Before subjoining any particular account of edifices, we may mention that the lever, the capstan, the crane, pulley, and other simple machines for raising or adjusting stones, were known to the Greeks and Romans. Though they could not pretend to a knowledge of machinery and mechanics even remotely approaching our own, still they had sufficient to answer the ordinary requirements of building. In carpentry, too, the Romans must have possessed considerable skill, or they could never have connected, by a structure of timber, arches so wide as those of Trajan’s bridge over the Danube.
We will now give a short description of the general form and appearance of the Greek and Roman house. In neither nation had the external appearance of a dwelling-house much pretension to beauty. Lying chiefly, almost exclusively, on the ground floor, there did not exist that elevation of structure, or regularity of plan necessary to produce a striking effect on the eye from without. In the Greek house there were two principal divisions, the men’s quarter and the women’s quarter. The outer door was approached by steps, and opened on a narrow passage, on one side of which, in a large house, were the stables, on the other a lodge for the porter. This passage entered on the men’s quarter—an open quadrangle surrounded by porticoes, forming a kind of cloister for exercise or meals. In this court was placed an altar for domestic sacrifice. Various chambers were ranged round the quadrangle behind the porticoes, answering the purposes of private dining-rooms, withdrawing-rooms, picture-galleries, libraries, bed-chambers, and so forth. The great object in the arrangement of chambers was to gain warm rooms, exposed to the sun, for use during winter, and cool, shady apartments for summer occupation. Directly opposite the entrance to the men’s quarter was a passage, closed by a door, and leading to the women’s quadrangle.
Three sides of this square were surrounded by porticoes, as in the men’s quarter; but on the fourth side, opposite to the entrance-door, and usually fronting south, there was a kind of vestibule, on either side of which were placed bed-chambers, the principal in the house. Behind these were large rooms, in which women worked at their spinning, weaving, or embroidery. An upper story, in most cases, extended partly over the space occupied by the lower; but the rooms on the upper floor bore a very small proportion to those on the ground. In early times, before the house had attained its usual main division into separate quarters for the men and women, the upper chambers were assigned to the latter. Afterward they were usually occupied by slaves, or by strangers visiting the family. Balconies were sometimes built, projecting from the windows of this upper floor. The roof was usually flat, and calculated for exercise or basking in the sun; in rarer cases a pointed roof existed. Windows were not common as with us; the necessity for them was not so great; the mildness of the climate, and the fact that nearly all the rooms opened on one or other of the quadrangles—which was, of course, a protection against rain and wind—were sufficient reasons for this arrangement. But some windows did look out on the street, and were closed by curtains and shutters.
Those usual adjuncts of a room in modern times, a fire-place and chimney, were unknown until after their employment by the later Romans. The Greek rooms were usually warmed by portable stoves, or braziers, in which charcoal or wood was burnt. Some of these stoves were, of course, fixed for the common culinary purposes; and in all cases the smoke found its way out as it best could.
Externally the Greek houses were plain in appearance, and destitute of the marble facings so frequent in those of Rome. A glance at the mansions of the wealthy in the latter days of the Roman Republic and under the Emperors, discloses a scene of magnificence perhaps without parallel even in our own days. The thatched or tiled cottages, built of sun-dried bricks and wood, with plainly washed walls and scanty accommodation, where the floors were of rough stone or hardened earth, whence the hardy warriors had issued forth to conquer the world, were no places for the refined luxury of the magnates of the imperial city. Foreign conquest brought the arts ministering to luxury, and the wealth requisite for splendor. Then came the age of splendid palaces in the city, and elegant country villas, seated on shaded and sheltered slopes, and adorned with every mark of urban splendor in the midst of the most attractive rural scenes—mansions and villas crowded with articles of vertù, with costly statues and paintings, with Babylonian tapestries, with Corinthian bronze, moulded, to all the forms that Greek fancy could suggest. Marble columns, of weight so great as to endanger the arches of the sewers over which they passed in their transit to the destined spot, were erected in their lofty halls, and the profuse aristocracy of rank and wealth oftentimes squandered immense fortunes on a dwelling. The house of Publius Clodius cost 131,000l.; and one of the Scauri possessed a Tusculan villa, valued—together with its furniture, decorations, and works of art—at the vast sum of 885,000l.
Before the door of a Roman house of the higher order was an open space—the vestibule. This was a recess open toward the road, but bounded on the other three sides by the outer walls of chambers in the house. The house-door facing the road admitted the visitor into an outer hall. Let us, too, follow his steps, and view the scene of so much magnificence. Passing the porter and his watch-dog, we find ourselves in a lofty hall, the finished development of what, in simpler times, was the chief room of the house. The ancestral images, the sacred hearth, the looms and spinning-wheels are still here to denote the traditional uses of the chief domestic chamber, though now surrounded and overgrown by tokens of a luxury that dazzles the eye and has long weakened the arm. Polished shafts of the finest marble support an elaborate roof rich with gold and ivory, save in the centre, where an opening reveals the deep blue of an Italian sky. Beneath this opening is a marble basin, filled to the brim with the purest water, in the centre of which a fountain casts its spray, dancing and sparkling in the sunbeams. In a recess at the farther end of the hall, we see the chests where family records are guarded with religious care, while through the open doors, or the raised curtains of Eastern tapestry which supply their place, the eye wanders into suites of apartments, everywhere denoting a refined taste delighting in the beautiful effects of proportion and perspective.
