THE ROMANS.

The splendour that surrounded the personal usages of the earlier races of antiquity, the Egyptians, Ninevites, Persians, Greeks, and Tuscans, was inherited by the Romans. Not only did they outlive those powers, but they absorbed their territory as far as they could reach it; they affected to take in their religions and deities to add to their own system; they drained the subject populations for slaves, and eagerly adopted from them every art that could administer to the magnificence and luxury of their own private life. They have left both written records in their literature and actual examples of their furniture, made in metal or of marble. The discovery of Herculaneum and of Pompeii has given us not only single pieces of furniture, but very considerable remains of houses, shops, streets, fora or open public places of assembly, theatres, and baths. It is in such evidences of Roman social life that we shall find the materials for our present inquiry.

The Romans spent their earlier ages in unceasing struggles for independence and dominion: and so long as the elder powers of Italy survived to dispute the growth of Roman greatness, there could not be much expansion of private wealth or splendour in the houses of Roman citizens. Though surrounded by splendid social life among the Etruscans, the Roman people long remained exceptionally simple in personal habits. It was after the Punic wars that oriental luxuries found their way into Italy along with the Carthaginian armies. Tapestry is said to have been first brought to Rome by Attalus, the king of Pergamus, who died B.C. 133 possessed of immense wealth, and bequeathed tapestries, generally used in the east from the early ages, to the Roman citizens. When Augustus became emperor the conquest of the world was complete. Thenceforward military habits and simplicity of individual life were no longer necessary to a state that could find no political rivals. The great capital of the world absorbed like a vast vegetable growth the thought, the skill, and the luxuries of the whole world. Nothing was too valuable to be procured by the great Roman nobles or money-makers, and nothing too strange not to find a place and be welcome in one or other of their vast households.

While this was so at Rome in chief, it must be remembered that other capitals were flourishing in various countries, as wealthy, as luxurious in their own way and degree, only less in extent and means, and lacking that peculiar seal of supremacy that gives to the real capital a character that is never attained in subordinate centres of civilisation. Antioch was such a centre in the east; Alexandria in the south. Both these great cities contained wealthy, refined, and luxurious societies. Both were known as universities and seats of learning. Antioch was the most debauched and luxurious; Alexandria the most learned and refined. They did not exactly answer to the distinct capitals of modern kingdoms and states, such as we now see flourishing in Europe, to London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or St. Petersburg, because no one supreme state or city predominates over them; and further still, no one draws the pick and choice of the intellect and refinement of the whole of Europe to absorb them into itself as Rome did in the old world. But, in those days, Antioch and Alexandria, one at the head of the wealth and splendour of Asia, the other representing Greek learning grafted on the ancient scientific and artistic traditions of Egypt, must have contributed much to the general fusion of "ideas" and notions on art and personal manners and customs in the capital of the Roman empire.

The Roman house was of traditional plan, and consisted generally of two or more square enclosures surrounded by arcades, open to the air in the centre, but which openings could be closed in summer or winter by awnings when the courts were not large enough to include a garden, as the inner enclosure usually did.

The house had in front a vestibulum, an open space covered by a verandah-shaped roof, sometimes enclosed by lattices, sometimes open. An ostium or lobby inside the entrance-door, deep enough to contain a small porter's lodge on one side, led to an inner door which opened on the atrium. This court had an opening to the air, and a tank for rain water was sunk in the middle. Fountains with jets or falls of water were not uncommon, the ancients being well acquainted with the principle that water if brought from an elevation in pipes will force its way up to its natural level.

