The picture of the Roman house on pages 294 and 295 may be taken to be reliable in every detail because of a terrible disater that fell upon the city of Pompeii near Naples in 79 A.D. Two Roman authors named Pliny were in the neighborhood of Pompeii when the great volcano, Vesuvius, erupted with fearful violence and showers of pumice stone and dust fell upon the city and the country around. Severe earthquakes, fires in the fires in the houses, and great upheavals in the sea near the shore accompanied by thick darkness terrified the people. Many perished, including the elder pliny; his nephew, Pliny the Younger, in two of his letters gives us a detailed account of the dreadful event as he saw it.
The showers of ashes buried the town; the roofs of the houses were broken down
and as time passed the woodwork rotted away. About two hundred years ago the
burried city began to be dug up. The excavations have been carried out with
increasing care, and now visitors to Italy may walk about in a city preserved
to us from the first century of our era, see the stone-paved streets deeply
rutted by the Roman chariots, and look into the temples, theaters, houses, stores
and factories.
The houses at Pompeii are not all on the same plan, but they are alike in some
ways' The house is enclosed by windowless walls all around on the lower floor;
you enter the house between two stores, each with its shop-front and its store
or living quarters upstairs looking to the street. The entrance hall has a strong
pair of doors to shut at night. Through the doorway we enter the main living-room
(atrium), lofty and lit by sunlight pouring through a large open space in the
roof. Under this open space is a small tank or pool into which rain pours from
the roof. Around the atrium are smaller rooms all lit from this central apartment;
opposite the main door is a room sometimes used for dining, especially on formal
occasions, but used also as an offie by the master of the house. By a passageway
we enter into the more private part of the house, the colonnaded court (peristylium).
In the center is a garden, and on two, three or four sides an open space shaded
with pillars. smaller rooms open from this court, and sometimes there is a second
story with small rooms, some of wich have windows looking out.
The Pompeian houses were made for summer weather. In colder climates the Roman
architects provided a heating sytem that warmed the mosaic pavements of which
the floors were made. These floors with their gay designs and the interesting
pictures painted on the walls must have made the homes of the Romans very cheerful
places to look at, and some at least of their charm may be recaptured by a visit
to Pompeii.