The principal divisions of a Roman house consist of three square chambers, leading one into the other; the first and last of these are lighted by a square opening in the middle of the ceiling, but the central apartment is destitute of any means for the entrance of the daylight; in fact, it receives only such light as can be communicated from the rooms on either side; still as there was no actual partition between these chambers, beyond that made by curtains,[54] sufficient light must have obtained entrance, which could be modulated at pleasure. The name of this central room was the Tablinum. The first room, which is generally the largest, is called the Atrium, and has a square tank or basin in the middle of the floor to collect the water dropping from the roof, and to receive the falling rain, as the apartment is directly open to the sky. The aperture in the roof is not very large, and this arrangement for the free descent of rain affords two essential luxuries to the inhabitant of a southern climate—shade and moisture. In a country like our own it is scarcely possible to estimate their value.
[54] Sir William Gell (vol. i. p. 160 of Pompeiana, Second Series) states that the iron rods on which curtains or draperies were suspended from column to column were discovered perfect in an excavation at Herculaneum in 1828.
The further room had a larger aperture above, and the open space below was laid out with plants like a garden, bordered with columns, so that the narrow covered space left on each side formed a miniature cloister. It was called Peristyle, from the Greek words, meaning surrounded by columns. In the map of ancient Rome, made in the time of Septimius Severus, this arrangement in the private houses is distinctly visible. As in our modern houses, the proportions varied both according to the caprice of the owner, or the limitations of space. Some had a greater number of apartments, and others a double set. Not a few added an extensive series of domestic offices, dining-rooms, and bed chambers, some of them up stairs. Many houses had a second and third story of bed-rooms above the common level, but in all well constructed houses, whatever the rank of the owner, these three apartments, Atrium, Tablinum, and Peristyle, remain the essential portions. Here, as much of the life of a leading citizen was public, he received his clients and allowed the slaves to wait upon him. It was only in the inner apartment, such as the œci and triclinia, that he could indulge in privacy.
In the better class of houses, the Atrium was generally surrounded by smaller rooms, called cubicula, and the square of the Atrium was broken by the further part being widened on each side T fashion, into alæ, or wings, which correspond to the transepts of our cathedrals. The tablinum, again, was narrowed by a partition which took off a side passage, called fauces, through which the servants passed from one end of the house to the other without disturbing those occupied in the middle chamber. The floor of this tablinum was frequently ornamented with elegant pictures, in mosaic, as that of the Tragic Poet’s House, by the choragus teaching his actors, and distributing his masks (Gell, vol. i. pl. 45). The famous large mosaic, the Battle of Issus, in the House of the Faun, has already been mentioned. In some houses, but very rarely, there was a passage on both sides of the tablinum; as in the reproduction described in these pages, the House of the Coloured Capitals, and a few others, but the majority have one only.
The reader may derive a clearer and certainly a more poetical idea of an ancient house from the following extracts from Sir Bulwer Lytton’s “Last Days of Pompeii.” The house which he describes is taken from a personal examination and the assistance of his antiquarian friend, Sir William Gell:—
“You enter then usually by a small entrance passage, called vestibulum, into a hall sometimes with—but more frequently without—the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors communicating with several bedchambers—among which is the porter’s—the best of these being usually appropriated to country visitors. At the extremity of the hall on either side to the right and left, if the house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tessellated pavement of the hall is invariably a square shallow reservoir for rain water—classically termed impluvium—which was admitted by an aperture in the roof above, the said aperture being covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes—but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome—placed images of the household gods. The hospitable hearth often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, was at Pompeii almost invariably formed by a moveable brazier; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal, so firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its position. It is supposed that this chest was the moneybox, or coffer, of the master of the house; though as no money has been found in any of the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes rather designed for ornament than use. In this hall—or atrium, to speak classically—the clients and visitors of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the more ‘respectable,’ an atriensis, or slave peculiarly devoted to the service of the hall, was invariably retained, and his rank among his fellow-slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must have been rather a dangerous ornament; but the centre of the hall was like the grass plot of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and fro, who found ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance at the other side of the hall, was an apartment (tablinum), in which the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the wall covered with elaborate paintings. Here were usually kept the records of the family or those of any public office that had been filled by the owner; on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was often a dining-room or triclinium; on the other side, perhaps, what we should now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were deemed most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the slaves to cross to the further parts of the house without passing the apartments thus mentioned. These rooms all opened on a square or oblong colonnade, technically termed peristyle. If the house was small its boundary ceased with this colonnade, and in that case its centre, however diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and adorned with vases of flowers placed upon pedestals; while under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors admitting to bedrooms, to a second triclinium, or eating-room—for the ancients generally appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer and one for winter, or perhaps one for ordinary, the other for festive occasions—and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet dignified by the name of library—for a very small room was sufficient to contain the few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable collection of books.
“At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre thereof was not, in that case, a garden, but might be perhaps adorned with a fountain or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was generally another eating room, on either side of which were bed rooms, and perhaps a picture saloon or pinacotheca. These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very much resembling the peristyle, only usually longer. This was the proper viridarium or garden, being commonly adorned with a fountain or statues, and a profusion of gay flowers; at its extreme end was the gardener’s-house; on either side beneath the colonnade were sometimes, if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.
“At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being built only above a small part of the house and containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating-room (or cœnaculum) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small size; for in those delightful climes they received any extraordinary number of visitors in the peristyle (or portico), the hall, or in the garden; and even their banquet rooms, however elaborately adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients being fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large dinner rooms were not so necessary with them as with us. But the suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance, must have had a very imposing effect: you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted—the tablinum—the graceful peristyle, and if the house extended further, the opposite banquet-room, and the garden which closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue.
“The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses, which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all, you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle, communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted; and in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegances of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decoration is, however, questionable; they were fond of the gaudiest colours, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncoloured: and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, &c., in perspective; a meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.”
The novelist then proceeds to describe the house known by the name of the Tragic Poet. (See [plan No. 2] on [page 38].)