Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul by T. G. Tucker (page 2)

for one man to hold.

When we survey this vast aggregation of various provinces, with their differences of race, language, religion, and habits; when we remember that it was on the whole strictly, energetically, and legally administered; it is hard–even allowing for a wise Senate and capable ministers–to realise a man competent for the position.

Yet Augustus had been conspicuously successful, and Tiberius not less so; Claudius, despite a certain weakness, cannot by any means be called a failure; after Nero, Vespasian and Titus were capable enough; while Trajan deserves nothing but admiration. On the other hand Caligula, it is true, had had more than a touch of the madman in his composition, and had believed himself to be omnipotent and on a level with Jupiter. Nero had begun well, but had been led by vanity, vice, and extravagance to an astounding pitch of folly and oppression. Nevertheless it must be remarked, and it should be firmly emphasised, that what is called the tyranny of Caligula and Nero is mainly–and in Caligula’s case almost solely–a tyranny affecting the Romans themselves, affecting the lives and property of the Roman senators and other prominent persons, and affecting the lives and honour of their wives and daughters. The outcry against these two emperors comes from the Romans, not from the subject peoples. At least in Caligula’s case the provinces were as peaceful and prosperous as at other times. It is true that the madman once meant to insist on the Jews putting up his own statue in the temple at Jerusalem, but this was because his vanity was aggrieved by their unwillingness. Under Nero the case is much the same. His tyranny for the most part took the shape of cruelty, insult, and plunder in Rome itself. It was only when he was becoming hopelessly in debt that he began to plunder the provinces as well as Italy by demanding contributions of money, and in particular to seize upon Greek works of art without paying for them. It is a mistake to think of Nero as habitually and without scruple trampling under his blood-stained foot the rights and privileges of the provinces, or grinding from them the last penny, or harrying, slaying, and violating throughout the empire.

There is nothing to show that, during the greater part of his reign, the provinces at large felt any material difference between the rule of Nero and the rule of Claudius, or that they rejoiced particularly in his fall. In many quarters he was a favourite. In the latter half of his reign he made himself a brute beast, and often a fool, in the eyes of respectable Romans. But it was, as still more with Caligula, rather in his immediate environment that his tyranny was felt to be intolerable; that is to say, among the men and women who had the misfortune to come in his way with sufficient attraction of purse or beauty to awaken his cupidity. And these were the Romans themselves, senators and knights, not the populace, and in but a small degree, if at all, the provincials in Spain or Greece or Palestine.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.–BUST OF SENECA. Archeologische Zeitung.]

Perhaps this is the time to look for a little while at this Nero, whose name has deservedly passed into a byword for heartless bestiality. In the year 64 he is 27 years of age, and has been seated on the throne for ten years. Four years more are to elapse before he perishes with the cry, “What an artist the world is losing!” In his early years his vicious propensities, inherited from an abominable father, had been kept in check partly by his preceptor, the philosopher Seneca, and by Burrus, the commander of the Imperial Guards, partly by his domineering and furious-tempered mother, Agrippina, who seems to have so closely resembled the mother of Lord Byron. But at this date he had got rid of both his tutors. Burrus was dead, probably by poison, and Seneca was in forced retirement. The emperor had also caused his own mother to be murdered. Poisoning, strangling, drowning, or a command–explicit or implied–to depart this life, were his ways of shaking off any incubus upon a free indulgence of his will. His follies and vices had revealed themselves from the first, and had gone to outrageous lengths, but now he is entirely unhampered in exhibiting them.

[Illustration: Photo–Mansell & Co. FIG. 14–BUST OF AGRIPPINA, MOTHER OF NERO.]

Educated slightly in philosophy, but better in music and letters, he could speak, like others of his day, Greek as well as his native Latin. His aim was to be an “artist,” but if the want of balance which too often goes with what is called the “artistic temperament” ever manifested itself in its worst form, it was in Nero. Apart from his passion for music and verse, he developed an early mania for horse-racing, and when he was caught talking in school–where such conversation was forbidden–about a charioteer who had fallen out of his chariot and been dragged along the ground, he explained that he was discussing the passage in Homer where Achilles drags the body of Hector round the walls of Troy. In after life he carried both forms of mania to amazing lengths. The highest form of music was then represented by singing to the harp. Nero’s ambition was no less than to compete with the champion minstrels of the world. As he remarked, “music is not music unless it is heard,” and he decided to make public appearances upon the stage like any professional. Whenever he did so, a number of energetic youths, salaried for the purpose, were distributed among the audience as _claqueurs_–the words actually used for them being perhaps translatable as “boomers” or “rattlers.” He acted parts in plays–a proceeding which would correspond to an appearance in opera–and made a peregrination through Greece and back by way of Naples as an exponent of the art of singing to the harp. While upon this tour, whenever he was performing in the theatre, the doors were shut, and no one might leave the building for any reason whatever. “Many,” says the memoir-writer, “got so tired of listening and praising that they jumped down from the wall, or pretended to be dead, so as to get carried out.” Naturally he always won the prize, and, on his side, it should be remarked that he honestly believed he had earned it. He practised assiduously, took hard physical training, regulated his diet for the cultivation of his voice, which was not naturally of the best, and probably became not at all a bad amateur. His monstrous self-conceit did the rest. Besides singing to the harp, he was prepared to perform upon the flute and the bagpipes, and to give a dance afterwards. All this, of course, was undignified and ridiculous, but it was scarcely tyranny. Doubtless there was sufficient suffering among the audience, but that cruelty was hardly deliberate. In the Roman noble, whose ideal of behaviour included dignity and gravity, these public appearances perhaps often aroused more indignation and scorn than did his sensual vices. The same contempt was often evoked by other proceedings of a similar nature. His insatiable fondness for horse-racing, or rather chariot-racing, induced him to appear also as a charioteer. First he practised in his extensive private park or gardens, which were situated across the Tiber on the ground now approximately occupied by St. Peter’s and the Vatican. When he appeared at the Olympic games driving a team of ten horses, he was thrown out of the car, and had to be lifted into it again. Though he was eventually compelled to abandon the race, he was, of course, crowned victor all the same. He dabbled also in painting and modelling.

We must not dwell too long upon his eccentricities. One might describe how in his earlier years he often put on mufti and roamed the streets at night with a few choice Mohawks, broke into shops, and insulted respectable citizens, throwing them into the drains if they resisted; how, being unrecognized, he once received a sound thrashing from a person of the senatorial order, and was thereafter attended on such occasions by police following at a distance. One might describe his dicing at L3 or L4 a pip, or his banquets, at one of which he paid as much as L30,000 for roses from Alexandria. After the great conflagration which swept over a large part of Rome in this very year 64 he began to build his enormous Golden House, in which stood a colossal effigy of himself 120 feet high, and in which the circuit of the colonnade made three Roman miles. Whether he deliberately set fire to the city in order to make room for this stupendous palace is open to doubt. It was naturally believed at the time, and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he turned it upon those persons for whom the Roman populace had at that moment the greatest contempt, because, as the historian puts it, of their pestilent superstition and of a profound suspicion that they harboured a “hatred of the human race.” These were the new sect of the Christians, and with burning Christians did Nero proceed to light up his gardens on one famous night, as a means of placating the populace whom he had offended, but who for the most part loved him for his misplaced generosity in the matter of “bread and sports.” The tolerant attitude of the Romans towards foreign religions will be discussed in its own place; but the cruelty of a Nero in the year 64 can hardly be put down as properly a religious persecution in any way typical of the Roman government.

The sensual vices of Nero are indescribable, and that word must suffice. His extravagances, whether in lavish presents or in personal expenditure, soon rendered him bankrupt. He had no means of paying the soldiers or meeting his own appetites. Then began, or increased, his attacks on wealthy persons, his executions and banishments of senators and other wealthy men, and his flimsy pretexts for all manner of confiscation. The Senate he hated and the Senate hated him. Nevertheless, so far as the empire itself was concerned, no systematic or widespread oppression can have been perceptible. His officers and the officers of the Senate were apparently all the time governing and administering the law and the taxation throughout the empire in as sound and steady a way as if an Augustus sat upon the throne.

If we wish to picture Nero to ourselves, here is his description: “He was of a fairly good height; his skin was blotched, and his odour unpleasant; his hair was inclined to be yellow; his face was more handsome than attractive; his eyes were grayish-blue and short-sighted; his neck was fat; he was protuberant below the waist; his legs were very slender; his health was good.”

