There are two rooms on the side next the ātrium. One of these (6) has been called the bibliothēca (§ 206), because a manuscript was found in it, but its purpose is uncertain; the other (6') as possibly a dining-room. The peristylium has two projections (7', 7'), much like the ālae, which have been called exedrae (§ 207); it will be noticed that one of these has the convenience of an exit (§ 202) to the street. The rooms on the west and the small room on the east cannot be definitely named. The large room on the east (T) is the main dining room (§ 204); the remains of the dining couches are marked on the plan. The kitchen is at the northwest corner (13) with the stable (14) next to it (§ 203, at the end); off the kitchen is a paved yard (15) with a gateway from the street by which a cart could enter. East of the kitchen and yard is a narrow passage connecting the peristylium with the garden (§ 202). East of this are two rooms, the larger of which (9) is one of the most imposing rooms of the house, 33 by 24 feet in size, with a large window guarded by a low balustrade, and opening into the garden. This was probably an oecus (§ 207). In the center of the peristylium is a basin about two feet deep, the rim of which was once decorated with figures of water plants and fish. Along the whole north end of the house ran a long veranda (16, 16), overlooking the garden (11, 11) in which was a sort of summer house (12). The house had an upper story, but the stairs leading to it are in the rented rooms, suggesting that the upper floor was not occupied by Pansa’s family.

   209. Of the rooms facing the street it will be noticed that one, lightly shaded in the plan, is connected with the ātrium; it was probably used for some business conducted by Pansa himself (§ 193, at the end), possibly with a slave (§ 144) or a freedman (§ 175) in immediate charge of it. Of the others the suites on the east side (A, B) seem to have been rented out as living apartments. The others were shops and stores. The four connected rooms on the west, near the front, seem to have been a large bakery; the room marked C was the salesroom, with a large room opening off it containing three stone mills (§ 418),³ troughs for kneading the dough, a water tap with sink, and an oven in a recess. The uses of the others are uncertain. The section plan (Fig. 96) represents the appearance of the house if all were cut away on one side of a line drawn from front to rear through the middle of the house. It is, of course, largely conjectural, but it gives a clear idea of the general way in which the dividing walls and roof must have been arranged.

   210. The Walls. The materials of which the walls (parietēs) were composed varied with the time, the place, and the cost of transportation. Stone and unburned brick (laterēs crūdī) were the earliest materials used in Italy, as almost everywhere else, timber being employed for merely temporary structures, as in the addition (§ 190) from which the tablīnum, perhaps, developed. For private houses in early times and for public buildings in all times, walls of dressed stone (opus quadrātum) were laid in regular courses, precisely as in modern times (Fig. 99). As the tufa, the volcanic stone first easily available in Latium, was dull and unattractive in color, over the wall was spread, for decorative purposes, a coating of fine marble stucco which gave it a finish of dazzling white. For less pretentious houses, not for public buildings, sun-dried bricks (the adobe of our southwestern states) were largely used until the beginning of the first century B.C. These, too, were covered with stucco, for protection against the weather as well as for decoration, but even the hard stucco has not preserved walls of this perishable material to our times. In classical times a new material had come into use, better than either brick or stone, cheaper, more durable, more easily worked and transported, which was employed almost exclusively for private houses, and very generally for public buildings. Walls constructed in the new way (opus caementīcium) are variously called “rubble-work” or “concrete” in our books of reference, but neither term is quite accurate; the opus caementīcium was not laid in courses, as is our rubble-work, while on the other hand larger stones were used in it than in the concrete of which walls for buildings are now constructed.

