The oldest Italian dwelling was a mere wigwam with a hearth in the middle of the floor, and a hole at the top to let the smoke out. But the house of historical times was rectangular, with one central room or hall, in which was concentrated the whole indoor life of the family, the whole meaning and purpose of the dwelling. Here the human and divine inhabitants originally lived together. Here was the hearth, “the natural altar of the dwelling−room of man,” as Aust beautifully expresses it; this was the seat of Vesta, and behind it was the penus or store−closet, the seat of the Penates; thus Vesta and the Penates are in the most genuine sense the protecting and nourishing deities of the household. Here, too, was the Lar of the familia with his little altar, behind the entrance, and here was the lectus genialis, and the Genius of the paterfamilias. As you looked into the atrium, after passing the vestibulum or space between street and doorway, and the ostium or doorway with its janua, you saw in front of you the impluvium, into which the rainwater fell from the compluvium, i.e. the square opening in the roof with sloping sides; on either side were recesses (alae), which, if the family were noble, contained the images of the ancestors. Opposite you was another recess, the tablinum, opening probably into a little garden; here in the warm weather the family might take their meals.
This is the atrium of the old Roman house, and to understand that house nothing more is needed. And indeed architecturally, the atrium never lost its significance as the centre of the house; it is to the house as the choir is to a cathedral. And it is easy to see how naturally it could develop into a much more complicated but convenient dwelling; for example, the alae could be extended to form separate chambers or sleeping−rooms, the tablinum could be made into a permanent dining−room, or such rooms could be opened out on either side of it. A second story could be added, and in the city, where space was valuable, this was usually the case. The garden could be converted, after the Greek fashion, and under a Greek name, into a peristylium, i.e. an open court with a pretty colonnade round it, and if there were space enough, you might add at the rear of this again an exedra, or an oecus, i.e. open saloons convenient for many purposes. Thus the house came to be practically divided into two parts, the atrium with its belongings, i.e. the Roman part, and the peristylium with its developments, forming the Greek part; and the house reflects the composite character of Roman life in its later period, just as do Roman literature and Roman art.
The Roman part was retained for reception rooms, and the Lar, the Penates, and Vesta, with their respective seats, retired into the new apartments for privacy. When the usual crowd of morning callers came to wait upon a great man, they would not as a rule penetrate farther than the atrium, and there he might keep them waiting as long as he pleased. The Greek part of the house, the peristylium and its belongings, was reserved for his family and his most intimate friends. In Pompeii, which was an old Greek town with Roman life and habits superadded, we find atrium and peristylium both together as early as the second century B.C. At what period exactly the house of the noble in Rome began thus to develop is not so certain. But by the time of Cicero every good domus had without doubt its private apartments at the rear, varying in shape and size according to the ground on which the house stood.
The accompanying plan will give a sufficiently clear idea of the development of the domus from the atrium, and its consequent division into two parts; it is that of “the house of the silver wedding” at Pompeii.
But in spite of all the convenience and comfort of the fully developed dwelling of the rich man at Rome, there was much to make him sigh for a quieter life than he could enjoy in the noisy city. He might indeed, if he could afford it, remove outside the walls to a “domus suburbana,” on one of the roads leading out of Rome, or on the hill looking down on the Campus Martius, like the house of Sallust the historian, with its splendid gardens, which still in part exists in the dip between the Quirinal and the Pincian hills.[384] But nowhere within three miles or more of Rome could a man lose his sense of being in a town, or escape from the smoke, the noise, the excitement of the streets. After what has been said in previous chapters, the crowd in the Forum and its adjuncts can be left to the reader's imagination; but if he wishes to stimulate it, let him look at the seventh chapter of Cicero's speech for Plancius, where the orator makes use of the jostling in the Forum as an illustration so familiar that none can fail to understand it.
A relief, of which a figure is given in Burn's Roman Literature and Roman Art,, gives a good idea of the close crowding, though no doubt it was habitual with Roman artists to overcrowd their scenes with human figures. Even as early as the first Punic war a lady could complain of the crowded state of the Forum, and, with the grim humour peculiar to Romans, could declare that her brother, who had just lost a great number of Roman lives in a defeat by the Carthaginians, ought to be in command of another fleet in order to relieve the city of more of its surplus population. What then must the Forum have been two centuries later, when halfthe business of the Empire was daily transacted there! And even outside the walls the trouble did not cease; all night long the wagons were rolling into the city, which were not allowed in the day−time, at any rate after Caesar's municipal law of 46 B.C. Like the motors of to−day, one might imagine that their noise would depreciate the value of houses on the great roads. The callers and clients would be here of a morning, as in the house within the walls; the bore might be met not only in the Via Sacra, like Horace's immortal friend, but wherever the stream of life hurried with its busy eddies.
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