Such was the man to whom St. Paul elected to have his case referred, when at Caesarea he exercised his privilege as a Roman citizen and appealed to the titular protector of the commons. “Thou hast appealed unto Caesar, and unto Caesar shalt thou go.” There is indeed no great probability that the apostle was ever brought directly before this precious emperor. We may perhaps draw from bur inner consciousness elaborate and interesting pictures of the two men confronting each other, but we must not forget that they will be pure imagination. The appeal of a citizen did not imply such right to an interview, for the Caesar in such minor cases commonly delegated his powers to other judicial authorities at Rome. Paul’s object was gained if his case was safely removed from the local influences of Judaea and the weaker policy of its governor, the “agent of Caesar,” to the capital with its broader-minded men and its superiority to small bribes and local interference.

[Illustration: FIG. 15.–BUST OF NERO.]

CHAPTER VI

ADMINISTRATION AND TAXATION OF THE EMPIRE

We are now brought to the consideration of the methods by which this huge empire was organised and governed.

And first let us observe that the Romans–strict disciplinarians and great lawyers as they were–never sought to impose upon the subject provinces any uniformity. They never sought, any more than Great Britain has sought, to erect one code of law, one form of administration, one standard of rights, one rate of taxation, one religion, and to make it equally applicable to Spain and Britain, Greece and Africa, Gaul and Asia Minor. There were, of course, common to all the empire certain rules essential to civilisation, certain natural laws and laws of all nations. Murder, violence, robbery, deliberate sacrilege, and so forth were punishable everywhere, though not necessarily by the same authority nor in the same manner. Necessarily it was held everywhere that contracts must be fulfilled and debts paid. Beyond the fact that Rome demanded peace and order and the essentials of civilised life, and provided machinery to secure those ends, she troubled little about differences of local procedure and varieties of local law, so long as the Roman rule was duly recognised and the Roman taxes duly paid. As with Great Britain, her care was for results, not for machinery, or, as the great Roman historian puts it, she “valued the reality of the empire, not the show.”

Outside Italy there spread the provinces. These had been conquered or peacefully annexed at various times. A number of small states had come in by perpetual alliance. Some provinces, such as Gaul, had formerly been divided among tribes and tribal chiefs. Some, such as Greece, had consisted of highly civilised city-communities with small territories and managing their own affairs, although they might all alike be acknowledging the suzerainty of some powerful prince. Some, such as Cappadocia, Syria, and Egypt, had been under their native kings. Judaea was a peculiar example of a small theocratic state, in which the chief power lay with the priests.

Rome was too wise to meddle more than she need with existing conditions. She preferred as far as possible to accept the existing machinery and to use it, with only necessary modifications, as her instrument of administration. To the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, for example, she conceded a large criminal jurisdiction over ecclesiastical offenders, so long as that jurisdiction did not limit the universal rights of a “Roman citizen.”

When a province was conquered, all its territory became technically the property of the Roman state. Some of it was kept as such, and mines of gold, silver, lead, iron, and salt, or quarries of marble, granite, and gravel, were commonly annexed as state property. If it was expedient to allot some portion of the conquered land to a Roman settlement–commonly a settlement of veteran soldiers called a “colony”–that was done. Such a settlement meant the founding of a town, to which was granted a certain environment of land. Those who took part in its formation were “Roman citizens” and forfeited no rights as such. As the native people came in from the surrounding districts to reside in it, they also, it appears, somewhat easily acquired similar privileges. Here the Roman law existed in its entirety. A colony was almost exactly a little Rome in respect of its system of officers and its legal procedure. Sometimes a town which had not originally been so founded might be made a “colony” by receiving a draft of Romans, and sometimes it was made such in sheer compliment. In the Eastern half of the empire such settlements were comparatively rare; they were but dots upon the map, as at Corinth, Philippi, Antioch in Pisidia, or Caesarea. In the West they were much more numerous. The south of France contained many; a number also existed in southern Spain. So many indeed were planted in these parts that they became, as has been already remarked, completely romanized. Farther north Cologne still perpetuates its Roman name of Colonia. Nevertheless in the West the bulk of the land of the provinces is far from being taken up, in the year 64, by colonies.

Apart from the lands thus appropriated, what happens to the rest of the conquered territory which is theoretically Roman property? Generally it is handed back to its original inhabitants, on condition that they pay rent for it, whether in money or in kind, or partly in each. Egypt pays in kind when it sends to Rome the corn in the great merchantmen; Africa pays in kind when it does the same; the Frisians of Holland pay in kind when they supply a certain quantity of hides. Before the days of the Emperor Augustus there had existed for the empire in general the abominable system of tithes, which were farmed by companies. But after him, and at our date, for the most part the payment is by a fixed sum of money, which has been calculated upon the basis of those tithes. In the imperial Record Office there is a register of the area of land in a given province, and an assessment of its producing value. The amount of the land-tax to be paid into the Roman treasury is therefore fixed. Those who read in the New Testament that Augustus Caesar sent forth an order that “all the world–that is, the Roman world–should be taxed” need find no difficulty in understanding what it means. “Taxed” is Old English for assessed, as when we speak of “taxing a bill of costs.” The Greek word means simply that a register should be made. The order of Augustus was that a census should be taken throughout the provinces; that a return should be made of population, property, trades, and all that a reasonable government requires to know; and that payments should be determined thereby. All the world had been “taxed” in the modern sense long before Augustus, and it has been taxed, unfortunately without much promise of respite, ever since.

The chief revenues of Rome were derived from this land-tax; but, when combined with other taxes, a large proportion of it was spent in the administration of the province from which it was obtained. No error could be greater than to suppose that Roman officers simply came and carried off all this money as booty to Rome for the pampering of its emperor and populace. Naturally the balance which accrued for the feeding of Borne, for Roman enjoyment and Roman buildings was very large; and doubtless this fact was bad for the morale of Rome itself and requires considerable casuistry to defend it. But it would be a monstrous misconception to imagine that all the “tribute paid to Caesar” was absolutely drained, by an act of sheer oppression, clean out of the province year by year. No country can be protected, policed, and have its justice administered without taxes, and the provincials were not paying more, and were often paying much less, as well as paying it in a more just and rational way, than when they were being taxed by their own kings, their own oligarchies, or their own socialistic democracies. The Roman settlements–the colonies–unless specially exempted, had to pay the land-tax as much as any other community. The only land which was exempt from it was Italy, and Italy paid sundry other taxes to make up for it, at least in part. But though Italy was first and foremost in the imperial regard, the emperor was by no means indifferent to the welfare of the provinces. If an earthquake, a fire, or other great calamity befell a town, it was by no means rare for the emperor to send a large sum of money in relief.

Besides the land-tax there was also a tax on persons and personal property. The tax on persons was not precisely a poll-tax, except in places like Britain and Egypt, where it was difficult to make proper estimates otherwise, but a tax on occupations and trades. This, if we choose, may be put down as a crude form of income-tax, although it was not actually assessed on income. In another sense it may be regarded as a tax on a license, assuming that we demand a license for every kind of occupation. Italy again was exempt from this taxation also. Obviously a census, and a regularly revised census, was necessary to carry out this system; and Rome required a whole army of agents, just as a modern state would require one, for assessing and collecting these dues.

The land-tax and the person-tax were the two chief sources of Roman revenue. These were regular and direct. There were others, subject, like our own taxes, to increase or decrease according to circumstances, but for the most part kept at very much the same standards under several consecutive emperors. For instance there were customs duties, paid on the frontiers of the empire and also on those of provinces or natural groups of provinces, not as part of any protective system, since the empire is all one, but as a means of raising money from commodities. In Italy there was a duty of 2-1/2 per cent. Luxuries from India and Arabia via Red Sea ports were specially taxed at 25 per cent. If you sold a slave, you would pay from 2 to 4 per cent on the purchase-money. Occasionally there was a tax on bachelors. In Italy, but not elsewhere, 5 per cent legacy duty was paid when the recipient was not a near relative, and when the legacy was not under L1000.

Add to these revenues the rents of state pastures, state forests, and state mines. Into the treasury came also unclaimed property and the property of certain classes of condemned criminals.

So much for the nature of the taxation. In point of government, the Romans were singularly liberal. When a province was conquered or annexed, the Senate sent out a commission of ten persons, who carefully considered the existing state of things, the laws and forms of administration actually in vogue, and drew up a constitution for the province, embodying as much of these as was possible or at all commendable; as much, in fact, as was compatible with the Roman connection. This constitution, when sanctioned by the Senate, was binding, whatever governor might be appointed by Rome to the province. Such a governor might interpret the law; he could not alter it.