   211. Pariēs Caementīcius. The materials of the pariēs caementīcius varied with the place. At Rome lime and volcanic ashes (lapis Puteolānus) were used with pieces of stone as large as or larger than the fist. Brickbats sometimes took the place of stone, and sand (§ 146) that of the volcanic ashes; potsherds crushed fine were better than the sand. The harder the stones the better the concrete; the best concrete was made with pieces of lava, the material with which the roads were generally paved. The method of forming the concrete walls was the same as that of modern times. The method employed by the Romans will be easily understood by examining Figure 101. First, upright posts, about 5 by 6 inches thick, and from 10 to 15 feet in height, were fixed about 3 feet apart along the line of both faces of the projected wall. Outside these were nailed, horizontally, boards 10 or 12 inches wide. Into the intermediate space the semi-fluid concrete was poured, receiving the imprint of posts and boards. When the concrete had hardened, the framework was removed and raised; thus the work was continued until the wall had reached the required height. Walls made in this way varied in thickness from a seven-inch partition wall in an ordinary house to the eighteen-foot walls of the Pantheon of Agrippa. They were far more durable than stone walls, which might be removed stone by stone with little more labor than was required to put them together; the concrete wall was a single slab of stone throughout its whole extent, and large parts of it might be cut away without in the slightest degree diminishing the strength of the rest.

   212. Wall Facings. Impervious to the weather though these walls were, they were usually faced with stone or kiln-burned bricks (laterēs coctī). The stone employed was commonly the soft tufa, not nearly so well adapted to stand the weather as the concrete itself. The earliest fashion was to take bits of stone having one smooth face but of no regular size or shape and arrange them, with the smooth faces against the framework, as fast as the concrete was poured in; when the framework was removed, the wall presented the appearance shown at A (Fig. 102). Such a wall was called opus incertum. In later times the tufa was used in small blocks having the smooth face square and of a uniform size. A wall so faced looked as if covered with a net (B in Fig. 102) and was therefore called opus rēticulātum (Fig. 100). A corner section is shown at C (Fig. 102). In either case the exterior face of the wall was usually covered with a fine limestone or marble stucco, which gave a hard finish, smooth and white. The burned bricks were triangular in shape, but their arrangement and appearance can be more easily understood from the illustration (Fig. 103). It must be noticed that there were no walls made of laterēs coctī alone; even the thin partition walls had a core of concrete.

   213. Floors and Ceilings. In the poorer houses the floor (solum) of the first story was made by smoothing the ground between the walls, covering it thickly with small pieces of stone, bricks, tile, and potsherds, and pounding all down solidly and smoothly with a heavy rammer (fistūca). Such a floor was called pavīmentum, but the name came gradually to be used of floors of all kinds. In houses of a better sort the floor was made of stone slabs fitted smoothly together. The more pretentious houses had concrete floors made as has been described. Floors of upper stories were sometimes made of wood, but concrete was used here, too, poured over a temporary flooring of wood. Such a floor was very heavy, and required strong walls to support it; examples are preserved of floors with a thickness of eighteen inches and a span of twenty feet. A floor of this kind made a perfect ceiling for the room below, requiring only a finish of stucco. Other ceilings were made much as they are now: laths were nailed on the stringers or rafters and covered with mortar and stucco.

   214. Roofs. The construction of the roofs (tēcta) differed very little from the modern method, as may readily be seen in Figures 81 and 82. Roofs varied as much as ours do in shape; some were flat, others sloped in two directions, others in four. In the most ancient times the covering was a thatch of straw, as in the so-called hut of Romulus (casa Rōmulī) on the Palatine Hill, preserved even under the Empire as a relic of the past (see note, page 134). Shingles followed the straw, only to give place, in turn, to tiles. These were at first flat, like our shingles, but were later made with a flange on each side in such a way that the lower part of one would slip into the upper part of the one below it on the roof. The tiles (tēgulae) were laid side by side and the flanges covered by other tiles, called imbricēs (Fig. 105), inverted over them. Gutters also of tile ran along the eaves to conduct the water into cisterns, if it was needed for domestic use. The appearance of the completed roof is shown in Figure 90.

