Meanwhile the more representative houses of the strictly Roman part of the Roman world—­that is to say, the dwellings of Romans or of imitators of Romans, wherever they might be settled, as distinct from the Greek and Oriental houses or from the various kinds of primitive huts to be found among the Western provincials—­were of three chief kinds.  These were the town house, the country seat, and the country homestead.  There was, of course, nothing to prevent a wealthy Roman from building his town house exactly like a country seat, or vice versa, if he had so chosen, but from considerations of purpose, apart from those of local space and view, it would have been altogether irrational to take either course.  The conditions of his life in town and country differed even more widely than they do with us.  The average Roman, moreover, was a lover of variety in respect of his habitation.  We find in a somewhat later epigrammatist that one grandee keeps up four town houses in Rome itself, and moves capriciously from one to the other, so that you never know where you will find him.  At different seasons or in different moods he might prefer this or that situation or aspect.  As for country seats of various degrees of magnificence, a man might—­like many modern nobles or royalties—­possess three, four, a dozen, or twenty.  He might, for example, own one or more on the Italian Lakes, one in Tuscany, one on the Sabine or Alban Hills, one on the coast within a half-day’s run of Rome, one on the Bay of Naples, one down in the heel of Italy, and so on.  Pliny the Younger, who was born in the reign of Nero, was not a particularly rich man, yet he owned several country seats on Lake Como alone, besides others nearer to Rome on north and south, at the seaside, or on the hills.

We may begin with a town house, and our simplest procedure is to take a plan exhibiting those parts which were most usual for an establishment of even moderate pretensions.  Let it be understood that it is but the symmetrical outline of a general scheme which was in practice submitted to indefinite enlargement or modification.  In the house of Livia, the mother of Augustus, on the Palatine Hill at Rome, and in various houses at Pompeii—­such as those of the Vettii, of “Sallust,” of the “Faun,” or of “The Tragic Poet”—­there will be found much diversity in the number and arrangement of the rooms, halls, and courts.  Nevertheless the main principle of division, the general conception of the portions requisite for their several purposes, was practically the same.  Some of the differences and enlargements may be illustrated after we have considered our first simple outline.  Before we undertake this, however, it may be well to warn any one who may have visited or be about to visit Pompeii, that he must exclude from his thoughts all those small premises of a room or two which face so many of the streets.  These were mostly shops, with which we are not now dealing.  He must also exclude all