country seat, or vice
versa, if he had so chosen, but from considerations of purpose, apart
from those of local space and view, it would have been altogether
irrational to take either course. The conditions of his life in town
and country differed even more widely than they do with us. The
average Roman, moreover, was a lover of variety in respect of his
habitation. We find in a somewhat later epigrammatist that one grandee
keeps up four town houses in Rome itself, and moves capriciously
from one to the other, so that you never know where you will find
him. At different seasons or in different moods he might prefer
this or that situation or aspect. As for country seats of various
degrees of magnificence, a man might--like many modern nobles or
royalties--possess three, four, a dozen, or twenty. He might, for
example, own one or more on the Italian Lakes, one in Tuscany, one on
the Sabine or Alban Hills, one on the coast within a half-day's run of
Rome, one on the Bay of Naples, one down in the heel of Italy, and so
on. Pliny the Younger, who was born in the reign of Nero, was not a
particularly rich man, yet he owned several country seats on Lake Como
alone, besides others nearer to Rome on north and south, at the
seaside, or on the hills.

We may begin with a town house, and our simplest procedure is to take
a plan exhibiting those parts which were most usual for an
establishment of even moderate pretensions. Let it be understood that
it is but the symmetrical outline of a general scheme which was in
practice submitted to indefinite enlargement or modification. In the
house of Livia, the mother of Augustus, on the Palatine Hill at Rome,
and in various houses at Pompeii--such as those of the Vettii, of
"Sallust," of the "Faun," or of "The Tragic Poet"--there will be found
much diversity in the number and arrangement of the rooms, halls, and
courts. Nevertheless the main principle of division, the general
conception of the portions requisite for their several purposes, was
practically the same. Some of the differences and enlargements may be
illustrated after we have considered our first simple outline. Before
we undertake this, however, it may be well to warn any one who may
have visited or be about to visit Pompeii, that he must exclude from
his thoughts all those small premises of a room or two which face so
many of the streets. These were mostly shops, with which we are not
now dealing. He must also exclude all the