   215. The Doors. The Roman doorway, like our own, had four parts: the threshold (līmen), the two jambs (postēs), and the lintel (līmen superum). The lintel was always of a single piece of stone and peculiarly massive. The doors were exactly like those of modern times, except in the matter of hinges, for, though the Romans had hinges like ours, they did not use them on their doors. The door-support was really a cylinder of hard wood, a little longer than the door and of a diameter a little greater than the thickness of the door, terminating above and below in pivots. These pivots turned in sockets made to receive them in the threshold and the lintel. To this cylinder the door was mortised, so that the combined weight of cylinder and door came upon the lower pivot. Figure 106 makes this clear, and reminds one of an old-fashioned homemade gate. The Roman comedies are full of references to the creaking of the front doors of houses.

   216. The outer door of the house was properly called iānua, an inner door ōstium, but the two words carne to be used indiscriminately, and the latter was even applied to the whole entrance (§ 195). Double doors were called forēs; the back door, opening into a garden (§ 208) or into a peristylium from the rear or from a side street, was called postīcum. The doors opened inward; those in the outer wall were supplied with slide-bolts (pessulī) and bars (serae). Locks and keys by which the doors could be fastened from without were not unknown, but were very heavy and clumsy. In the interiors of private houses doors were less common than now, as the Romans preferred portières (vēla, aulaea.)

   217. The Windows. In the principal rooms of a private house the windows (fenestrae) opened on the peristylium, as has been seen, and it may be set down as a rule that in private houses rooms situated on the first floor and used for domestic purposes did not often have windows opening on the street. In the upper floors there were outside windows in such apartments as had no outlook on the peristylium, as in those above the rented rooms in the House of Pansa (§ 208) and in īnsulae (§ 232) in general. Country houses might have outside windows in the first story. Some windows were provided with shutters, which were made to slide from side to side in a framework on the outside of the wall. These shutters (foriculae, valvae) were sometimes in two parts moving in opposite directions; when closed they were said to be iūnctae. Other windows were latticed; others again, were covered with a fine network to keep out mice and other objectionable animals. Glass was known to the Romans of the Empire, but was too expensive for general use in windows. Talc and other translucent materials were also employed in window frames as a protection against cold, but only in very rare instances.

   218. Heating. Even in the mild climate of Italy the houses must often have been too cold for comfort. On merely chilly days the occupants probably contented themselves with moving into rooms warmed by the direct rays of the sun (§ 204), or with wearing wraps or heavier clothing. In the more severe weather of actual winter they used foculī, charcoal stoves or braziers of the sort still used in the countries of southern Europe. These were merely metal boxes (Fig. 108) in which hot coals could be put, with legs to keep the floors from injury and handles by which they could be carried from room to room. The wealthy sometimes had furnaces resembling ours under their houses; in such cases, the heat was carried to the rooms by tile pipes, The partitions and floors then were generally hollow, and the hot air circulated through them, warming the rooms without being admitted directly to them (§ 368). These furnaces had chimneys, but furnaces were seldom used in private houses in Italy. Remains of such heating arrangements are found more commonly in the northern provinces, particularly in Britain, where the furnace-heated house seems to have been common in the Roman period.

   219. Water Supply.4 All the important towns of Italy and many cities throughout the Roman world had abundant supplies of water brought by aqueducts from hills, sometimes at a considerable distance. The aqueducts of the Romans were among their most stupendous and most successful works of engineering. The first great aqueduct (aqua) at Rome (see Fig. 2) was built in 312 B.C. by the famous censor Appius Claudius. Three more were built during the Republic and at least seven under the Empire, so that ancient Rome was at last supplied by eleven or more aqueducts. Modern Rome is well supplied by four, which are the sources and occasionally the channels of as many of the ancient ones. Mains were laid down the middle of the streets, and from these the water was piped into the houses. There was often a tank in the upper part of the house from which the water was distributed as needed. It was not usually carried into many of the rooms, but there was always a fountain in the peristylium and its garden (§ 202), and a jet in the bathhouse and in the closet. The bathhouse had a separate heating apparatus of its own, which kept the room or rooms at the desired temperature and furnished hot water as required. The poor must have carried the water for household use from the public fountains in the streets.

     The necessity for drains and sewers was recognized in very early times, the oldest at Rome dating traditionally from the time of the kings. Some of the ancient drains, among them the famous Cloaca Maxima, were in use until recent years.

