The street door was of wood, having two leaves (a folding-door), moving on pivots, and in private houses opening inward and outward in public buildings. When opening inward the door was secured by a bolt and when opening outward by lock and key. There were but few windows and in general only in rooms above the ground floor. Paper, linen cloth, horn, and mica were used in the windows and glass seems to have come into use under the early emperors. The walls were decorated with paintings. The floors of the primitive houses consisted of clay and then came bricks and tiles and stones and later the houses of the wealthy class had marble and mosaics.
"The Romans resorted to various methods of warming their rooms. They made use of portable furnaces for carrying embers and burning coals to warm the different apartments of the house, and which they seem to have placed in the middle of the room. They also had a method of heating the rooms by hot air, which was conveyed by means of pipes through the different apartments. They also had a kind of stove, in which wood appears to have been usually burned. It has been a matter of much dispute whether the Romans had chimneys to carry off the smoke, but it does not appear that these were entirely unknown to the Romans."[179]
There were four representative kinds of chairs used by the Romans. The first kind was a folding-stool with curved legs placed crosswise; the second kind had four perpendicular legs and were without backs; the third kind were similar to the second but had a back; and the fourth kind was a chair of state, with high or low back, the back and legs being ornamented.
The couches were of three kinds. There was the low dining-couch, upon which they reclined at meals; then there were the beds for sleep at night or siesta by day; and the third kind had usually two arms but no back and which were chiefly used for reading or writing at night. With the bed was the mattress, filled with straw or sheep's wool or the down of geese and swans; bolsters and cushions, stuffed as the mattress; blankets and sheets, of simple material or dyed and embroidered; pillows for propping the head or the left elbow of the sleeping or reclining persons; and footstools.
They had benches of wood and stone and bronze, some of them being semi-circular and large enough to hold quite a number of people. There were square, round, and crescent-shaped tables, some being quite large, others smaller with three legs, and a one-legged table, often quite small and made of the rarest material and elegant in design. There were pots and pans of various kinds, and buckets and dishes and drinking-vessels, and other kinds of vessels.
The houses at night were lighted with lamps. The lamp consisted of the oil-reservoir, which contained the oil, the nose, through which went the wick, and the handle to carry it by. The lamps were put on stands or were suspended from lamp-holders or they hung down from the ceiling. The stands and lamp-holders that were used by the poorer people were made of common wood or metal, while those of the rich were of costly material and often most beautifully adorned with figures of all kinds of animals carved upon them. They had lanterns also, which had for covering horn, oiled canvas, and bladder, and later, glass.
Women.
In the early times the woman remained at home. She engaged in spinning and weaving and other household duties, and she had supreme control of household affairs. She was under the authority of her husband and she had no individual rights in property and she could not make a will. Later she acquired more rights and privileges. The condition of women at Rome was quite a deal better than at Athens or in any other country previous to Roman times. For at Rome women were allowed more freedom and participation in public affairs, they were allowed more to share in the joys and pleasures of the husband and other people, and they enjoyed a greater confidence and esteem of the men.
That Roman women appeared in public and that they were not afraid to stand up for their rights is illustrated in the following. In 215 B. C., when Rome needed resources for the second Punic war, the Oppian Law, was passed which forbade any woman to have gold trinkets of the weight of more than half an ounce, to wear a parti-colored garment, or to ride in a chariot within the city of Rome or a town occupied by Roman citizens or within a mile of these places, except for a religious purpose. Twenty years later, when the war was over and prosperity had returned, the women asked for the repeal of this law. They started a campaign and talked about it in every place, they interviewed men on the street, and they stated the case to every one that had a vote. Women from towns and villages came into Rome to help. On the day of the vote, the women rose early and filled the streets to the Forum and used every means to gain their cause. They finally overcame the opposition, the law was repealed, and the women recovered their liberty of riding and dressing as they had formerly done.
The Roman women would even go to greater extremes than the conducting of a political campaign. Over a hundred years before the event recorded above, when the women had much less privileges, when the despotic actions of husbands became unendurable, the women sought a way of rescuing themselves. At the time a number of men of the upper classes were attacked by an unknown disease, in every case attended by similar symptoms, and nearly all died. No cause could be found until a female slave offered to explain upon promise of freedom and to suffer no harm in consequence. Upon the Senate's guaranteeing such to her, she told them that the deaths were from poison, that the wives met together to compound the poison. She took the officials to the place, where they found the women preparing the ingredients. The women were charged with the matter, and to prove their innocence they partook of the drugs, upon which death followed, and with the same symptoms as with the men. Upon investigation 170 of the women were found guilty and it is held that 300 or more wives had entered into the plot to put their husbands to death. Some doubts are thrown upon this story by some historians but at any rate it is stated that the Romans believed it and told it for the truth.