Fig. 113.—Herculaneum Gate, looking down the Street of Tombs.
The corners of the entrances are opus mixtum, a course of brick-shaped blocks of stone alternating with three courses of bricks.
A still more peaceful aspect is presented by the Herculaneum Gate. The style of masonry—rubble work with opus mixtum at the corners—points to the end of the Republic, rather than to the Empire, as the period of construction. Here we find three vaulted passages, the middle one for vehicles, those on either side for pedestrians. The vaulting over the middle part of the gate has disappeared; but according to appearances a vantage court was left here, in the middle passage, if not in those at the sides; at the inner end of this court the gates were placed. The greater part of the structure served no purpose of utility; it was obviously designed as a monumental entrance to the city.
PART II
THE HOUSES
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE POMPEIAN HOUSE
Our chief sources of information regarding the domestic architecture of ancient Italy are two,—the treatise of Vitruvius, and the remains found at Pompeii. The Pompeian houses present many variations from the plan described by the Roman architect; yet in essential particulars there is no disagreement, and it is not difficult to form a clear conception of their arrangements.
The houses of Greco-Roman antiquity differed from those of modern times in several respects. They took their light and air from the inside, the apartments being grouped about a court or about a large central room which ordinarily had an opening in the ceiling; the distribution of space being thus made on a different principle, the large rooms were often larger, the small rooms smaller and more numerous than in modern dwellings of corresponding size; and in the better houses the decoration of both walls and floors was more permanent than is usual in our day. The ancient houses were relatively low, in most cases, if we except the crowded tenements of imperial Rome, not exceeding two stories. The windows in the outside walls were generally few and small, and the external appearance was not unlike that of Oriental houses of the present time. In the city house the large front entrance was frequently ornamented with carved posts and lintel.
The development of the Italic house can be traced at Pompeii over a period of almost four hundred years. The earlier form consisted of a single series of apartments,—a central room, atrium, with smaller rooms opening into it, and a garden at the rear; an example is the house of the Surgeon ([p. 280]). A restoration of such a house with its high atrium, wide front door, and garden is shown in [Fig. 114].