FIG. 109
A CUBICULUM IN A VILLA AT BOSCOREALE, NEAR POMPEII
These frescoes are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, set up as they were in the villa.

   220. Decoration. Houses were small and simple with little decoration until the last century of the Republic. The outside of the house was usually left severely plain; the walls were merely covered with stucco, as we have seen (§ 212). The interior was decorated to suit the tastes and means of the owner; not even the poorer houses lacked charming effects. At first the stucco-finished walls were merely marked off into rectangular panels (abacī), which were painted in deep, rich colors; reds and yellows predominated. Then in the middle of these panels simple centerpieces were painted, and the whole was surrounded with the most brilliant arabesques. Then came elaborate pictures, figures, interiors, landscapes, etc., of large size and most skillfully executed, all painted directly upon the wall, as in some of our public buildings today. A little later the walls began to be covered with panels of thin slabs of marble with a baseboard and cornice. Beautiful effects were produced by combining marbles of different tints, since the Romans ransacked the world for striking colors. Later still came raised figures of stucco work, enriched with gold and colors, and mosaic work, chiefly of minute pieces of colored glass, which had a jewel-like effect.

FIG. 110
PART OF A CARVED DOORWAY FROM POMPEII

   221. The doors and doorways gave opportunities for treatment equally artistic. The doors were richly paneled and carved, or were plated with bronze, or made of solid bronze. The threshold was often of mosaic (see the example from Pompeii in Figure 126). The postēs were sheathed with marble usually carved in elaborate designs, as in the one shown in part here in Figure 110. The floors were covered with marble tiles arranged in geometrical figures with contrasting colors, much as they are now in public buildings, or with mosaic pictures only less beautiful than those upon the walls. The most famous of these, “Darius at the Battle of Issus,”⁵ measures sixteen feet by eight, but despite its size has no less than one hundred fifty separate pieces to each square inch. The ceilings were often barrel-vaulted and painted in brilliant colors, or were divided into panels (lacūs, lacūnae), deeply sunk, by heavy intersecting beams of wood or marble, and then decorated in the most elaborate manner with raised stucco work, or gold or ivory, or with bronze plates heavily gilded.⁶

   222. Furniture. Our knowledge of Roman furniture is largely indirect, because only such articles have come down to us as were made of stone or metal. Fortunately the secondary sources are abundant and good. Many articles are incidentally described in works of literature, many are shown in the wall paintings mentioned above (§ 220), and some have been restored from casts taken in the hardened ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In general we may say that the Romans had very few articles of furniture in their houses, and that they cared less for comfort, not to say luxurious ease, than they did for costly materials, fine workmanship, and artistic forms. The mansions on the Palatine were enriched with all the spoils of Greece and Asia, but it may be doubted whether there were many comfortable beds within the walls of Rome.

   223. Principal Articles. Many of the most common and useful articles of modern furniture were entirely unknown to the Romans. No mirrors hung on their walls. They had no desks or writing tables, no dressers or chiffoniers, no glass-doored cabinets for the display of bric-a-brac, tableware, or books, no mantels, no hat-racks even. The principal articles found in even the best houses were couches or beds, chairs, tables and lamps. If to these we add chests or wooden cabinets with doors, an occasional brazier (§ 218), and still rarer, a water-clock, we shall have everything that can be called furniture, except tableware and kitchen utensils. Still it must not be thought that their rooms presented a desolate or dreary appearance. When one considers the decorations (§§ 220, 221), the stately pomp of the ātrium (§ 198), and the rare beauty of the peristylium (§ 202), it is evident that a very few articles of real artistic excellence were more in keeping with the Roman house than would have been the litter and jumble that we sometimes have in our rooms.

