662 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
The most interesting architectural development in the last century 
of the Republic was the birth of a domestic architecture properly so 
called, a domestic architecture nourished by the immense private for- 
tunes which became common. The rapidity with which it grew up 
may be gathered from the difference between the state of affairs in 
125 B. C. and sixty or seventy years later. In the former year Sulla, 
afterwards Dictator, was paying 3,000 sesterces—say £25—a year in 
rent,* which is said to mean that he was living in two rooms; and 
Lepidus, the augur, was called to order by the censor, for luxury, 
because he paid twice as much.’ At the later time Cicero, besides his 
town house, for which he had paid a sum equivalent to about £30,000,¢ 
owned no fewer than seven country ones—that is, for his own use— 
and though we do not know the exact numbers of the houses kept up 
by other rich men, it is quite clear Cicero was not singular in that 
respect. These houses were of immense size. Sallust speaks of them 
as like cities,? and they were adorned with marble columns, paintings, 
statues, and works of art of all kinds. They covered large areas, the 
greater part being but one story high; moreover, even in Rome they 
were often surrounded by extensive gardens. One such house 
changed hands for fifteen millions of sesterces°—say £132,000— 
which probably did not include the movable works of art. It is re- 
corded that as early as 92 B. C. Crassus erected in his atrium columns 
of the marble of Mount Hymettus 12 feet high, for which piece of 
luxury Brutus nicknamed him “ the Palatine Venus.”/ By 78 B. C. 
Lepidus was using Numidian marbles not merely for columns, but for 
thresholds.7_ Marble slabs for lining walls seem to have been intro- 
duced rather later, in Ceesar’s time. Before that, all walls, internally 
as well as externally, were covered with hard plaster and painted. 
No remains are known of the large country houses or villas of the 
time; and the impossibility of finding out much about them from 
the allusions in ancient literature may be judged by the various inter- 
pretations that have been put upon the fuller descriptions of his own 
villas by Pliny 1 in the next century. 
Passages in the sixth book of Vitruvius indicate, however, that 
country ere of the better class in his day did not differ materially 
as regards their domestic arrangements from town houses except that 
the peristyle was the first court entered, with the atrium beyond it, 
and that they had baths and various farm buildings attached to them. 
After several chapters devoted to describing private dwellings gen- 
erally, the several apartments, and the modifications of size and ar- 
rangement required for different classes of owners, he says: “ But the 
@Plut. Sall., ¢«. 1, éPlin.,. FL Ns XOXVi, dad. 
6 Vell. Pat., II, 10. T Tbid:, XXX Vi, fe 
oCier ad Att, I! 13:6. Olbid.. XXXVI: 48: 
Cat. 12. 