But though a province was a unit in so far as it was under one governor, the Romans were firm believers in strictly local administration. Their policy in this, as in conquest, was “divide and rule.” It did not suit their ends to make any large part of the empire conscious of a corporate existence. The unit of administration was, therefore, a town and its district–a “community.” In Gaul there were about sixty such divisions, each roughly corresponding in size to a modern French “department.” Such a community had its own local council and officials, who were ultimately responsible to the governor. So long as they performed their municipal or communal functions correctly and honestly they were not interfered with. The chief principle upon which Rome insisted was that their local government should be aristocratic, or rather that office should be based on wealth. The governor, of course, stepped in when he felt it to be his duty. He was required to suppress all secret societies or political unions. A strike of the bakers in one city of Asia Minor was promptly put down by the governor as interfering with social order and social needs.

The communities made their own by-laws, they collected the land-tax of their own district and handed it over to the financial representative of the Roman government. This was done by men of their own people, often of a low class, known in the Gospels as the “publicans,” who were so commonly associated with sinners. St. Matthew had been one of the minor agents for such collection in Galilee. Other taxes–those which were indirect–might be collected by the great tax-farming companies of Roman “knights,” who offered a lump sum for them to the government, and made what they could out of the bargain.

One incidental consequence of this systematic division into communes was that there spread throughout the empire a strong municipal patriotism, especially in the Greek world. This was followed by liberal local expenditure on the part of rich provincials in beautifying their centres with public buildings and works of art, chiefly, no doubt, given for the sake of the local honours with which they were repaid, but given nevertheless.

Most of the towns or communities throughout the empire were in the position described. Some communities, however, such as Thessalonica, though situated inside a province, were for some special service in the past exempted from the interference of the governor, and were allowed to exercise their own laws to the full, even upon Roman citizens who might happen to reside there. These were called “free” towns. In other cases the community, having come into voluntary alliance with Rome at an earl; date and before conquest, was still treated as an “allied” state, and was exempted from either interference or taxation, so long as it supplied its quota of soldiers when called upon. Such cities, however, were distinctly the exception, and most of them in the end preferred to come directly within the Roman sphere of administration. They often found their burdens smaller and less capricious than when they taxed themselves through their own authorities.

* * * * *

The function of the governor was to see that the various local bodies did their work, kept within their rights, and paid their taxes. He also, either in person or by his deputies, administered justice wherever the Roman laws were concerned. Where they were not concerned, he necessarily acted as Gallio did with the Jewish charges against Paul at Corinth; he dismissed the case as not demanding his jurisdiction. Said Gallio: “If it were a question of a misdemeanour or a crime, I should be called upon to bear with you; but if they are questions of (mere) words and names and of your (Jewish) law, you must see to it yourselves.” When the Greeks who were standing by proceeded to beat the chief of Paul’s Jewish accusers, the governor shut his eyes to the matter. This may have been a laxity, but it would almost appear as if Gallio liked their behaviour.

For the purposes of justice a province was divided into “Assize Districts,” and the governor or his deputies went on circuit. In the court he sat upon a platform in his official chair and with his lictors in attendance. The official language of the court and of its records was of course Latin, but in the Eastern half of the empire the bench cannot always have pretended not to understand Greek. Since it would not, however, understand Hebrew, the Jews would need to speak through a representative who knew Latin, and this is apparently the reason for the appearance of Tertullus against St. Paul at Caesarea. A Roman citizen–that is, a person possessed of full Roman rights–if he either denied the jurisdiction or was in danger of being condemned to capital punishment, might, unless he had been caught red-handed in certain heinous crimes, appeal to Caesar and claim to be sent to Rome. Unless the governor had been expressly entrusted with exceptional powers, or unless the case was so self-evident that he had nothing to fear from refusing, he had no alternative but to send the appellant on to the metropolis. Arrived there, the prisoner was taken to the guardrooms or cells in the barracks of a special prefect who had charge of such arrivals from abroad, and his case would in due course be taken either by the emperor himself, if it was sufficiently important, or by magistrates to whom the emperor delegated his powers for the purpose.

Meanwhile, provincials other than full Roman citizens enjoyed no such privilege. They could make no appeal. The governor was supreme judge, and his verdict or sentence was carried out. In matters of doubt, whether administrative or judicial, the governor might refer to the emperor for direction or advice, and we have at a somewhat later date a considerable collection of letters and their replies which passed in this manner between Pliny and the Emperor Trajan.

* * * * *

A glance at the map will show some provinces named in heavy type and some in italics. Those in _italics_ are the provinces to which the Senate has the right to appoint the governors, in this case called “proconsuls.” Of course His Highness the Head of the State is graciously pleased to approve the choice of the Senate; which means that the Senate will not attempt any appointment which the emperor would dislike. The revenues of these provinces go into a treasury controlled by the Senate. Of those named in heavy type the emperor is himself the governor or proconsul. Theoretically he is made governor of all these simply because they contain, or may need, armies, and he is the commander-in-chief of those armies. But since he is at Rome, and in any case cannot be everywhere at once, he governs all such provinces by means of his deputies, whom he appoints for himself. They are his lieutenants, and are so called–to wit, “lieutenants of Caesar” and “deputies of the commander.” The revenues of these imperial provinces are collected by an “agent” or “factor” of Caesar, and go into a treasury controlled by the emperor. In any one of his provinces the emperor would be its governor, and would exercise the usual military and civil powers of a governor. His lieutenant to each province simply acts in his place, receives the same powers, and is the governor of that province exactly as the proconsul sent by the Senate is governor in his. But whereas the governors in the senatorial provinces wear the garb of peace, and are appointed, like other civil officers, for one year only, the “deputies of Caesar,” the commander-in-chief, wear the military garb, and are kept in office just so long as their superior thinks fit. It is as if in modern times the governor of the one kind of province made his public appearances in civilian dress, and the governor of the other kind in uniform.

The actual outcome of this system was that the provinces of the emperor were on the whole better administered than those of the Senate. In the latter, changes were too frequent, and a governor might sometimes strain a point to enrich himself quickly. But it must on no account be imagined that at this date a governor could with impunity be extortionate or oppress the provincials, as he too often did in the good old days of the republic. He was paid his salary, which might be anything up to L10,000; his allowances and power of making requisitions, such as of salt, wood, and hay when travelling, were strictly defined by law; any pronounced extortion, oppression, or dishonesty laid him open to impeachment; and such a charge was tolerably certain to be brought. Among so many governors it was inevitable that a number should have been impeached. We know of twenty-seven instances, resulting in twenty condemnations and only seven acquittals. The emperors at least looked sharply to their own provinces; nor would they readily tolerate any gross irregularity in those other provinces which were nominally controlled by the Senate. On leaving his province every governor must make out duplicate copies of his accounts, one to be left in the province, one to be forwarded to Rome.

In the _Acts of the Apostles_ we have mention of two governors of senatorial provinces–in other words, two “proconsuls”–Gallio in Achaia (or Greece), and Sergius Paulus in Cyprus. It is instructive to compare the lenient and common sense attitude of these trained Roman aristocrats with that of the turbulent local mobs who dealt with St. Paul in Asia Minor, Judaea, or Greece. Of the minor governors of smaller provinces–styled “agents” or “factors” of Caesar–we meet with Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus.

It remains only to remark that, while the Senate’s treasury, which received the revenues from the senatorial provinces, paid the expenses of their management and also of the administration of Italy, the emperor’s treasury, which received the revenues from the other provinces, provided for their administration, for the pay of the army, for the corn and water of Rome, for public buildings, for the great military roads, and for the imperial post. Nevertheless the emperor could handle all this latter money exactly as he chose, and it is upon this chest that Nero was drawing for all his lavish prodigalities and his undeserved and wasteful bounties. Yet even Nero was scarcely so bad as Caligula, who managed to spend L22,000,000 in less than one year.

