664 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
other Pompeiian dwellings. One can hardly accept it as a specimen 
of the spacious and sumptuous habitations we hear of even under 
the late Republic. 
In his chapter especially devoted to country houses® Vitruvius is 
evidently describing only what we should call farmhouses. He 
speaks of the several aspects and the arrangement of farm buildings, 
stables, kitchens, wine presses and baths—which he says should be 
placed so that they can be used also by the farm hands. And then 
he adds: “ If something of luxury is to be introduced into country 
houses they are to be built according to the proportions that are laid 
down above for those in towns, on the fixed condition they are to be 
so arranged as to be without impediment to country uses.”® In 
Diomed’s villa this part of the problem seems to have been solved 
by putting the farm buildings at the side of the house, separated from 
it by a narrow court, probably as a safeguard against fire or noise; 
and one may take it that in a gentleman’s villa some such arrange- 
ment is so obvious that it would be the usual one. Of the better class 
of Roman house at the end of the Republic, that is, the separate house 
of the wealthy called a domus, as distinguished from the insula or 
block of flats inhabited by poorer folk, we can obtain a very clear 
idea from the descriptions of Vitruvius, which necessarily refer to 
this time, because they are illustrated by considerable remains of such 
houses at Pompeii. These agree very closely with the descriptions, 
and many date no doubt, at any rate as regards plan and the lower 
parts of the walls, from soon after 64 B. C., when the town was 
Romanized and became a fashionable resort of the wealthy. One of 
Cicero’s seven villas was at or near Pompeii; he calls it his Pompeian 
villa. It would be wearisome to repeat the oft told names and uses 
of the various apartments of the Roman or Pompeian house, though 
a comparison of description with example is exceedingly interesting, 
both in itself and in the light it throws on the life of the period. But 
it may be worth while to repeat once more that the Pompeian houses 
are essentially Roman, and not Greek in their arrangements. They 
do not agree with the contemporary description’of a Greek house by 
Vitruvius, and they do agree both with his description of a Roman 
house and with what has been discovered of the plans of houses in 
Rome; it is not very much, unfortunately, but adequate for the pur- 
pose of comparison. The decorations of the Pompeian houses cer- 
tainly appear to owe something to Greek influence, but similar 
decoration has been found in Rome. The Greek names which Vit- 
ruvius gives to many of the principal apartments he applies to Roman 
houses generally and not to those in Pompeii alone. If the architec- 
ture of Pompeii owes anything to Greek influence it is the influence 
Wi Wate Wills (ey Oats.) WaAl,.0: 
