Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Rome (Yesterday's Classics) by Baikie James

Author:Baikie, James [Baikie, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781599152905
Publisher: Yesterday's Classics
Published: 2010-11-14T17:23:52.690000+00:00

CHAPTER VII

A Visit to Rome: The Town House and the City

THE town house of our friend Publius Synistor is a much more elaborate affair than the little country villa at Pompeii. Of course it is by no means a great mansion, like some of the houses in the neighbourhood. Cicero's house on the Palatine cost him £30,000, and Cicero was not a grandee, but only a successful advocate. There are some houses not far away which have cost sums from £100,000 up to half a million. All the same, though Publius is a prudent man who makes no pretence of splendour, he has a good average specimen of a comfortable gentleman's house, and we shall get quite a fair idea of the Roman home when he shows us through it. 5

The building covers a whole street-block, or "island," as the Romans call it; but that does not mean that Publius himself occupies the whole. The average Roman does not mind so much about the outside of his house, so long as the inside pleases him, and Publius has planned his house so that the frontage and the two sides are divided into little shops, which are let to various tenants, and bring him in a good round sum every year. We knock at a door between two of these shops, and after we have waited a moment in the narrow vestibule till the porter has taken a glance at us through his spy-hole in one of the door-posts, the leaves of the door slide back in their groove and we enter the inner hall, stepping across a threshold inscribed with the word "Salve!" (Welcome) in mosaic.

This inner hall leads us to what in old Republican days was the chief room of every Roman house. We have a greater variety of rooms now, but the "atrium," as it is called, still keeps a kind of official position in the house. It is a large oblong room, lit only from the centre of the roof, where there is a square opening, which admits light, fresh air, and all the rain that is going. Beneath this roof-window lies an open tank bordered with coloured marbles, into which the rain from the house roof pours through terra-cotta spouts—a picturesque and cool arrangement, but decidedly damp and unwholesome, especially in rainy weather. The floor is laid with mosaic pavement, and the walls are painted with a crimson dado, and with frescoes of landscape and legend. Near the tank stand the images of the household gods, and a little altar, consecrated to them, which is supposed to typify the hospitable hearth of the house. Round the atrium are grouped six bedrooms, small and stuffy, like most Roman sleeping-rooms.

At the far end of the atrium heavy curtains are hung from a row of four pillars. Drawing the central curtain aside, we enter a small room, gorgeously decorated with paintings and floored with beautiful mosaic. It is the room where all the family records are kept, and its sumptuousness shows the importance which a Roman household attached to its history.

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