Inside the atrium was the nuptiale, the nuptial bed, and here were kept in earliest times the penates, household or family divinities, and the family hearth, though these sacred emblems were banished in the imperial times to distant parts of the house, and statues between the columns that supported the central roof supplied their place. The atrium was the general reception-room, like the hall in mediÆval houses, but not the dining-room. To this succeeded an inner open court, with porticoes or corridors running round, supported on columns, and with a fountain or basin, shrubs and flowers in the centre, like the courts of the Alhambra. This court provided four halls in the four corridors, which could be screened off by tapestries and curtains. The centre was shaded in summer by canvas or carpet awnings. In winter a wooden roof could be pushed over the open space. Between the two halls or courts was a chamber called the triclinium, or dining-room. These rooms were roofed with timber richly painted and gilt. The roofs either hung on beams projecting from the walls, or were supported by pillars, or were carried up to a high opening, sloping back to the walls so as to admit more light to the rooms, alcoves, or screened portions furthest removed from the opening. Occasionally they were covered in wholly with a testudo-shaped roof, and in such cases lighted, perhaps, by dormers, though it is not quite clear how light was provided for in such constructions. Roman rooms were not floored with boards but paved with marble in large pieces, or in mosaic work made of small dies or squares. Coarse specimens of such work manufactured in our own times are laid down in the museum at Kensington, and fragments of the old work may be seen there on the walls. Occasionally these mosaics represent the house watch-dog chained, or the fable of Ganymede, or hunting scenes, sometimes finished with the utmost nicety. The triclinium took its name from the three couches or sofas, on each of which three persons reclined during meals. Later, and in sumptuous palaces, several dining-rooms were built out beyond the inner courts. The engraving, a reconstruction, will give a fair idea of the general character of a richly furnished Roman house. First, is the atrium, into which smaller chambers open; next, the triclinium, to the left of which is a cabinet; and beyond is the peristylium, with its lofty colonnades. This last apartment was large and open; often planted with shrubs and trees, or containing statues, flowers in pots and vases, and surrounded by a corridor. As these courts were of various sizes they were, no doubt, in Rome on a scale out of all proportion to those found at Pompeii; were fewer or more in number, and rooms were added as the proprietor could acquire ground for building, often a difficulty in the older parts of the city. Something of this ground plan survives in a few of the very ancient Roman churches, as in that of S. Pudenziana, formerly the house of the senator Pudens, with vestibules, open courts, &c.

Around the inner court, in the sumptuous Roman houses and the country villas of the patricians, were built other rooms, dining-halls, no longer called triclinium but triclinia in the plural, as admitting more than the number of nine persons reclining on the conventional three couches, to dine at once. In the city itself room was probably wanting in private houses for such expansion, the houses being in streets already laid out. In the villas there was no such restriction. These halls were built to face different quarters of the compass and to be used according to the season. Verna and autumnalis looked to the east, hyberna to the west, Æstiva to the north. Œci were other rooms still larger; and glass windows were to be found in them. In a painting now in the Kensington museum, n^o. 653, given by the emperor Napoleon the third, glazed windows can be distinguished, divided by upright mullions and transoms of wood, such as were constructed in English houses in the seventeenth century. The sleeping-rooms, cubicula, were small closets rather than rooms, closed in general by curtains or hangings, and disposed about the sides of the rooms between the courts, or round the outer courts themselves.

Besides the living and sleeping chambers, there were store-rooms for various kinds of food. Wearing apparel was kept in vestiaria, wardrobe rooms, fitted especially to store them in. It is doubtful whether the dresses were in chests: more probably in presses, or hanging on pegs.

The ornamental woodwork in some of these rooms was rich in the extreme. The outer vestibule was protected by an overhanging balcony or by the projecting rafters of the roof of the first portion of the house, according as rooms were built over that portion or not. It was in some instances enclosed by carved or trellised woodwork. The doors were generally in two halves and could be closed with locks, which in the age of the empire were thoroughly understood, with latchets secured by a pin or with a wooden bar. The term obserare was used when the security of a bar was added. The hinge was a pin or peg at the top and bottom which turned in a socket. Metal hinges strapped over the wood frame were not unknown: and bronze hinges are in the collection of the British museum. The decoration of the door, which was of wood, consisted principally of bronze mounts. The doorposts were ornamented with carving, sometimes inlaid with tortoiseshell and other rich materials. The woodwork was painted. Bedrooms were closed with doors; oftener by curtains. The windows were generally closed with shutters, hinged and in pairs. They were some six feet six inches above the level of the street, not beyond reach of the knocks and signals of friends outside. Wooden benches were usually provided in the vestibule.

