unroofed,
quadrangular court surrounded by a roofed colonnade, and thence known
as the "peristyle." Or the colonnade may extend only round three
sides, the back being free to the garden. In the uncovered space lying
between the rows of pillars there are ornamental shrubs and flowers,
marble tables, a cistern of water containing goldfish, a fountain, and
marble basins into which fresh water is spouted from bronze or marble
statuettes, from figures of animals, or from masks. Under the
colonnade are marble floors or other more or less rich pavements,
decorated walls, and such works of art as the owner most affects.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--PERISTYLE IN HOUSE OF THE VETTII. (Present
state.)]
When it seems desirable for shade and coolness, coloured curtains or
awnings may be suspended between the columns, so that one can sit or
walk with comfort under the cloistered portion. At the sides are
apartments for different purposes. At the far end, or elsewhere, there
is regularly the largest dining-room, often with mosaic floor and
generally with pictured walls. Whereabouts in the house the family or
an invited party should dine would depend partly on the number to be
present, partly on the season of the year, and partly on some passing
inclination. A house of any pretensions would possess several rooms
used, or capable of being used, for this purpose. Some dining-rooms
had what we should call French windows on three sides, permitting the
diners to enjoy the view of the garden or the shrubbery outside.
Other large and airy apartments or saloons off the peristyle were used
for social conversation, or as drawing-rooms. Farther back still,
approached by another passage or door, there was often to be found a
garden, containing an arbour or a terrace covered with a trailing
vine, of the kind known in modern Italy as a _pergola_. In suitable
weather _al fresco_ meals were often taken here, and occasionally
there were fixed couches and tables of masonry always ready for that
purpose.
Coming back from the garden into the court, we might explore other
passages, leading to the kitchen or to the bathrooms of hot, warm, and
cold water. These offices would be respectively situated wherever
circumstances made them most convenient. In the kitchen the part
corresponding to our "range" consisted of a flat structure of masonry,
on which the fire was lighted. The cooking pots were placed either
upon ridges of masonry running across the fire or upon three legged
stands of iron. The accompanying illustrations will sufficiently show
what is meant. The bedrooms, little better than cells, of the slaves,
and also the storerooms, were variously distributed. Underground
cellars were apparently exceptional, although examples may be seen at
Pompeii.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--KITCHEN HEARTH IN THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--KITCHEN HEARTHS (Drawing).]
Somewhere in one of the bays of the hall, at the back of the peristyle
court, or elsewhere, would be found a small shrine for the worship of
the domestic gods. This was variously constructed. Sometimes it was a
niche or recess containing paintings or little effigies and with an
altar or altar-shelf beneath, sometimes a miniature temple erected
against the wall. There was apparently no special place to which,
rather than any other, it was to be assigned. To the nature and
meaning of the household gods we may refer again when dealing with the
general subject of religion.
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--SHRINE (IN BACKGROUND) IN HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC
POET.]
In the homes of persons of culture there would also be included a
library and, perhaps less regularly, a picture-gallery. The library,
which sometimes comprised thousands of rolls, would be a room not only
surrounded by large pigeon-holes or open cupboards containing the
round boxes for the parchment rolls, but also traversed by lower
partitions provided on either side with similar shelves. About the
room, over or by the shelves, stand portrait busts or medallions of
great authors, both Greek and Roman, the "blind" Homer being
represented in traditional form, but the majority, from Aeschylus and
Thucydides down to Virgil and Livy, being authentic and excellent
likenesses. In the picture-gallery would be found paintings either
done upon the stucco walls in a frame-like setting or upon panels of
wood attached to the walls, very much as we hang our modern pictures.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--HOUSEHOLD SHRINE.]
It was scarcely ever the case that a second storey--where one existed
at all--extended over the whole house. If upper rooms were used, they
were placed over those parts where they would interfere least with the
light, the comfort, and the appearance of the ground-floor
arrangements. The stairs leading to them were variously disposed and
as little as possible in evidence. In such upper apartments there was
naturally not the same risk from the curious or the burglar as in the
case of the lower, and windows of perhaps 4 by 2-1/2 feet were
therefore freely employed. In some instances, though we cannot tell
how frequently, the second storey projected on strong beams over the
street, as in the example at Pompeii known as the "House of the
Hanging Balcony."
It remains to make brief observations upon one or two matters
interesting to any practical householder. These are the questions of
water-supply, drainage, warming, and roofing.
In respect of water there was no difficulty. It was brought in the
ordinary way, from those reservoirs which formed the ends of the
aqueducts or conduits, by means of pipes, mostly made of lead, though
sometimes of bronze. These were conducted to the points where they
were required, and there the flow was manipulated by means of taps and
plugs. In order to make a water-pipe, a sheet of lead or bronze was
rolled into a cylinder, the joining of the two edges taking the shape
of a raised ridge, which was soldered. One end of a section was
squeezed or narrowed so that it might be inserted into the widened end
of the next. Lead pipes of no inconsiderable size, stamped with the
name of the owner, are to be seen preserved in the Palatine House of
Livia, and a number of smaller ones remain at Pompeii. For drainage
there the sewers, and also pipes to carry the less offensive overflow
of water into the street channels, which in their turn led into
underground drains.
[Illustration: FIG. 88 A.--LEADEN PIPES IN HOUSE OF LIVIA.
(Palatine.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--PORTABLE BRAZIERS.]