Cedar or citron tables, some from the world-old forests of Atlas, so costly that the price of one would buy a moderate estate; side-boards for the display of gold and silver plate, formed of costly woods or marble slabs, and supported by feet of bronze, silver, or even gold itself, moulded into elegant or fantastic devices; chairs and couches of ebony, inlaid with ivory, and covered with cushions, overlaid with coverlets of the richest Eastern fabrics, sparkling with gold and silver threads, or dyed in the brightest tints of the Tyrian purple; elegant bronzes and lofty candelabra, paintings, statues, and marble columns, all unite in realizing a dream of splendor scarcely dreamed of by the poets. Look for one moment at that side-board, where a cup from which Nestor is fabled to have quenched his thirst stands in antique contrast to the latest products of the Alexandrian glass-works—a mingled profusion of beakers, bowls, and vases, superb in their mouldings, and imitating so naturally the tints of the ruby or amethyst as completely to bewilder the gazer’s eye. Some shine like opals, or are cut in relief, representing scenes from ancient history or fable; and among them, perhaps, the wolf-suckled brothers, who laid the foundation of imperial Rome. Others there are, gems of minuteness, cut from amber, doubly valuable because preserving in its interior the perfect remains of some insect thus immortalized.
Passing through this magnificent hall, we gain the peristyle or open quadrangle, which forms so important a part of the Greek house. This is perhaps adorned with flowers and shrubs, or, in a country villa, shaded by a few plane-trees. Porticoes for air and exercise, some of them open to the south for the luxury of basking in the sun, to express which the Romans had a separate word in their language; cool summer-rooms, fronting north, and opening into ornamental gardens, with rows of fantastically-clipped trees; private withdrawing-rooms, bedrooms, baths, terraces and a library, complete the scene of comfort and luxury. These rooms were added according to the wealth or taste of the owner; they were not arranged on a regular plan as in modern houses. The exterior of the house was frequently faced with marble; but, owing to the want of plan and the lowness of elevation, it was usually destitute of effect, though presenting so much splendor internally. The outer door, however, was of striking height, and often surmounted by an elegant cornice. The door-posts of the wealthy were richly inlaid with ivory, tortoise-shell, or even more costly material. The door itself consisted of two halves meeting in the centre, each of which was broad enough to allow two persons to pass. In the days of luxury, precious woods, marble and bronze were in common use among the upper class, for the construction of this outer door. The door turned upon pivots, which either worked in sockets in the sill and lintel, or were encircled by metal rings—the ordinary form of metal hinges being never employed. It was furnished with a circular knocker, and closed by bolts and locks, the remains of which show a skill in the locksmith’s art by no means contemptible.
The floors of the Roman houses were not boarded. In plainer dwellings they were covered with a mixture of fragments of stone and mortar, or with pavement of brick, stone, or common tiles. But in great mansions the floor was one of the special points for display. It was either formed of white, black, or colored marbles, arranged in a check pattern, or it was a specimen of elaborate inlaid work. The tesselated pavements, of which so many remains exist, display two varieties. The first, or plainer kind, is formed of tiles moulded into various forms of animals, flowers, or such devices, each tile being a perfect figure in itself. The second, or real mosaic, was composed of pieces separately formless, but put together in a pattern. The most costly kind of this formed a beautiful inlaid painting composed of highly minute fragments, and representing animals, landscapes, historic, or other scenes. The fragments composing this fine mosaic were of glass, earthen-ware, marble, or even precious stones, as agate and onyx. So minute were they, that one hundred and fifty have been found on a square inch of surface.
The walls were sometimes overlaid with costly marbles; and, as if no product of nature could be sufficiently rich for Roman display, even the marble itself was not unfrequently covered with paintings by first-rate artists. Artificial marbles, in the production of which the workmen of Italy at that time excelled, sometimes supplied the place of the real. But a favorite mode of decoration was by painting the walls in panels—either in fresco, distemper, or encaustic. The colors were usually very brilliant. Wreaths of flowers, architectural, historic, and domestic scenes, or copies of still life, were among the usual subjects for such paintings. Elaborate mouldings cornices, and ornaments in relief, were also employed in decorating the walls. The ceilings were formed of polished beams, with their interstices glued; or they were arranged in panels and then decorated. The beams and panels were gilt, richly inlaid with ivory and tortoise-shell, or painted in brilliant colors.