Besides the inlaid door frames, the ceilings of all the Roman rooms were very richly decorated. In more simple constructions the wood joists of the floor above, or the structure of the roof when no room surmounted it, were shown and painted; but in richer houses the timbers were covered with boards, and formed into coffers and panels, painted, gilt, and inlaid with ivory. This splendid system of decoration dates from the destruction of Carthage. Curved bearers from the upper part of the walls were added to form one kind of ceiling (camara), for which Vitruvius gives directions; and glass mosaics, like those used in the pavements, were inlaid on a plaster bed in the coffers. The cornices were of carved wood, or of plaster carved or modelled; the wood was always covered with a preparation of gesso, and gilt and painted like the walls.

An examination of the remains of Roman glass found at Pompeii and elsewhere, and of which excellent examples may be studied in the Kensington museum, seems to point to the use not only of mosaics made of dies, but of mouldings, borders, and panels moulded in coloured glass of magnificent hues, and with the finest stamped ornaments. These were occasionally gilt, or were made in relief, or with a coat of opaque white glass over the translucent material, which could be cut and modelled in the manner of cameos, and helped further to decorate the ceiling, always one of the most splendid features of the room.

The walls, when not painted, were sometimes hung with mirrors of glass blackened, or of silver, or of slabs of obsidian. They were of various sizes, sometimes large enough to reflect persons at full length. In the case of portable pictures, frames were added round them. Borders were certainly painted round frescoes. It is not to be supposed that paintings which could be exposed for sale, moved about, and hung up, could be finished round otherwise than by ornamental mouldings, or framework sufficient to protect and properly set them off.

Among the ornamental pieces of furniture were tripods, three-legged frames, forming the supports of tables, of altars, of braziers, sometimes of pieces of sculpture. These were generally of bronze, and original pieces obtained in various parts of Italy can be seen in the bronze room of the British museum. Some of these much exceed the height of high modern tables. They are light, and ornamented on the upper ends with animal or other heads; some with the beginning of a hind leg about halfway down. They were, however, frequently movable, and, like the piece in the cut on the preceding page from an example in the British museum, were made to contract by folding; the stays which connect the legs internally slipping up and down them by means of loops. Such pieces might serve as table legs, or would hold altar pans or common fire pans or support pots of flowers.

Besides tripods the reception rooms were ornamented with candelabra on tall stands of most graceful form and proportions. It will suffice to point to more than a dozen of examples in the British museum; and the woodcuts are from examples in other collections. The stems are a fluted staff or a light tree stem, commonly supported on three animal legs spread at the base, and branching out on the tops into one, two, or more boughs or hooks, with elegant modelled decorations or ending in flat stands. One has a slight rim round the dish or stand, on which a candelabrum or wax candlestick could be placed. In other cases the lamps were hung by their suspensory chains to the branches described. Other candelabra stands were of marble, six, eight, ten, or more feet in height, hybrid compositions of column caps, acanthus leaves and stems, on altar bases, &c., in great variety of design, of which engravings may be studied in the work of Piranesi. Casts, n^{os.} 93, 94 (antiques), are in the South Kensington museum.

We do not know in what kind of repositories or pieces of furniture the ancient Romans kept their specimens of painting or their vases, some of which formed their most valued treasures. It is generally supposed that they were set on shelves fastened to the wall. On such shelves small images, boxes of alabaster or glass, and ornamental vases of all kinds were kept. Craters, sculptured vases on a large scale and made of bronze or marble, were also mounted on pedestals and ranged as ornaments with the statues. Bronzes and statues, pieces of sculpture that had fixed places, stood either along the walls of the reception rooms or under the eaves of the compluvium, whence light was obtained to set them off to advantage, and where turf, flowers, and fountains were in front of them. A vase or crater, nearly eight feet high, is in the hall of the British museum, brought from the villa of Hadrian at Palestrina; and in the entrance-hall of Nero's house there was a colossus 120 feet high, and long arcades and a tank or basin of water. But objects on this scale scarcely belong to the descriptions of what might be found ordinarily in houses of the great patricians. Sometimes a couch and a table of marble were placed close to the fountains in these delightful portions of the house.