CHAPTER VII

ROME: THE IMPERIAL CITY

In the year 64 the capital of the Roman Empire was, it is true, a large and splendid city and an “epitome of the world,” but it had not yet reached either its zenith of splendour or its maximum, of size. Many of the largest and most sumptuous structures of which we possess the records, and in most cases the ruins, were not yet built or even contemplated. There was no Colosseum; there were no Baths of Trajan, Caracalla, or Diocletian. The Column of Trajan, still soaring in the Foro Traiano, and of Marcus Aurelius, now so conspicuous in the Piazza Colonna, are of a later date. So also are the three great triumphal arches which are still standing–those of Titus, Severus, and Constantine. The Mausoleum of Hadrian, now stripped of its outward magnificence of marble and sculpture, and known as the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, was not built for two generations. On the Palatine Hill the palaces of the Caesars were wide and lofty, but not more than half so spacious and imposing as they became by the end of the following century.

Down in the Forum there stood no Basilica of Constantine; the place of several later temples and shrines was occupied by edifices of less dignity; many columns and statues, and much ornament of gilt or marble, were still to come. Beside and beyond the two embellished public places which had been added to the public comfort and convenience by Julius Caesar and Augustus, and which were known respectively as the Julian and the Augustan Forum, lay only the houses of citizens or streets of shops. Up from the Forum towards the later Arch of Titus and the Colosseum, the “Upper Sacred Way” ran as but a narrow road between buildings for the most part of ordinary character, principally shops catering for luxury. It was later by two centuries and a half that this street was converted into a broad avenue forming a worthy approach to the “hub of the universe.”

In the ruins which lie on the Palatine Hill, or along the valley of the Forum below, or up the Sacred Slope towards the Colosseum, or across where the streets wind round from the “Roman” Forum through the Forum of Trajan to the Corso, the modern visitor to the Eternal City does not behold simply the remnants of the temples, halls, squares, and arches which actually existed in the days of Nero. We must not say of these places that St. Paul trod the very paving-stones or gazed on the very walls which we now find in their worn and broken state. In a few cases it may be so; in most it is certainly otherwise. Either the building was not there, or what we now behold is part of a reconstruction or an enlargement. Fire, flood, earthquake and the wear and tear of time called for many a rebuilding or restoration. In the very year upon which we have fixed, there swept over all this part of the city perhaps the most disastrous fire that it ever experienced. Another only a little less destructive occurred in A.D. 283, and when we say that the remains of the glory of ancient Rome are still visible in the excavated Forum, we must recognise that the glory which they represent is the glory of the place as restored after that year.

This does not mean that the general plan and appearance were markedly different under Nero, nor that there was any lack of magnificence; it is only meant by way of caution against a frequent misconception.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

If there was no Arch of Severus in the Forum, there was an Arch of Augustus, near the Temple of Castor, surmounted by his statue in the four-horsed chariot of the conqueror, and there was an Arch of Tiberius near the temple of Saturn. If to the north there was as yet no bridge or “castle” of Sant’ Angelo to celebrate the dead Hadrian, there was, on the near side of the Tiber, not far from the modern Piazza del Popolo, a splendid Mausoleum of the deified Augustus and his family. In the chief Forum the Temples of Vesta, of Julius Caesar, of Castor, Saturn, and Concord existed under Nero in the same spots and in much the same style as they did through all the remainder of Roman history. Above them towered the Capitoline Hill, with its resplendent Temple of Jupiter on the one summit and its great shrine of Juno on the other. Beyond, in the “Field of Mars”–the site of the densest part of modern Rome–was an almost continuous cluster of public buildings and resorts, of theatres, temples–including the first form of that incomparable edifice, the Pantheon, the only building of ancient Rome which still remains practically whole–of baths, porticoes, and enclosed promenades.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.–SOME REMAINS OF THE CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT.]

Away in the opposite direction stretched the Appian Way, and in the year 64 the beautiful tomb of Caecilia Metella, which is so familiar in picture, stood as perhaps the noblest among the multitude of patrician tombs. The Apostle Paul certainly passed close by it on his way from Puteoli. The aqueduct, of which so many arches still meet the eye as you cross the Campagna, was the work of Nero’s predecessor, Claudius, and it still bears his name–the Aqua Claudia. Where now you go out of the gate to St. Paul’s Outside-the-Walls there stood–more free and visible than now–that pyramid of Cestius, close to whose shadow lie the graves of the English Shelley and Keats. There was no gate at this spot in the days of Nero, for the great wall, of which so many portions–more or less restored–are still conspicuous, had no existence till a much later date, when the empire was already tottering to its fall, and when Aurelian was driven to recognise that the heart of the empire, after remaining secure for centuries, must at last look to be assailed. There was, it is true, an inner wall of ancient date (to be seen upon the plan) which had enclosed the “Seven Hills” before Rome was mistress of more than her own small environment. But the city had long ago overflowed this boundary, and the newer quarters lay as open to the country as do our own modern cities.

How far the suburbs stretched, or precisely how far Rome proper extended, in the days of Nero, is no easy matter to decide. We shall in all probability be near the mark if we accept the line of the later wall of Aurelian as practically the limit of what might be included in the “Metropolitan Area.” The total circumference of the whole city would be about twelve English miles, a circuit which fell somewhat short of that of Alexandria and probably of Antioch, although in actual importance these cities took but the second and third rank respectively.

Some parts within this line were thickly inhabited, in some the houses must have been but sparse. Particularly along the upper slopes of the hills–of the Pincian, Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine–were the spacious houses and gardens of the wealthy. The Palatine was almost, though not completely, monopolised by the emperors’ palaces and sundry temples. The Campus Martius was mostly a region of public buildings and grounds for promenade and exercise, although some of the finest shops stood very close to where they stand to-day, in that Flaminian Way which is now called the Corso of Humbert. On one side below the Palatine Hill, space was taken up by the vast Circus or racing-ground; on the other lay the public places known as the Fora. It was left for the poorer inhabitants to crowd themselves into the valleys of the town, either between the Forum and the spurs of the several hills which trend towards the centre–up under Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, or Caelian–to the left behind the buildings as you now go from the bottom of the Forum to the Colosseum; or between the Forum and the Tiber in the low-lying ground called the Velabrum and there-abouts; or else across the river in that “Transtiberine” region which still bears the name of Trastevere.

If, therefore, it is asked what may have been the Population of Neronian Rome, it need cause no surprise if the number should appear comparatively small to one who is accustomed to our huge modern towns. Rome had never been a seat of manufactures. Its wealth and luxury came almost wholly from its empire, and it was emphatically a city for the rich and ruling classes. In Nero’s day it was still growing, and even in its fullest times it is doubtful if the population ever exceeded or even reached a million and a quarter. Perhaps for the year 64 we may most safely put it down at about 750,000.

* * * * *

Now suppose yourself to be standing at F in the recognised centre of Roman life, the “Roman Forum.” Here, before we begin our rapid exploration of the city, it is well to clear our minds of one false notion which too commonly prevails. Think of any modern town you please, and remember that, whatever may be the accumulation of architectural magnificence around any given spot, the people of that town treat it all with familiarity and without any waste of sentiment. They will set up their shops or stalls wherever they are allowed; they will carry on their traffic and their amusements; they will saunter and sit on steps and misbehave without feeling oppressed by any appreciable awe of their surroundings. So was it, and even more so, in ancient Rome. The fact that there were shrines or public buildings on all sides did not prevent the Romans from loitering and loafing in the Forum, from sitting on the steps of a temple or a basilica, or leaning against its columns or statues, or playing at a sort of draughts or of backgammon on its marble platforms–the lines to put the “men” upon are here and there still visible upon the pavements–or even scratching a name or a drawing on a pillar. In certain parts the Forum was alive with the bustle of financial business and, doubtless under certain limitations, with the traffic of the pedlar. Curiosities were exhibited, the crier shouted his advertisements, and, in short, the place was almost as freely used for the vulgar purposes of ordinary life as for the dignified gatherings and ceremonies which to our minds appear so much more appropriate to it. Though we are not yet dealing with the social life of Rome, whether indoor or outdoor, it seems advisable to make this observation before proceeding.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.–THE ROSTRA: BACK VIEW. (Probable restoration for A.D. 64.)]

