public edifices. This done,
he must remember that we now possess only portions of the walls
without the roofs, and that in such circumstances apartments always
appear to be much smaller than they are by actual measurement, or than
they appear when they contain their furniture and appointments
properly disposed. Finally, he must not take a Pompeian house, even
the most spacious, as a fair example of either the size or splendour
of the great houses in the metropolis. Pompeii was but a small place,
with a population of no great wealth or standing, and its houses would
have cut but a provincial figure among those of the same date on the
Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, or Quirinal Hills. Nevertheless they are
extremely useful to us in reconstructing the type. It is that type and
not the exception which we now consider.

A town house might either be detached or it might stand in a street,
like one of the tenement-blocks, with shops let into the less
important parts of the outer wall of the ground floor. Much would
naturally depend upon the means and dignity of the owner. In any case
the interior portions would belong to the private residence. As a rule
the exterior of the ordinary house was little regarded. No
architecture was wasted upon it; decoration and other magnificence
belonged to the interior. Provided a house possessed a more or less
imposing doorway its exterior walls might be left either to shops or
to a dull monochrome of stucco, pierced here and there, if necessary,
at 9 or 10 feet from the ground by barred slits, which cannot be
called windows, for the admittance of light. The general principle of
a Roman house, as of a Greek, was that of rooms surrounding spaces
lighted from within. Privacy from the outer world was not indeed so
scrupulously sought by the Romans as by the Athenians--principally
because of the more free position occupied by the Roman
women--nevertheless it was secured by the absence of ground-floor
windows opening on any thoroughfare.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--TYPICAL SCHEME OF ROMAN HOUSE.]

Before the actual door there was commonly an open recess or space a
little backward from the street, in which callers could wait until the
door was opened. This was the "vestibule," and in the case of the
larger houses of the nobles it was often adorned with honorary
statues, on horseback or otherwise, while above the door might be seen
the insignia of triumphs won by the family, a decoration in some
mea