Tables were of many varieties in Rome, and enormous expenses were incurred in the purchase of choice pieces of such furniture. They were made of marble, gold, silver, bronze; were engraved, damascened, plated, and otherwise enriched with the precious metals; were of ivory, and of wood, and wood decorated with ivory; and in many other methods. Engraved (p. 26) is a very beautiful table found at Pompeii, and now at Naples. Tripods, terminal and other figures, made of bronze or marble; winged sphinxes, or leopards' and lions' legs, columns and other architectonic forms, were the supports on which these tables were fastened. Some had one central support only, in a few instances finished with animal heads of ivory. Abaci were small tables with raised rims to hold valuables.

Many tables were of cedar and on ivory feet. Horace speaks of maple, so also does Pliny, as a favourite wood for tables: birds'-eye maple especially was much prized. The planks and disks that could be cut from the roots and the boles of trees that had been either pollarded or otherwise dwarfed in growth in order to obtain wavy grain, knotted convolutions, &c., were in request. Veneers of well-mottled wood or of precious wood, small in scantling, were glued on pine, cedar, &c., as a base. These pollard heads, root pieces, &c., were bought at high prices, specially those of the citrus or cedrus Atlantica.

The point held to be desirable (says Pliny) in the grain of tables was to have "veins arranged in waving lines or else forming spirals like so many little whirlpools. In the former arrangement the lines run in an oblong direction, for which reason they are called tigrinÆ, tiger tables. In the latter case they are called pantherinÆ, or panther tables. There are some with wavy, undulating marks, and which are more particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes of a peacock."

Next in esteem to these was the veined wood covered or dotted, as it were, with dense masses of grain, for which reason such tables received the name of apiatÆ, parsley wood. But the colour of the wood is the quality that was held in the highest esteem of all; that of wine mixed with honey was the most prized, the veins being peculiarly refulgent. The defect in that kind of table was lignum (dull log colour), a name given to the wood when common-looking, indistinct, with stains or flaws. The barbarous tribes, according to Pliny, buried the citrus wood in the ground while green, giving it first a coating of wax. When it came into the workman's hands it was put for a certain number of days beneath a heap of corn. By this process the wood lost weight. Sea-water was supposed to harden it, and to act as a preservative. This wood was carefully polished by hand-rubbing. As much as £9,000 (a million of sesterces) was paid for one table by Cicero. Of two that had belonged to king Juba, sold by auction, one fetched over £10,000. These were made of citrus (Thuya articulata or cedrus Atlantica). We hear of two made for king PtolemÆus of Mauritania, the property of Nomius, a freed man of Tiberius, formed out of two slices or sections of the cedrus Atlantica four feet and a half in diameter, the largest known to Pliny; and of the destruction of a table, the property of the family of the Cethegi, valued at 1,400,000 sesterces.

The Roman patricians and their ladies sat on chairs and reclined on couches when not at meals. In the atrium under the broad roofed corridors, and in the halls not used for eating, were couches, such as the couch of which we give a woodcut, of bronze or of precious woods; the bronze damascened with ornaments of the precious metals, or of metal amalgam; the wood veneered or inlaid with marquetry or tarsia work of ivory, ebony, box, palm, birds'-eye maple, beech, and other woods.

The chairs were of different kinds and were used for various occasions. The atrium contained double seats, single seats, and benches to hold more than one sitter; chairs that either folded or were made in the form of folding chairs, such as could be carried about and placed in the chariot, curules. The woodcut shows the general fashion of a state or ceremonial chair; from the marble example in the Louvre.

This woodcut is of the sella, a seat or couch, made of wood, with turned legs; it is intended, probably, for one person only, and has no need of a footstool. It has been covered with a cushion.

Scamnum was a bench or long seat of wood, used in poorer houses instead of the luxurious triclinium of the men or arm-chairs of the women, for sitting at meals or other occasions. Seats were placed along the walls in the exedrÆ or saloons; marble benches in most cases, sometimes wooden seats; particularly also in the alcoves that were constructed in the porticoes of baths and public buildings, where lectures of philosophers were listened to.