Let us now stand at F and look about us toward the Capitol, noting only the chief features of the scene. The reader would do well to consider the plan along with the frontispiece to this book. We are upon an open space paved with marble slabs, round which stand sundry honorary statues and various minor monuments into which we need not now enquire. Facing us, toward the far end, is a platform about 80 feet long and 11 feet in height, with marble facing. A trellis-work rail, or pierced screen, runs along it at either side, and also extends along the front for one-third of the distance from either end. The one-third in the middle of the front is open. This platform is approached by a flight of steps at the back, while in the sheer face are set as ornaments rows of bronze “beaks” or “rams” cut from ships captured in war. From these “beaks” the platform obtains its name–the Rostra. It is the platform for harangues delivered to the Roman people–the Roman citizens who are politely assumed to be the body politic–and the open space on the front is the position for the orator. It is from this stand that important announcements are made to the people at large. An emperor or his nominee may speak from it; a magistrate may deliver some pronouncement; a political exhortation may be uttered; in the case of a public funeral, or even of the private obsequies in some eminent family, an oration over the deceased may be spoken with that finished and animated elocution which the Romans so zealously cultivated, and which the Italians still affect with no little success. It is not indeed the same platform as was used by Cicero and the orators of the republic: this stood elsewhere, and doubtless the substance of public speaking had declined deplorably since that day. Nevertheless many a torrent of rich and sonorous Latin must have streamed over the Forum from that noble standing-place, and it must still have been worth while for a Roman to develop both his speaking voice and his oratorical art. Still further back, to the right behind the Rostra, there stands the Temple of Concord, where the Senate in older times gathered on more than one occasion to listen to Cicero, and where the emperors have formed practically a gallery of works of art; to the left is the Temple of Saturn, long used as the Roman Treasury, of which eight pillars still remain as perhaps the most conspicuous feature among the existing ruins. Another object in the background to the left, at the rear of the Rostra, will be a stone pillar coated with gilded bronze, upon which the first emperor, Augustus, inscribed the names of the great roads leading out from Rome into the length and breadth of the empire, with a list of the chief towns to which those roads would take you, and their distances. The name of this pillar is the “Golden Milestone.” Behind these objects, running along the high face of the Capitoline Hill, are visible the arcades of the Record Office, of which the greater portion still exists, though stripped of its architectural graces and built over and about in more modern times, in the state represented in FIG. 18. Still higher on the summit to the left, with its gilded tiles glistening in the sun–at least they were gilded within the next few years–rises the most sacred structure of all, the building most closely identified in the Roman mind with the eternity of the empire. This is the splendid temple of Jove, Supreme and Most Benign. Of this edifice nothing considerable except its platform now remains, its site being occupied by an object of which the existence would have been inconceivable to the ancient Roman–to wit, the German Embassy. On the other summit, a fortified citadel to your right stands the temple of the consort of Jupiter. In this shrine she was known as Juno Moneta, and since, attached to her temple in this citadel, was the office of the Roman coinage, her name Moneta has become familiar to modern mouths in the form of “the Mint.” If you seek the place of this temple now, you must look for it under the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.

[Illustration: FIG. 18.–RUINS OF FORUM.]

[Illustration: Photo, Anderson. (Record Office in background with modern building above.)]

Next, instead of looking up at the hill, glance to your left, and you will see running along that side of the Forum, beside the Sacred Way, a spacious public building known as the Basilica of Julius, that is to say, of Julius Caesar. It is an edifice of a type familiar in cities of the Roman world. You mount the steps from the Sacred Way and find yourself under an outer two-storied arcade suitable for lounging or promenading while discussing business or gossip with your friends. Passing from this inwards you are in a building which consists of a covered colonnade, or nave, about 270 feet in length, with a row of pillars on either hand. On each side is a gallery, or upper floor, from which spectators may look down upon the interior, or, from the outer side, upon the open Forum. At the far end is a recess with a raised tribunal, shut off, if necessary, by railings. In other basilicas there may be an apse at this point, similarly enclosed. This serves as a court of justice, round which the curious may stand, or upon which listening spectators may gaze from the ends of the galleries above. Meanwhile up and down the open space of the nave all kinds of verbal business may be transacted by appointment, exactly as such business used to be carried on in old St. Paul’s Cathedral in London or in churches elsewhere. In what may be called the inner side-aisle are situated offices of various kinds, including those of sundry public corporations, boards, or commissions. The whole of this great hall is paved with coloured marbles; its pillars are coated with marble; its ceiling is adorned with painting and gilt; it is embellished with statues; and it is lighted from above by a clerestory. Though the question has been debated, it is almost certain that it was mainly from buildings like this, or from rooms similarly constructed in palatial houses, that the early Church developed its basilicas–with their nave, aisles, and clerestory, and with their railed apse at the end, where was placed the chair of the bishop on its dais. Across the Forum on the opposite side, to your right, lies another structure of the same kind, in artistic respects more excellent. In this, the Basilica Aemilia, the chief business was that of the bankers and money-changers, although it served various other purposes according to convenience.

If you could see round the farther end of this basilica to the right, you would perceive the beginning of one of the busiest streets in Rome–the Argiletum–chiefly known to fame as a favourite quarter of the booksellers, who fasten on their door-posts, or on the pillars which support a balcony or upper floor, the lists of the newest or most popular publications to be bought within. And where that street enters the Forum, though standing back a little from your line of vision–perhaps you can catch sight of the top of it over the corner of the Basilica–is the temple-like Senate-House with its offices. Here is the meeting-place of the six hundred who nominally govern jointly with the emperor. If you visit Rome to-day you will find the greater part of the actual chamber, though miserably despoiled, bearing the name of the church of S. Adriano.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.–N.E. OF FORUM, A.D. 64. (Complementary to frontispiece.)

From left: in background, Record Office, with Temple of Concord and Rostra below; on summit, Temple of Juno and Citadel; below, Prison, with shrine of Janus in front. To right: Basilica Aemilia, with gable of Senate-House beyond. (Largely after Tognetti.)]

The little building, half arch, half shrine, which you observe standing free where the roads converge upon the Forum, is the famous sanctuary of Janus, of which the doors are never shut unless there is complete peace throughout the Roman world. So long as Rome is anywhere engaged in a great or little war, the open doors of Janus tell the fact to a people which might otherwise be unconscious of so slight or remote a circumstance.

* * * * *

[Illustration: FIG. 20.–TEMPLE OF FORTUNA AUGUSTA. (Pompeii.)]

We need not describe in detail the temple of Castor, or rather of the “Twin Brethren,” which stands immediately to your left, or that of the deified Julius Caesar, which is just behind you, on the spot where the body of the great dictator was burned. It is perhaps more interesting to note the ordinary–though not by any means the only–form of the Roman temple in general. Those who have seen the so-called Maison Carree at Nimes will possess a fair notion of the commonest or most typical shape and arrangement. For the most part we have a rather lofty platform, mounted from one end by steps, which are flanked by walls or balustrades, often bearing at their extremities equestrian statues or other appropriate figures. Upon the platform stands the temple proper, consisting of a chamber containing the statue of the god. Where more than one deity are combined in the same temple–as in that of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, where the supreme deity has Juno and Minerva to left and right of him–there may either be as many separate chambers or as many chapel-like bays as there are deities. The altar for sacrifice stands outside opposite the entrance, being placed either upon the top of the main platform or more commonly on a minor platform of its own in the middle of the steps. In most cases the chamber stands back behind a row, in some instances two rows, of columns, which support the characteristic entablature seen in the illustrations. In the case of the more grandiose temples a series of columns may run all round the building, carrying an extension of the roof, under which is thus formed a covered colonnade. More commonly the sides and back of the chamber have only what are known as “engaged” columns, as it were half-embedded in the wall. The roof is gabled and tiled, with ornaments along the eaves. The front has an embellished entablature, with its triangle of masonry called the “pediment,” consisting of a cornice overhanging a sunken surface decorated with a sculptured group. Over each angle, right, left, and summit, is a base of stone supporting some conspicuous ornament, such as a statue, an eagle, or a figure in a chariot. In the middle of the front of the building, behind the columns of the portico, are double doors, commonly made of decorated bronze, with an open grating of the same metal above them. The whole is outwardly of marble, either all white or with colour in the pillars, but the core of at least the platform is commonly made of the immensely strong Roman concrete, or else of blocks of the less beautiful and costly kinds of stone.

In point of architectural style the Romans of this date–who in artistic matters were but imitators of the Greeks and far less certain in taste than their masters–affected the Corinthian, as being the most florid. Even this they could not leave in its native purity, but for the most part converted it into Graeco-Roman or composite varieties. A prime fault of the Roman taste was then, as it has always been, a love of gorgeousness, of excessive and obtrusive ornament. In almost any Roman church of to-day we find the walls and pillars stuck about with figures, slabs, and so-called decorations to such an extent that the finer lines and proportions are often ruined, The ancient Roman likewise was commonly under the impression that the more decoration you added, the more magnificent was the building. There were doubtless many buildings in simpler and purer taste, probably executed by Greek artists under the authority of some Roman who happened to possess a finer judgment or less self-assertiveness. Nevertheless the fault of over-elaboration is distinctly Roman.

