The houses of the Romans are supposed at first to have been nothing more than thatched cottages. After the city was burnt by the Gauls, it was rebuilt in a more solid and commodious manner; but the streets were very irregular.

In the time of Nero the city was set on fire, and more than two-thirds of it burnt to the ground. That tyrant himself is said to have been the author of this conflagration. He beheld it from the tower of MÆcenas, and being delighted, as he said, with the beauty of the flames, played the taking of Troy, dressed like an actor.

The city was then rebuilt with greater regularity and splendor—the streets were widened, the height of the houses was limited to seventy feet, and each house had a portico before it, fronting the street.

Nero erected for himself a palace of extraordinary extent and magnificence. The enclosure extended from the Palatine to the Esquiline mount, which was more than a mile in breadth, and it was entirely surrounded with a spacious portico embellished with sculpture and statuary, among which stood a colossal statue of Nero himself, one hundred and twenty feet in height. The apartments were lined with marble, enriched with jasper, topaz, and other precious gems: the timber works and ceilings were inlaid with gold, ivory and mother of pearl.

This noble edifice, which from its magnificence obtained the appellation of the golden house, was destroyed by Vespasian as being too gorgeous for the residence even of a Roman emperor.

The lower floors of the houses of the great were, at this time, either inlaid marble or mosaic work. Every thing curious and valuable was used in ornament and furniture. The number of stories was generally two, with underground apartments. On the first, were the reception-rooms and bed-chamber; on the second, the dining-room and apartments of the women.

The Romans used portable furnaces in their rooms, on which account they had little use for chimneys, except for the kitchen.

The windows of some of their houses were glazed with a thick kind of glass, not perfectly transparent; in others, isinglass split into thin plates was used. Perfectly transparent glass was so rare and valuable at Rome, that Nero is said to have given a sum equal to £50,000 for two cups of such glass with handles.

Houses not joined with the neighboring ones were called InsulÆ, as also lodgings or houses to let. The inhabitants of rented houses or lodgings, Insularii or Inquilini.

The principal parts of a private house were the vestibulum, or court before the gate, which was ornamented towards the street with a portico extending along the entire front.

The atrium or hall, which was in the form of an oblong square, surrounded by galleries supported on pillars. It contained a hearth on which a fire was kept constantly burning, and around which were ranged the lares, or images of the ancestors of the family.

These were usually nothing more than waxen busts, and, though held in great respect, were not treated with the same veneration as the penates, or household gods, which were considered of divine origin, and were never exposed to the view of strangers, but were kept in an inner apartment, called penetralia.

The outer door was furnished with a bell: the entrance was guarded by a slave in chains: he was armed with a staff, and attended by a dog.

The houses had high sloping roofs, covered with broad tiles, and there was usually an open space in the centre to afford light to the inner apartments.

The Romans were unacquainted with the use of chimnies, and were consequently much annoyed by smoke. To remedy this, they sometimes anointed the wood of which their fuel was composed, with lees of oil.

The windows were closed with blinds of linen or plates of horn, but more generally with shutters of wood. During the time of the emperors, a species of transparent stone, cut into plates, was used for the purpose. Glass was not used for the admission of light into the apartments until towards the fifth century of the christian era.

A villa was originally a farm-house of an ordinary kind, and occupied by the industrious cultivator of the soil; but when increasing riches inspired the citizens with a taste for new pleasures, it became the abode of opulence and luxury.

Some villas were surrounded with large parks, in which deer and various foreign wild animals were kept, and in order to render the sheep that pastured on the lawn ornamental, we are told that they often dyed their fleeces with various colours.

Large fish ponds were also a common appendage to the villas of persons of fortune, and great expense was often incurred in stocking them. In general, however, country houses were merely surrounded with gardens, of which the Romans were extravagantly fond.