The Romans had hearths in certain rooms. Numerous passages in ancient writers, to which it is needless to refer, concur in showing that the hearth was a spot sacred to the lares of the family, the altar of family life. It was occasionally made of bricks or stone, and immovable, on which logs could be heaped. It seems doubtful whether chimneys were used in the Roman houses; probably occasionally. Writers on Roman antiquities speak of such rare constructions used, perhaps, as ventilators to the kitchen. The usual method of warming was by means of a brazier, of which an example found at CÆre, in Etruria, is preserved in the British museum. It is a round dish on three animal legs, with swing handles for removing it. Another, square in form, is reproduced in a casting in the South Kensington museum collection, n^o. 70, standing on animal legs and damascened round the sides with gold ornaments. The Romans had also kitchen braziers with contrivances for heating pans, water, wine, &c., by charcoal. N^o. 71 at South Kensington is a casting of such a piece, having a round metal receptacle, like a small cask, on its end, and a raised horse-shoe frame, on which a pan could be placed, with fire space in the middle. These braziers were filled with charcoal heated thoroughly by the help of the bellows, to get rid of the noxious gases.

It has been said that the dresses of the Romans were preserved, as in mediÆval castles, in a separate room or wardrobe, and this room must have been fitted with apparatus for hanging shelves and lockers. They had besides for keeping valuables, and usually placed in the sleeping-room of the master or mistress of the house, cupboards and chests of beech ornamented with metal, some large enough to contain a man. In these receptacles they conveyed their property to and from country houses, and on visits. Enormous numbers of slaves moved to and fro with the family, and the chests were carried on men's shoulders, or in waggons of various shape and make.

The most important action of the luxurious Roman day was the dinner. Couches were arranged for the guests, and the room was further provided with stools or low benches, side tables, and the movable table used for each course. These tables were put down and removed from the supports on which they stood. The side tables were of marble or of wood, covered with silver plates, inlaid, veneered, and ornamented in various ways; some were used for serving the dishes, others for the display of plate.

Sculptured objects of plate, partly ornamental, were put on the table and removed with the courses. Petronius describes an ass of Corinthian bronze with silver paniers as the centre piece of one course; sauces dropped from the paniers on luscious morsels placed beneath. A hen of wood with eggs within and a figure of Vertumnus are also named by the same author as centre pieces. These were replaced on the sideboard or removed with the course in trays.

Closely connected with the dining-room was, it need scarcely be said, the kitchen; and we give woodcuts of kitchen utensils, from the originals preserved at Naples.

Mention should be made of tapestries and carpets before leaving the subject of Roman house furniture.

Carpets, tapete, blankets, or other woollen coverlids for sofas or beds, were made at Corinth, Miletus, and a number of seats of fine wool manufacture. It is too large a question to go into in detail, and woven fabrics belong to a different class of objects fully described in another hand-book, upon textiles. These tapestries played a great part in the actual divisions of the Roman rooms. Bedrooms, it has been said, were often closed with curtains only, and the corridors and smaller rooms were closed at the ends and made comfortable by the same means. At the dinner detailed by Petronius the hangings on the triclinia are changed between pauses in the meal. The feelings consonant with the day or occasion were symbolized or carried out in these external decorations. Mention is made by Seneca of ceilings made so as to be moved, and portions turned by machinery; perhaps the changed panels showed different colours and decorations according to the day, and to the hangings which were used. The same author alludes to wood ceilings that could be raised higher or lower by machinery, "pegmata per se surgentia et tabulata tacite in sublime crescentia," making no noise in the operation. These contrivances were reserved for dining-rooms, where the diversions were of the freest description and the guests prepared for any exciting or sensational interludes.

The Romans required some of their furniture for out-door use. Besides the curule chairs and lofty seats which were carried into theatres or baths, and other places of public resort, they used litters. The sofas or couches were sometimes carried on the necks of six or more slaves, and served as litters. But special contrivances like the Indian palanquins were made with or hung under poles, with curtains or shutters. Stations of such conveyances for public use were established in Rome.

The subjects of the carving and ornamentation of Roman furniture were the classic legends mainly derived from the Greek mythology. Roman house walls were, however, in later years profusely decorated with conventional representations of architecture, and panels richly coloured on which were painted figures of dancers, cupids, gods and heroes; sometimes commonplace landscapes and domestic scenes. Their solid furniture was decorated with masks, heads of heroes, legs and feet of animals, and foliage, generally the leaves of the acanthus, of an architectonic kind.