[Illustration: FIG. 21.–SO-CALLED TEMPLE OF THE SIBYL AT TIVOLI.]

We must not omit to say that, besides temples of this typical rectangular form, there were others of a round shape, encircled by columns, like that graceful structure at Tivoli commonly, though mistakenly, known as the temple of the Sibyl, and that small building which still exists in an impoverished condition near the Tiber, and which used to bear the erroneous title of the temple of Vesta. Others again were simply round and domed, like the true temple of Vesta in the Forum, or the superb and impressive Pantheon in the Campus Martius. So far as the bare round was broken in these cases, it was either by a pillared portico, as with the Pantheon, or by engaged columns and ornament, as with the true temple of Vesta.

The mention of the temple of Vesta reminds us that it is time to face about, and, passing behind the temple of Julius, to look in the opposite direction, from V. Before us lies this circular shrine, a form gradually developed from the primitive round hut which once served as house to the prehistoric ancestors of the Roman stock. As it was the duty of the maiden daughters of that ancient tribe to keep alight the fire upon the domestic hearth, so through all the history of Rome it was the duty of certain chosen virgins to keep perpetually burning the hearth-fire of the city. The roof of the temple is open in the middle, and you may perhaps see the smoke issuing from it. But if you are a male, you may not enter. No man, except the chief Pontifex, may set foot inside the shrine of the virgin goddess, who is attended by virgin priestesses. Close behind the temple stands the house of these Vestals. They are in a large measure the ancient prototype of the modern nun, and their house is the prototype of the convent. Six nobly-born young women, sworn to chastity, and dressed in a ritual garb, live in an edifice of much magnificence under the rule of one who is the chief Vestal, a sort of Mother Superior. Many pedestals of the statues of such chief priestesses still remain, and we can clearly trace the arrangement of their abode, with its open court–once containing a garden and cool cisterns of pure water–its separate room for each Vestal, its baths, and its resources of considerable comfort and even luxury.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.–VESTAL VIRGIN]

If, as you face this way, you look up to your right, you will perceive the Palatine Hill rising steeply above you, with its summit crowned by the lofty palaces and gardens constructed by the Caesars. At the side and corner which look down upon the Forum stands the part built by Caligula, the epileptic who thought himself no less than a god, and who in consequence not only turned the temple of Castor into a lower vestibule to his own house, but also built a bridge across the valley over the temple of Augustus and the Basilica of Julius to the Capitoline Hill, so that he might visit and converse with Jupiter, his only compeer. From the top of the Basilica he occasionally threw money into the Forum to be scrambled for by people who crushed each other to death in the process. It would require too much space if we climbed the sloping road which leads on to the Palatine and examined the various structures upon that hill. As we now see it in its ruins it is perhaps the most mysteriously impressive place in the world. But many alterations and enlargements of the palaces were made after the date of Nero, and we cannot now be sure of the precise aspect of the hill-top in his day. Suffice it that, overlooking the Forum, overlooking the Velabrum Valley which leads from the Forum to the Tiber, and overlooking the middle of the valley where the vast Circus or race-ground separated the imperial hill from the Aventine, there were portions of the huge imperial abodes, rising in several stories gleaming with marble, and enjoying the purest air and the widest views obtainable within the city. Nero himself, it is true, was not content with such mere human housing. After the great fire of this year 64, he proceeded to make for himself what he called “a home fit for a man,” and so built–though he never finished–that famous or infamous “Golden House,” which ran from the Palatine all across the upper Sacred Way and the hollow now occupied by the Colosseum far on to the opposite hills–a house of countless chambers, with three miles of colonnade, enclosed gardens large enough to be called a park, and a statue of himself 120 feet in height. The epigram went that the people of Rome must migrate, inasmuch as what had once been a city was now but a private house. This, however, had not yet occurred, and we have rather to think of palaces and gardens rich indeed, but by no means occupying the whole of the Palatine Hill alone. There were, of course, numerous buildings more or less connected with the imperial establishment, among them being quarters for the officers and soldiers of the guard. There were also a number of temples, one of which, the magnificent shrine of Apollo, the god of light and learning, stood in a court marvellously enriched with sculptured masterpieces, while connected with it were libraries filled with Greek and Latin books and adorned with the busts and medallion-portraits or statues of great authors.

If we proceeded now to walk up the Sacred Way, along the narrow street edged by jewellers’ and other shops, we should meet as yet with no Arch of Titus, nor in descending beyond should we see any Colosseum, but only a block of ordinary dwellings, to be swept away later in this year by the fire which made room here for the ornamental waters of Nero’s Golden House. Turning to the right along the valley between the Palatine and Caelian Hills, we should not have to pass under any Arch of Constantine; but, after glancing up to the left at the great unfinished temple of Claudius and going under the Claudian aqueduct which carries water to the Palatine, we should proceed between private houses and gardens till we reached a famous gate in the ancient wall and found ourselves on that noted Appian Way, which would take us to Capua and thence over the Apennines to Brindisi and the East. Just outside the gate we should find the livery-stables, with their vehicles and horses or mules waiting to be hired for the stage which would carry us as far as the slope on the southern edge of the Alban Hills.

But we will not proceed in this direction. From our stand at V in front of the temple of Vesta we will turn back, walk over the Forum to the right of the Rostra, between the sanctuary of Janus and the front of the Senate-House. Thence we will cross an enclosed forum, or public place, erected by Julius Caesar, with its temple of “Venus the Mother” in the middle, and so enter the Forum of Augustus. This is worth a pause. As you pass to-day up the narrow Via Bonella and perceive near the Pantani Arch a few imposing columns and a patch of rather depressing bare wall, it requires much effort to realise that here was once a noble space enclosed by marble-covered walls 100 feet in height, and that those walls contained in a series of niches a gallery of statues of all the military heroes and patriots of Roman history from Aeneas downwards. Meanwhile the few columns at your side are the sole survivors of the number which surrounded the splendid temple of Mars the Avenger, the shrine which was identified in imperial times with the military power of Rome, and which received the standards captured from the enemy, just as captured flags are to be seen in many a modern church.

Leaving this Forum, we will not bear to the right to find ourselves amid the dense population of the Subura and its neighbourhood, but we will turn to the left and pass between the Capitoline and Quirinal Hills, which then met more steeply and closely than they did fifty years later, when Trajan had cut away the rising ground and levelled an open space which must have been an incalculable advantage to the convenience of the city. It is perhaps well to observe here that the piling up of fallen ruins and the deliberate levellings and gradings, both in ancient and modern times, have greatly altered the appearance of the often-mentioned hills of Rome, especially of the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.–TEMPLE OP MARS THE AVENGER IN FORUM OF AUGUSTUS. (After Ripostelli.)]

Emerging from this too narrow passage-way and proceeding a short distance, we enter that straight Flaminian Road which has been replaced by the modern Corso beginning at the Piazza Venezia. For the first part of its course it was also known as “Broadway.” We are now in that more open part of Rome which lies outside the ancient wall, and which is commonly spoken of loosely as the Campus Martius. Here again, it is impossible to inspect all the various sights visible in the year 64. A few examples must suffice. As you walk along this straight thorough-fare–the commencement of the road which would eventually carry you to the North of Italy–you will find but few buildings of any note on your right. Lying to your left is a long and wide cloistered space which contains not only certain public offices and a pillared promenade, but also the richest shops in Rome, where are sold gold and silver work, objects of art, tapestries, and fine fabrics from Alexandria, Syria, and farther East. The place is, in fact, mainly a huge bazaar. Up the Flaminian Way beyond this enclosure we go under a triumphal arch erected by the late Emperor Claudius to record his conquest of Britain, where he subdued “eleven kings” without Roman loss. Keeping straight on we pass, this time on our right, another large enclosure surrounded by arcades, where is now the east side of the Piazza Colonna. In and about this locality are carried on not only promenades and saunterings but also various athletic exercises, including feats of horsemanship. Farther on still, and you will see to your left the Mausoleum of Augustus, rising some 220 feet into the air. Its base, coated with sculptured marble, contains one grand sepulchral chamber for Augustus himself, and fourteen smaller chambers for members of his family. Above this base towers a conical mound of earth planted with evergreen trees, and on the summit is a colossal statue of the first emperor. Close by is a paved space, where the bodies of the Caesars are cremated before their ashes are placed in the Mausoleum. From this spot a ready faith saw their immortal part carried up to heaven by the eagle, messenger of Jove.