   224. The Couches. The couch (lectus, lectulus) was found everywhere in the Roman house, as a sofa by day, a bed by night. In its simplest form it consisted of a frame of wood with straps across the top on which was laid a mattress. At one end there was an arm, as in the case of our sofas; sometimes there was an arm at each end, and a back besides. The back seems to have been a Roman addition to the ordinary form of the ancient couch. The couch was always provided with pillows and rugs or coverlets. The mattress was originally stuffed with straw, but this gave place to wool and even feathers. In some of the bedrooms of Pompeii the frame seems to have been lacking; in such cases the mattress was laid on a support built up from the floor. The couches used for beds seem to have been larger than those used as sofas, and they were so high that stools (Fig. 112) or even steps were necessary accompaniments. As a sofa the lectus was used in the library for reading and writing; the student supported himself on his left arm and held the book or writing with the right hand. In the dining-room it had a permanent place, as will be described later. Its honorary position in the great hall has already been mentioned (§ 199). It will be seen that the lectus could be made highly ornamental. The legs and arms were carved or made of costly woods, or inlaid or plated with tortoise-shell, ivory, or the precious metals. We read even of frames of solid silver. The coverings were often made of the finest fabrics, dyed in the most brilliant colors, and worked with figures of gold.

   225. The Chairs. The primitive form of seat (sedīle) among the Romans, as elsewhere, was the stool or bench with four perpendicular legs and no back. The remarkable fact is that it did not give place to something better as soon as means permitted. The stool (sella) was the ordinary seat for one person (Fig. 114), used by men and women resting or working, and by children and slaves at their meals as well. The bench (subsellium) differed from the stool only in accommodating more than one person. It was used by senators in the cūria, by jurors in the courts, and by boys in the school (§ 120), as well as in private houses. A special form of the sella was the famous curule chair (sella curūlis), having curved legs of ivory (Fig. 113). The curule chair folded up like our camp-stools for convenience of carriage and had straps across the top to support the cushion which formed the seat.

   226. The first improvement upon the sella was the solium, a stiff, straight, high-backed chair with solid arms; it looked as if cut from a single block of wood (Fig. 115), and was so high that a footstool was as necessary with it as with a bed (§ 224). Poets represented gods and kings as seated in such a chair, and it was kept in the ātrium for the use of the patron when he received his clients (§§ 182, 198). Lastly, we find the cathedra (Fig. 116), a chair without arms, but with a curved back sometimes fixed at an easy angle (cathedra supīna), the only approximation to a comfortable seat that the Romans knew. It was at first used by women only as it was regarded too luxurious for men, but finally came into general use. Its employment by teachers in the Schools of Rhetoric (§ 115) gave rise to the expression ex cathedrā, applied to authoritative utterances of every kind, and its use by bishops explains our word “cathedral.” Neither the solium nor the cathedra was upholstered, but cushions and coverings were used with them both as with the lectī, and they afforded like opportunities for skillful workmanship and lavish decoration.

   227. Tables. The table (mēnsa) was the most important article of furniture in the Roman house, whether we consider its manifold uses, or the prices often paid for certain kinds. Tables varied in form and construction as much as our own, many of which are copied directly from Roman models. All sorts of materials were used for their supports and tops: stone wood, solid or veneered, the precious metals, probably in thin plates only. The most costly, so far as we know, were the round tables made from cross sections of the citrus tree. The wood was beautifully marked and single pieces could be had from three to four feet in diameter. Cicero paid $20,000 for such a table, Asinius Pollio $44,000 for another, King Juba $52,000 for a third; the family of the Cethegi possessed one valued at $60,000. Special names were given to tables of certain forms. The monopodium was a table or stand with but one support, used especially to hold a lamp (§ 228) or toilet articles. The abacus was a table with a rectangular top having a raised rim; it was used for plates and dishes, in the place of the modern sideboard. The delphica (sc. mēnsa) had three legs. Tables were frequently made with adjustable legs, so that the height might be altered. On the other hand the permanent tables in the trīclīnia (§ 204) were often of solid masonry or concrete built up from the floor; they had tops of polished stone or mosaic. The table gave a better opportunity than even the couch or chair for artistic workmanship, especially in the matter of carving and inlaying the legs and top.