For the warming of a house the Romans not only portable braziers with
charcoal for fuel, but in the larger establishments there existed a
system of "central" heating, by which hot air was conducted from a
furnace in the basement through flues running beneath the floor and up
through the walls, where its effect might be regulated by adjustable
openings or registers. The only fixed fire-place in a town house was
in the kitchen. From this the smoke was carried off by a flue,
constituting to all intents and purposes a chimney. The belief that
the Romans were unacquainted with such things as chimneys has been
proved to be untrue.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--MANNER OF ROOFING WITH TILES.]
The roofing, when constructed, as it most frequently was, in a gabled
form, consisted of terra-cotta tiles arranged on a regular system.
First came the flat layers, each higher row overlapping the lower. The
descending edges of a row of these flat plates, as they lay side by
side, were turned up into a kind of flange of about 2-1/4 inches in
height, so that at the points of contact a ridge was formed down the
roof. Over this line was laid a series of other tiles shaped into a
half-cylinder, the lower end of each tile overlapping the next. By
this means the rain was prevented from penetrating the crevice between
the flanges. At the bottom, above the eaves, the line of semicircular
tiles ended in a flower-like or mask-like ornament, which broke the
monotony of the horizontal edge of the roof.
After this description of what may be considered a representative
Roman house, it is necessary to repeat that it is but typical. Many
were considerably smaller, containing, for example, no peristyle. Many
on the contrary were far more spacious and sumptuous, possessing more
than one hall and more than one peristyle, and varying the nature as
well as the number and position of those portions of the house. In
exceptional cases the hall had no opening in the ceiling and therefore
no basin below, but was covered with a simple gabled roof which shed
the rain-water into the street. In exceptional cases also there was no
"parlour" of the kind described a little while ago. The situation of
the house, enlargements made after the main part was built, the
joining of two houses into one, or other causes, often modified the
rectangular and symmetrical appearance presented in the plan hitherto
given. Such modifications are, however, better illustrated by a
comparison of the plans of two well-known Pompeian houses than by any
amount of verbal description. The first is that of Pansa, which forms
the main portion of a whole block, smaller dwellings and shops
unconnected with the Pansa establishment being built round and into it
at various points. The arrangements of this house closely approach the
normal or simple type described in this chapter. The second is the
famous house of the Vettii, which departs somewhat freely from the
customary disposition of apartments.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--HOUSE OF PANSA AT POMPEII.]
The parts within the dark lines belong to the one house; the rest are
other houses and shops built into the block.
1. Vestibule 11. Rooms
2. Passage 12. Dining-Room
3. Hall 13. Winter Dining-Room
4. Rooms 14. Saloon (Drawing-Room)
5. Wings 15. Kitchen
6. Dining-Room 16. Carriage Room
7. Parlour 17. Boudoir
8. Passage 18. Portico
9. Library? 19. Saleroom
10. Peristyle 20. Passage to Side Door
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--HOUSE OF CORNELIUS RUFUS. (Pompeii.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--HOUSE OF THE VETTII AT POMPEII. A second
storey extended over the corners and front parts included under the
nine small crosses.]
[Illustration: FIG. 43--SPECIMEN OF PAINTED ROOM.]
It would be tempting to indulge in rhetoric and to dwell upon the
magnificence of some of the more luxurious houses of the wealthy
Romans; to describe their ostentation of rich marbles in pillar, wall,
or floor--the white marbles of Carrara, Paros, and Hymettus; the
Phrygian marble or "pavonazzetto" its streakings of crimson or violet;
the orange-golden glow of the Numidian stone of "giallo antico"; the
Carystian marble or "cipollino" with its onion-like layers of white
and pale-green; the serpentine variety from Laconia, and the porphyry
from Egypt. We might descant upon the lavish wall-paintings,
representing landscapes real and imaginary, scenes from mythology and
semi-history, floating figures, genre pictures, and pictures of still
life; or upon the mosaics in floor and wall depicting similar subjects
and often serving to the occupants not so much in the place of
pictorial art as in the place of wall-papers and of Brussels or
Kidderminster carpets. We might speak of the profuse collections of
statuary, of the gilding on ceiling and cornices, of the colours shed
by the rich curtains and awnings of purple and crimson, of the
grateful sound of water plashing in the fountains and basins or
babbling over a series of steps like a broken cascade in miniature.
But perhaps too much of such description might only encourage still
further the erroneous notion that the Roman houses were all of this
nature, and that even the average Roman lived in the midst of an
abundance of such domestic luxury and art. It requires but a little
sober thought to realise that such homes were, as they have always
been, the exception. It would be as reasonable to judge of an average
London house by the most opulent specimens in Park Lane, or of an
American house by the richest at Newport, as to judge of the abodes of
Romans in the time of Nero by the examples which appeal so strongly to
the novelist or the romancing historian. Suffice it that beside the
modest and frugal homes, the tenement flat, and the hovel, there were
houses distinguished by immense luxury; and, since Romans have at all
times sought the ostentatious and grandiose, perhaps such dwellings
were larger and more pretentious in proportion to wealth than they are
in most civilised countries at the present day. Seneca, who made
himself extremely comfortable in the days of Nero, exclaims upon the
rage for costly decoration. Says he of the bathing of the plutocrat:
"He seems to himself poor and mean, unless the walls shine with great
costly slabs, unless marbles of Alexandria are picked out with reliefs
of Numidian stone, unless the whole ceiling is elaborately worked with
all the variety of a painting, unless Thasian stone encloses the
swimming baths, unless the water is poured out from silver taps."
These, indeed, are comparatively humble. "What of the baths of the
freedmen? a mass of statues! What a multitude of pillars supporting
nothing, but put there only for ornament! What an amount of water
running over steps with a purling noise--and all for show!"
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--SPECIMEN OF WALL-PAINTING. (Pompeii.)]