Turning back and passing across the Campus we arrive at the public baths erected by Nero, and then at the Pantheon. This building, though shorn of many of its decorative splendours both within and without, still stands structurally intact, at least as it was restored and enlarged two generations later than our date. It is scarcely possible to say how far its shape was altered at its restoration under Hadrian, but we may provisionally treat the edifice as already belonging to our period. It is still, after all these centuries, an entirely noble pile, and forms a fit receptacle for the tomb, not only of Victor Emanuel, but of Raphael. Its form is that of a rotunda, with walls of concrete 20 feet in thickness and with a dome of concrete cast in a solid mass. The middle of the dome is open to the sky, and by that means the building is lighted in a manner most perfectly suited to it. Could we behold it fully restored and at its best, we should see above its portico, which is supported by huge marble pillars each made of a single stone, large bronze reliefs of gods and giants. To one side of the doors would be a colossal statue of Augustus; on the other a colossal statue of the builder Agrippa, the son-in-law of that emperor. Inside there is a series of niches for colossal effigies of Mars, Venus, and other deities connected with the Julian family. The marble pillars dividing the niches have capitals of fine bronze, and the coffered ceiling of the dome, now bare and colourless, shines with gilt on blue, like the sky lit up with stars. The doors, which have mysteriously remained entire, are also of noble bronze; the roof consists of tiles of bronze thinly plated with gold. The gold has naturally vanished, after passing into Saracen hands; of the bronze nearly half a million pounds weight has been stripped from the building, some to make cannon for the defence of the Castle of St. Angelo, some to form the twisted columns which now support the giant baldacchino under St. Peter’s dome.

At a short distance behind this magnificent temple Agrippa–who was in charge of the aqueducts and water-supply–had also built the first great public baths. It would probably be incorrect to found any detailed description of them upon what we know of the stupendous structures of Caracalla and Diocletian, which were perhaps the most amazing exhibitions of public luxury ever seen in the world. Of these we know how huge and splendid were the halls, with their coloured marbles, their mosaic floors, their colossal masterpieces of statuary, their elaborate arrangements of baths–cold, tepid, hot and dry-sweating–their conversation-rooms and reading-rooms. But we cannot pretend to say how far the Agrippan and Neronian baths of the year 64 corresponded in magnificence to these. We shall be safer in simply assuming that, since the baths of Pompeii were in full swing in the year in question, Home must have possessed establishments of a similar kind but on a larger and more sumptuous scale.

[Illustration: FIG. 24.–EXTERIOR OP THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. (Present state.)]

Leaving without further mention the various temples of Minerva, Isis, Serapis, and other deities which might be found about the Campus Martius, we note an undistinguished stone amphitheatre, the only resort of the kind as yet possessed by the metropolis. In this were exhibited the sanguinary combats of gladiators with each other, and the fights with wild beasts performed by trained professionals or by criminals selling their lives as dearly as possible. Of these “sports” we have to treat in a later chapter. Coming nearer to the Tiber, while returning towards the city proper, we pass in succession the three great theatres, lofty semicircular constructions of stone and concrete faced with marble, one computed to hold 40,000 spectators, but probably accommodating not more than 25,000, and the others some 20,000 and 12,000 respectively. In these matters we must allow both for Roman exaggeration and Roman close-packing. The theatres rise in three stories, of which the outward sides consist of open arcades adorned with pillars in varied styles, while round their bases are shops for the sale of sweetmeats, beverages, perfumes, and other articles which the theatre-goer or the loitering public may require. What a theatrical Performance was like is a matter belonging to the question of spectacles and amusements. At the back of the largest theatre–that of Pompey–lies a large square surrounded by colonnades of a hundred pillars, where sycamores form avenues and fountains play, while statues of finished workmanship stand where they produce the best effect. Particularly grateful to the Roman lounger were the seats in the large semi-circular bays, so placed as to offer full protection from too hot a sun or too cold a wind.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.–THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. (Restored.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.–CIRCUS MAXIMUS (restored); Imperial Palaces on Palatine to left.]

By the time that we have passed the last theatre of the three we have arrived at the river end of the low valley leading into the Forum between the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine, a place which had once been a cattle-market but had now become an open place surrounded by dwellings of the humbler sort. It still, however, bore the name of “Cattle-Market.” If from this point we followed the river bank, we should come to the wharves, to which the smaller ships bring up the Tiber the freights of grain transhipped from the larger vessels from Alexandria or Carthage, or of marble from the quarries of Numidia, Greece, and Phrygia, or of granite and porphyry from Upper Egypt. All along this bank are the offices and storehouses of such cargoes, and here too is performed much of the shaping of those blocks which Rome is using in such astonishing profusion. Along the river by the stone embankment the ships are moored, with their cables passed through huge stone corbels or sculptured lions’ mouths. No busier part of Rome could be found than this, but we have no time to proceed further in this direction.

In front of us rises the Aventine Hill, another quarter of the wealthy, but otherwise chiefly distinguished by its temples of Juno the Queen and of Diana. Turning our eyes from the Aventine to the left we see lying in the valley between Aventine and Palatine–where now are the Jewish Cemetery and the grimy Gasworks–the vast Circus Maximus or Hippodrome. This structure, devoted chiefly to chariot-racing, is some 700 yards in length and 135 in width, and will at a pinch hold nearly a quarter of a million spectators. In all probability it would seat 150,000. It consists, as the illustration will show, of long tiers of seats sweeping down the sides and round the curved end of an oblong space. As with the theatres, its outside view presents three tiers of marble arches, and through the lowest tier are numerous staircases leading to the various sections of the seats within. Those seats themselves are laid upon large vaults of concrete; the lower rows are of marble, the upper ones are as yet of wood. How the chariot-races were run, and what is meant by the “sports of the circus,” will naturally require a separate narration.

Coming back from the entrance of this mammoth place of amusement and turning up the Velabrum Valley, we pass by a temple of Augustus, to which is attached a public library, and issue by the temple of Castor into the Forum to our first standing-point at F.

CHAPTER VIII

STREETS, WATER-SUPPLY, AND BUILDING MATERIAL

After this rapid walk through the more interesting parts of the capital, we may consider one or two connected topics of natural interest.

Amid all this splendour and spaciousness of public buildings, what is the aspect of the ordinary streets? In this respect Rome was by no means fortunate. As in Old London, Old Paris, or Old New York, the streets had for the most part grown up as chance circumstances would have it. There were very few thoroughfares laid out straight from the first like the Flaminian or “Broad” Road. Alexandria and Antioch were the creations of monarchs who began with a clear field and a consistent scheme. Their straight, broad streets might well be the envy of the capital. The Romans, then as now, possessed the engineering genius, but they could not well undo the work of a struggling past, which had necessitated the crowding of population, within the defences of a wall. They knew how to supply the city abundantly with water, and how to drain it with sewers of great capacity and strength. The chief of such sewers–the Cloaca Maxima–which passed underneath the Forum to the Tiber and was laid down more than twenty-five centuries ago, is still in working order. But no republican or imperial government ever took it in hand to Hansmannise the city, even after one of those devastating conflagrations which might seem to have cleared the way. It is true that all traffic of vehicles, except for special processions, for Vestal Virgins, and a few other cases–was forbidden for ten hours in the day. All through the morning and afternoon there were no wheels in the Roman streets, unless some public building imperatively demanded its load of stones or timber, or unless the few privileged persons were proceeding in their carriages to some festival. Nevertheless the rich men and women in their litters or sedan-chairs, attended by their servants or their clients; the porters carrying their heavy loads; the itinerant hucksters; and the ordinary man on errand or other business bent, made up crowds which were often difficult to pass through.