FIG. 118
ROMAN LAMPS FROM POMPEII

   228. The Lamps. The Roman lamp (lucerna) was essentially simple enough, merely a vessel that would hold olive oil or melted grease with threads twisted loosely together for a wick or wicks, drawn out through one or more holes in the cover or top (Fig. 118). Usually there was a special hole through which the lamp was filled. The light thus furnished must have been very uncertain and dim. There was no glass to keep the flame steady; there was never a chimney or central draft. As works of art, however, lamps were often exceedingly beautiful. Even those of the cheapest material were frequently of graceful form and proportions, while to those of costly material the skill of the artist in many cases must have given a value far above that of the rare stones or precious metals of which they were made.

     Some of these lamps (Fig. 118) were intended to be carried in the hand, as shown by the handles, others to be suspended from the ceiling by chains. Others were kept on tables expressly made for them, as the monopodia (§ 227) commonly used in the bedrooms, or the tripod shown in Figure 119. For lighting the public rooms there were, besides these, tall stands, like those of our “floor lamps,” an example of which may be seen in Figure 120. On some of these, several lamps were placed or hung at a time. Some stands were adjustable in height. The name of the lamp-stands (candēlābra) shows that they were originally intended to hold wax or tallow candles (candēlae), and the fact that these candles were supplanted in the houses of the rich by the smoking and ill-smelling lamp is good proof that the Romans were not skilled in the art of candle-making. Finally, it may be noticed that a supply of torches (facēs) of dry, inflammable wood, often soaked in oil or smeared with pitch, was kept near the outer door for use upon the streets, because the streets were not lighted at night (§§ 151, 233).

   229. Chests and Cabinets. Every house was supplied with chests (arcae) of various sizes for the purpose of storing clothes and other articles not always in use, and for the safe keeping of papers, money, and jewelry. The material was usually wood; the arcae were often bound with iron and ornamented with hinges and locks of bronze. The smaller arcae, used for jewel cases, were often made of silver or even of gold. Of most importance, perhaps, was the strong box, kept in the tablīum (§ 201), in which the pater familiās stored his ready money. It was made as strong as possible so that it could not easily be opened by force, and was so large and heavy that it could not be carried away entire. As an additional precaution it was sometimes chained to the floor. Often, too, it was richly carved and mounted, as is seen in the illustration in Figure 121.

   230. The cabinets (armāria) were designed for similar purposes and made of similar materials. They were often divided into compartments and were always supplied with hinges and locks. Two of the most important uses of these cabinets have been mentioned already: in the library (§ 206) they preserved books against mice and men, and in the ālae (§ 200) they held the imāginēs, or death masks of wax. It must be noticed that the armāria lacked the convenient glass doors of the cabinets or cases that we use for books and similar things, but they were as well adapted to decorative purposes as the other articles of furniture that have been mentioned.

   231. Other Articles. The heating stove, or brazier, has already been described (§ 218). It was at best a poor substitute for the poorest modern stove. The place of our clock was taken in the peristylium or garden by the sundial (sōlārium), such as is often seen nowadays in our parks and gardens; this measured the hours of the day by the shadow of a stick or pin. It was introduced into Rome from Greece in 268 B.C. About a century later the water-clock (clepsydra) was also borrowed from the Greeks. This was more useful because it marked the hours of the night as well as of the day and could be used in the house. It consisted essentially of a vessel filled at a regular time with water, which was allowed to escape from it at a fixed rate, the changing level marking the hours on a scale. As the length of the Roman hours varied with the season of the year and the flow of the water with the temperature, the apparatus was far from accurate. Shakespeare’s reference in Julius Caesar (II, i, 192) to the striking of the clock is an anachronism.