The great achievement of the Romans in woodwork of a constructive kind was the machinery contrived for public shows, such as the cages shot up out of the sand of the arena of amphitheatres, of which the sides fell down, leaving at liberty the beasts wanted for fights or for the execution of criminals. Of such constructions probably nothing in the middle ages, when timber abounded and the use of it was thoroughly understood, exceeds the following; a description by Pliny of a device of C. Curio, in Africa, when celebrating the funeral games in honour of his father:—

"He caused to be erected close together two theatres of very large dimensions and built of wood, each of them nicely poised, and turning on a pivot. Before mid-day a spectacle of games was exhibited in each, the theatres being turned back to back, in order that the noise of neither of them might interfere with what was going on in the other. Then, in the latter part of the day, all on a sudden, the two theatres were swung round and, the corners uniting, brought face to face; the outer frames too were removed (i.e. the backs of each hemicycle) and thus an amphitheatre was formed, in which combats of gladiators were presented to the view; men whose safety was almost less compromised than that of the Roman people in allowing itself to be thus whirled round from side to side."

The following woods were in use amongst the Romans:—

For carpentry and joiner's work, cedar was the wood most in demand. Pine of different kinds was used for doors, panels, carriage building, and all work requiring to be joined up with glue, of which that wood is particularly retentive. Elm was employed for the framework of doors, lintels and sills, in which sockets were formed for the pins or hinges on which the doors turned. The hinge jambs were occasionally made of olive. Ash was employed for many purposes; that grown in Gaul was used in the construction of carriages on account of its extreme suppleness and pliancy. Axles and portions which were much morticed together were made of Ilex (Holm oak). Beech also was in frequent use. Acer (Maple) was much prized, as has been already stated, for tables, on account of the beauty of the wood and of the finish which it admits. Osiers were in use for chairs as in our own times. Veneering was universal in wood furniture of a costly kind. The slices of wood were laid down with glue as in modern work, and they used tarsia or picture work of all kinds. Figwood, willow, plane, elm, ash, mulberry, cherry, cork wood, were amongst the materials for the bed or substance on which to lay such work. Wild and cultivated olive, box, ebony (Corsican especially), ilex, beech, were adapted for veneering boxes, desks, and small work. Besides these, the Romans used the Syrian terebinth, maple, palm (cut across), holly, root of elder, poplar; horn, ivory plain and stained; tortoiseshell; and wood grained in imitation of various woods for veneering couches and other large pieces of furniture, as well as door frames, &c., so that this imitation of grains is not entirely a modern invention. Woods were soaked in water or buried under heaps of grain to season them; or steeped in oil of cedar to keep off the worms. The cedars of Crete, Africa, and Syria were the best of that class of timber. The best fir timber was obtained from the Jura range, from Corsica, Bithynia, Pontus, and Macedonia.

The Romans had admirable glue, and used planes, chisels, &c. Their saws, set in frames, had the teeth turned in opposite directions to open the seam in working.

There are some curious historical records of the endurance of particular wood structures. The cedar roof of the temple of Diana of Ephesus was intact at the end of four centuries in Pliny's time. Her statue was black, supposed to be of ebony, but according to other authorities of vine, and had outlasted various rebuildings of the temple. The roof beams of the temple of Apollo at Utica were of cedar and had been laid 348 years before the foundation of Rome; nearly 1,200 years old in the time of Pliny, and still sound.

The emperor Philip celebrated the secular games (recurring every 100 years), with great pomp, for the fifth time in the year 248. We may consider this event, for our present purpose, as a convenient finish of the classic period of antique art, and of the reflections of it in the woodwork and furniture and the surroundings of private life.

Ten centuries had elapsed since Romulus had fortified the hills on the banks of the Tiber. "During the first four ages" (says Gibbon) "the Romans, in the laborious school of poverty, had acquired the virtues of war and government; by the vigorous exertion of these virtues, and by the assistance of fortune, they had obtained in the course of the three succeeding centuries an absolute empire over many countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The last three centuries had been consumed in apparent prosperity and internal decline."