From the line of the bases of the columns we see that the front of the
older house sloped back diagonally from the Via Sacra, the point
farthest from the Forum being nearest to the Via Sacra; whilst the
more recent construction was on a line parallel with, and abutting on
to, the Sacred Way.
[Illustration]
This early house, appearing beneath the building of later date, is in
all probability the house in which Julius Cæsar lived. The
construction agrees with that of earlier and contemporary date. It is
the first house on the Via Sacra, and the site coincides with the
notices which we have of Cæsar's house:--
"He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra; but after his
advancement to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the
state in the Via Sacra. Many writers say that he liked his residence
to be elegant ... and that he carried about in his expeditions
tesselated and marble slabs for the floor of his tent" (Suetonius,
"Cæsar," xlvi.).
"As a mark of distinction he was allowed to have a pediment on his
house" (Florus, iv. 3).
"Julius Cæsar once shaded the whole Forum and Via Sacra from his
house, as far as the Clivus Capitolinus" (Pliny, xix. 6).
"The night before his murder, as he was in bed with his wife, the
doors and windows of the room flew open at once.... Calpurnia dreamed
that the pediment was fallen, which, as Livy tells us (in the lost
books), the senate had ordered to be erected upon Cæsar's house by way
of ornament and distinction; and that it was the fall of it which she
lamented and wept for" (Plutarch, in "Cæsar").
"He lay for some little time after he expired, until three of his
slaves laid the body on a litter and carried it home, with one arm
hanging down over the side" (Suetonius, "Cæsar," lxxxii.).
The house of Cæsar was under the Palatine, on which, above Cæsar's,
stood the house of Cicero. "He (Vettius) did not name me, but
mentioned that a certain speaker, of consular rank (Cicero), and
neighbour to the consul (Cæsar), had suggested to him that some Ahala
Servilius, or Brutus, must be found" (Cicero, "Ad Att." ii. 24).
In Cæsar's fourth consulship, the year before he was killed, for some
reason or other the defence of King Deiotarus by Cicero was heard by
Cæsar in his own house. Cicero says to Cæsar: "I am affected also by
the unusual circumstance of the trial in this place, because I am
pleading so important a cause--one the fellow of which has never been
brought under discussion--within the walls of a private house. I am
pleading it out of the hearing of any court or body of auditors, which
are a great support and encouragement to an orator. I rest on nothing
but your eyes, your person, your countenance. I behold you alone; the
whole of my speech is necessarily confined to you alone.... But since
the walls of a house narrow all these topics, and since the pleading
of the cause is greatly crippled by the place, it behoves you, O
Cæsar," &c. ("Pro Deiot." ii.).
It was in the year of his prætorship (62 B.C.) that the scandal of
Clodius being found in the house whilst they were about to celebrate
the rites of the Bona Dea happened. "When the anniversary of the
festival comes, the consul or prætor (for it is at the house of one of
them that it is kept) goes out, and not a male is left in it"
(Plutarch, "Cæsar"). The trial that such a scene gave rise to caused
Cæsar's celebrated words on being asked why he had divorced his wife:
"Because I would have the chastity of my wife clear even of suspicion"
(Plutarch, "Cæsar").
Plutarch speaks of it as "a great house." Ovid says the house of Numa,
the Regia, was "small," showing that the house of Cæsar and the Regia
were two distinct edifices.
This old house of which we have been speaking fronted towards the
Temple of Vesta, whilst the portico and shops, built at a late period
over its ruins, ran parallel with the Via Sacra. The house side of the
atrium is plainly marked by the fragments of columns, composed of
travertine coated with stucco, and frescoed. There is the base of an
isolated column near what must have been the middle of the house side;
and to its right there is a half column of the same workmanship, and
between these two bases runs a travertine gutter which drained the
atrium. Amidst the shops built over the atrium are remains of
beautiful black and white mosaic pavement, the fragments of the
borders showing that they once belonged to the older edifice. On the
right of the atrium, towards the Via Sacra, was an area-vestibulum,
giving access to the house from the Via Sacra, and, like it, paved
with polygonal blocks of silex.
There was another entrance to the house at the point where it nearly
touched, at its north-eastern corner, the Via Sacra. The bases of two
columns mark the ingress into a small vestibule which has a mosaic
pavement, on the right of which was the entrance to the house, the
threshold of travertine stone being _in situ_. There are the two holes
at the ends where the doors turned on their pivots, and the bolt-hole
in the middle.