C. Augustus,
part of whose policy it was to make the city population comfortable
and contented, carried this tendency still further, and under the
Empire the town house played quite a subordinate part in Roman
social life. The best way to realise this out-of-door life, lazy and
sociable, of the Augustan age, is to read the first book of Ovid's
_Ars Amatoria_,--a fascinating picture of a beautiful city and its
pleasure-loving inhabitants. But with the Augustan age we are not here
concerned.
Yet the Roman house, like the Italian house in general, was in origin
and essence really a home. The family was the basis of society, and by
the family we must understand not only the head of the house with
his wife, children, and slaves, but also the divine beings who dwelt
there. As the State comprised both human and divine inhabitants, so
also did the house, which was indeed the germ and type of the State.
Thus the house was in those early times not less but even more than a
house is for us, for in it was concentrated all that was dear to
the family, all that was essential to its life, both natural and
supernatural.
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