The smaller tombs varied greatly in size and form. Some were vaulted chambers, with graceful internal painted decorations of figures and vine patterns combined with low-relief enrichments in stucco. Others were designed in the form of altars or sarcophagi, as at Pompeii; while others again resembled ædiculæ, little temples, shrines, or small towers in several stories of arches and columns, as at St. Rémy (France).
PALACES AND DWELLINGS. Into their dwellings the Romans carried all their love of ostentation and personal luxury. They anticipated in many details the comforts of modern civilization in their furniture, their plumbing and heating, and their utensils. Their houses may be divided into four classes: the palace, the villa, the domus or ordinary house, and the insula or many-storied tenement built in compact blocks. The first three alone concern us, and will be taken up in the above order.
The imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill comprised a wide range in style and variety of buildings, beginning with the first simple house of Augustus (26 B.C.), burnt and rebuilt 3 A.D. Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero added to the Augustan group; Domitian rebuilt a second time and enlarged the palace of Augustus, and Septimius Severus remodelled the whole group, adding to it his own extraordinary seven-storied palace, the Septizonium. The ruins of these successive buildings have been carefully excavated, and reveal a remarkable combination of dwelling-rooms, courts, temples, libraries, basilicas, baths, gardens, peristyles, fountains, terraces, and covered passages. These were adorned with a profusion of precious marbles, mosaics, columns, and statues. Parts of the demolished palace of Nero were incorporated in the substructions of the Baths of Titus. The beautiful arabesques and plaster reliefs which adorned them were the inspiration of much of the fresco and stucco decoration of the Italian Renaissance. At Spalato, in Dalmatia, are the extensive ruins of the great Palace of Diocletian, which was laid out on the plan of a Roman camp, with two intersecting avenues (Fig. 64). It comprised a temple, mausoleum, basilica, and other structures besides those portions devoted to the purposes of a royal residence.
FIG. 64.—PALACE OF DIOCLETIAN. SPALATO.
The villa was in reality a country palace, arranged with special reference to the prevailing winds, exposure to the sun and shade, and the enjoyment of a wide prospect. Baths, temples, exedræ, theatres, tennis-courts, sun-rooms, and shaded porticoes were connected with the house proper, which was built around two or three interior courts or peristyles. Statues, fountains, and colossal vases of marble adorned the grounds, which were laid out in terraces and treated with all the fantastic arts of the Roman landscape-gardener. The most elaborate and extensive villa was that of Hadrian, at Tibur (Tivoli); its ruins, covering hundreds of acres, form one of the most interesting spots to visit in the neighborhood of Rome.
FIG. 65.—HOUSE OF PANSA, POMPEII.