Another consequence of the old compression within narrow walls was that, as population increased, the houses grew more lofty. How high the Romans built, or were allowed to build, in republican times we cannot tell. The tendency was certainly to build higher and higher, and sky-scrapers would perhaps have become the rule if the ancient Roman had understood the use of materials both sufficiently light and sufficiently strong, or if he had been forced to establish his work on secure foundations. In point of fact there had been, and there continued to be, too much of jerry-building. Houses sometimes collapsed, and many were unsubstantially shored up. A flood or an earthquake was apt to find them out, and there was frequent peril in the streets. The majority of the abodes of people of humble means were not like those in smaller towns, such as Pompeii, still less like those in the country. They were “tenement houses,” large blocks let out in rooms and flats, and it was natural that landlords should make haste to run them up and to increase the number of their stories. When Augustus became emperor he enacted what may be called a Metropolitan Building Act, which insisted on firmer foundations and limited the height to 70 feet. That act was apparently still in force in the age of Nero, and we may take it that along the more frequented streets the houses commonly ran to a height of four or five stories. They looked the taller because of the narrowness of the street itself. While it is perhaps, though not necessarily, an exaggeration for the epigrammatist–who lived “up three pair of stairs, and high ones”–to say that he could touch his opposite neighbour with his hand, it is at least an indication of the truth. Some of the narrower lanes between blocks cannot have been more than a few feet across.

Nor does it appear that the occupants’ of rooms opening on the streets were very particular as to what they threw out in the way of rubbish or dirty water. It is true that there were aediles, or officers to look after the order of the streets and public places, but their efforts seem to have been mainly directed to preventing conspicuous obstruction. Practices which we should regard as heinous were treated lightly or disregarded. To make matters worse, the shopkeepers, who occupied the lower fronts of most of such houses, took the greatest liberties in encroaching upon the roadway when exhibiting their wares, and it was not till twenty years later than our date that the Emperor Domitian ordered them to keep within their own thresholds.

Apart from the question of the freedom of traffic, it can be readily imagined that, with all the wooden counters, doors, and shutters down below, and with the disproportionate quantity of woodwork in the beams, floors, and even walls above, fires were of the commonest occurrence, and, with streets so high and narrow, the conflagration of a whole quarter of the town was speedy and complete. Augustus had divided the metropolitan area into fourteen regions, and had distributed over these a force of 7000 watchmen to keep the peace and to deal with fires at night; but it was not to be expected, if a fire occurred in a lofty block, that this body, assisted or hampered by the neighbours, could do much with the buckets, siphons, and wet blankets which formed the extinguishing apparatus of the time.

Another serious danger, or, when not danger, at least discomfort, came from the trick which the Tiber has always had of flooding the lower parts of the city. Somewhat later than our date the river restrained by strong stone embankments, which one had to descend by steps in order to reach the river at the ferries or other boats; but this must have been but inadequately achieved in the early period of the empire, and a severe flood might bring the houses in the Velabrum, for example, tumbling about the ears of their inhabitants.

* * * * *

On the whole the streets of Neronian Rome were neither very comfortable nor very safe to walk in. At night there was no lighting, except when, at some great festival, illuminations might be made by order of the emperor for a whole night or perhaps a series of nights. In ordinary times torches and lanterns must be provided by yourself, and even the 7000 watchmen scarcely gave you a full feeling of security. The precise arrangements made for scavenging are unknown, but presumably it was done by the public slaves under the supervision of the aediles. It is, however, easy to discover from contemporary complaints that the streets were often annoyingly wet and slimy.

One thing the ordinary Roman appears never to have minded, any more than it is minded at the present day. This was noise. There are studious men enough in ancient literature who complain that sleep or study is impossible in Rome. They exclaim upon the bawling of the hawkers, the canting songs of the beggars, the banging of hammers, the sing-song of schoolboys learning to read in the open-air verandahs or balconies which often served as schools, and the shouting in the baths. All night long there was the rattle of carts and the creaking of heavy waggons. But the average Roman cared, and still cares, very little for quiet or sleep, and no emperor attempted to check the annoyance. Perhaps he could devise no check. Perhaps he himself, being on the Palatine, and his counsellors, being in their own comparatively secluded houses on the hills, scarcely realised the full enormity of the nocturnal roar of Rome. In any case the fact of the noise is unquestionable. It was then very much as it is now if one tries to sleep in rooms in the Corso or the Via Babuino. The saying that “God made the country and man made the town” is met with in a Roman writer of the age of Augustus, and the noise is one factor in the difference.

The ancient Romans, we have said, were masters of practical engineering, and a chief glory of the city was its abundant supply of water. Apart from the Tiber and the natural springs, there were in the year 64 at least eight aqueducts bringing drinkable water into the city. It was the emperor’s concern to see to this matter, as he did to the corn-supply, but in practice he appointed what he might call his Minister of Water-supply, and gave him liberal means to provide a large staff of engineers, surveyors, masons, pipelayers, inspectors, and custodians. It is a common error to imagine that the Romans were ignorant of the simple hydraulic law that water will find its own level, and to suppose that their aqueducts were built in consequence of that ignorance. In point of fact they knew the law as well as we do. Their earlier aqueducts were conduits almost wholly underground; their later were all on arches. When they wished to carry water to a height within the city, up a watertower to a distributing cistern, or to the top storey of a building, they did so by pipes, just as we should; but when they brought water from forty miles away they preferred to bring it in channels lined with impermeable cement and carried upon arches, which wound across the country according to the levels in order to avoid the excessive pressure of too steep a gradient. The reasons for their choice are simple enough. Their chief difficulty was in making pipes of iron of sufficient capacity. On the other hand, it was easy to construct a cemented channel in masonry of any size you desired. In the next place the water about Rome rapidly lays a calcareous deposit, and it is much easier to clear this from a readily accessible channel than from pipes buried in the ground. The pipes which the Romans commonly made were of lead, bronze, or wood. None of these could be made and cleared cheaply enough to serve for the volume of water required for household use, the baths, and the public fountains of Rome. Meanwhile slave labour was inexpensive, and the cost of building an aqueduct of any length was of little account to the Roman.

When the water reached the city it was conducted into settling and distributing reservoirs and its flow regulated. Thence it was carried by pipes, mostly of lead, wherever it was required. When Agrippa was minister of water-supply he constructed in the city 700 public pools or basins and 500 fountains, drawing their supply from 130 collecting heads or reservoirs. And it is to the credit of Agrippa and of Rome that all these pools, fountains, and reservoirs were made pleasant to the eye with suitable adornment. There is mention of 400 marble columns and 300 statues, but these are to be regarded as only chief among the embellishments.

The streets of Rome were commonly paved with blocks of lava quarried in the neighbourhood from the abundant deposits which had formed in a not very remote volcanic period.

The materials employed for substantial building were various; in the older days red and black tufa–a stone so soft as to require protection by a layer of stucco; later the dark-brown peperino, the golden-creamy travertine, marble white and coloured, and concrete. The modern visitor to Rome who regards the ruins but superficially would naturally imagine that many of the edifices were mainly constructed of brick. In reality there was no building so composed. The flat triangular bricks, or rather tiles, which are so much in evidence, are but inserted in the face of concrete to cover the nakedness of that material. Concrete alone might serve for cores and substructures, but those parts of the building which showed were required to present a more pleasing surface. At the date of Nero this might be achieved by a fronting of marble slabs and blocks, but more commonly it was obtained by means of the triangular red or yellow tiles above mentioned. In buildings of slightly earlier date the exterior often presented a “diamond pattern” or network arrangement of square pieces of stone inserted in the concrete while it was still soft. The huge vaults and arches affected by the Romans made concrete a particularly convenient material, and nothing could better illustrate its strength than the tenacity with which it has endured the strain in the unsupported portions of the vaults of the Basilica of Constantine. Any of the more imposing buildings which were not mainly of concrete were composed of blocks of stone, held to each other by clamps soldered in with lead. Few, if any, such buildings were made entirely of marble. In the case of those composes of the other varieties of stone already named, the surface was commonly coated either with stucco or with marble facings attached by hook-like clamps fixed into the main structure Externally the appearance of Rome–so far as its public buildings are concerned-was that of a city of marble. The present having been for centuries torn away, either to be used elsewhere, or more often to be burned down for lime.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.–BUILDING MATERIALS. (From Middleton.)]

CHAPTER IX

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 portieres 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.)]

CHAPTER X

THE COUNTRY HOMESTEAD AND COUNTRY SEAT

Throughout the romanized parts of the empire–in other words, wherever Romans settled, in Italy, Spain, Gaul, Britain, and also wherever the richer natives imitated the Roman fashions–the house in any city or considerable town was built as nearly as possible after the type described.

In the country the poor naturally had their much simpler cottages and cabins of a room or two, commonly thatched or shingled, knowing nothing of hall and court and all these arrangements of art and luxury. In the case of the more well-to-do country people of