The Utility and Beauty of Mosaic Floors 
Romans, are but few, although it is clearly proven 
to us by history and modern research that those 
works were wonderful indeed. Time has almost 
effaced the brick conduits, and the lead piping which 
we know they used has entirely disappeared. The 
floors, however, of their buildings, which remain to 
this d a y i n a 
marvelous state 
of preservation, 
show that in 
these they built 
against time 
itself. So i m- 
portant did 
these people 
con sider the 
permanent and 
indestructi ble 
floor thatit was 
a matterof great 
pride with them 
to have them 
embellished 
and beautified 
more than any 
other portion of 
the house. 
Pliny tells us 
in his time, that 
the man was 
considered a 
poor one indeed 
who could not 
afford to have 
at least one mo¬ 
saic floor. This 
was usually in 
the entrance 
hall of his coun¬ 
try home. The 
floors in these 
houses were 
of two kinds, 
either compos¬ 
ed of geomet¬ 
ric pieces of 
marble or small 
cut fragments. 
The Romans 
spoke of one as 
a floor in sectile 
and of the latter as one in tesserce as we now speak 
of a floor in tile, or in mosaic. Even when the 
Romans left Italy and went to places where wood 
was as plenty as with us in earlier days, we find as 
in their villas in Britain, Gaul and Germany, they 
used these wonderful mosaic floors in preference to 
those of wood. 
This was the more remarkable as they were 
people of much experience in the tempering of tools 
and the working of soft material was certainly easier 
for them than the shaping of a hard one, and would 
have been not only si mpler but cheapef. Though they 
knew nothing of microbes or the germs of infec¬ 
tion and disease, 
we cannot but 
admit that they 
knew much of 
cleanliness and 
valued it appar¬ 
ently beyond 
everything else, 
as their public 
and private 
baths and their 
extensive facili¬ 
ties for con¬ 
ducting water 
testify. We can 
clearly attribute 
to this cause 
their use of im¬ 
pervious floors 
which would be 
subject to no 
suspicion of de¬ 
cay, moreover, a 
material which 
was a poor con¬ 
ductor of heat 
and impervious 
to moisture un¬ 
doubtedly ap¬ 
pealed to their 
practical sense. 
These floors 
were conducive 
also to the 
safety of thei r 
household inas¬ 
much as they 
are not inflam¬ 
mable. While 
they lived much 
in the open air, 
they built their 
houses so that 
they might en¬ 
joy in privacy 
this out-door existence, for the open court which 
was found in the center of each villa, was sur¬ 
rounded by the rooms of the houses, though open 
to the sky above. 
T he floors were planned to stand exposure from 
the weather as the partly overhanging roof was 
insufficient to shield them from decay. So again 
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ROMAN MOSAIC FLOOR 
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