   232. Īnsulae. Before the end of the Republic, in Rome and other cities only the wealthy could afford to live in private houses. By far the greater part of the city population lived in apartment buildings and tenement houses. These were called īnsulae, a name originally applied to city blocks. They were sometimes six or seven stories high. Augustus limited their height to seventy feet; Nero, after the great fire of his reign, set a limit of sixty feet. They were frequently built poorly and cheaply for speculative purposes; and Juvenal speaks of the great danger of fire and collapse. Except for the lack of glass in the windows they must have looked rather like modern buildings of the sort. Outside rooms were lighted by windows (§ 217). There were sometimes balconies (§ 233) overhanging the street. These, like the windows, could be closed by wooden shutters. The inner rooms were lighted by courts if, indeed, they were lighted at all.

     The īnsulae were sometimes divided into apartments of several rooms, but were frequently let by single rooms. At Ostia remains of īnsulae have been found in which each of the upper apartments has its own stairway. The ground floors were regularly occupied by shops. The superintendent of the building, who looked after it and collected the rents, was a slave of the owner and was called the īnsulārius.

FIG. 124
A STREET IN POMPEII SHOWING STEPPING-STONES
This picture shows stepping-stones such as are mentioned on page 175.

   233. The Street. It is evident from what has been said that a street in a residence quarter of an ordinary Roman town must have been plain and monotonous in appearance. The houses were all of practically one style, they were finished alike in stucco (§ 210), the windows were few and mainly in the upper stories, there were no lawns or gardens facing the streets; there was, in short, nothing to lend variety or to please the eye, except, perhaps, the decorations of the vēstibula (§ 194), or the occasional balcony (maeniānum, see § 232), or a public fountain.

     In the shopping streets the open fronts of the small shops, as well as the balconies and windows above them, gave color and variety during the day; the shops, however, were closed and blank at night. In Pompeii some streets show colonnades extending along the fronts of the buildings. These offered shade and shelter to the shopper and the passerby; walls thus protected were sometimes adorned with paintings. Such advertisements as notices of elections and announcements of gladiatorial fights (§ 361) were very often painted on the walls. In the city streets the rows of tall apartment buildings would seem much like such buildings in the same cities today. The galleries and balconies were full of life in warm weather. There were often flowerpots or window boxes in upper windows.

     In Rome most of the streets were narrow and crooked (§ 382). Juvenal, in his third satire, gives a vivid description of the discomfort and even danger involved in threading one’s way through the crowd. Conditions were worse at night because of the lack of any system of street lighting (§ 151). The street itself was paved (§ 385), and was supplied with a footway on either side raised from twelve to eighteen inches above the carriageway. The inconvenience of crossing from the one to the other was relieved at Pompeii by stepping-stones (§ 386), of the same height, firmly fixed at suitable distances from one another across the carriageway. These stepping-stones were placed at convenient intervals on each street, not merely at the intersections. They were usually oval in shape, had flat tops, and measured about three feet by eighteen inches; the longer axis was parallel with the walk. The spaces between them were often cut into deep ruts by the wheels of the vehicles, the distance between the ruts showing that the wheels were about three feet apart. The arrangement of the stepping-stones is shown clearly in Figure 124.

FIG. 126
A MOSAIC THRESHOLD OF POMPEII
A border mosaic with tragic masks, fruits, flowers, and garlands.
From the Museo Nazionale, Naples.

¹ The hut of Romulus, now standing on the Palatine, is a modern reconstruction, based on the round hut-shaped urns found in Latin graves (Fig. 76).

² The opening in the roof is called the impluvium in Plautus, and by later writers when they refer to a certain ancient religious usage (e.g., Aulus Gellius 10.15.8). Hence it is probable that the terms were interchanged later.

³ The Romans had no public mills distinct from bakeries; each baker was also a miller. (See § 283 and Figure 166.)

⁴ For a fuller discussion see Chapter XVI.

⁵ See Baumeister, “Mosaik,” Fig. 1000; Overbeck, between pages 612 and 613; Mau-Kelsey, Fig. 137.

⁶ The magnificence of some of the great houses at Rome, even in Republican times, may be inferred from the prices paid for them. Cicero paid about $140,000, the consul Messala the same price, Clodius $600,000, the highest price known to us. All these were on the Palatine Hill, where ground, too, was expensive.

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