Instead of surrounding their houses with large lawns and gardens, the Romans created their gardens inside their domus. The peristylium was an open courtyard within the house; the columns surrounding the garden supported a shady roofed portico whose inner walls were often embellished with elaborate wall paintings. Sometimes the lararium, a shrine for the gods of the household, was located in this portico, or it might be found in the atrium. The courtyard might contain flowers and shrubs, fountains, benches, sculptures and even fish ponds. This reconstruction of a peristyle show how attractive this part of the house could be.
The Luxury of the Rich in Rome III
Those few mansions which were once celebrated for the serious
cultivation of liberal studies, now are filled with ridiculous
amusements of torpid indolence, reechoing with the sound of singing,
and the tinkle of flutes and lyres. You find a singer instead of a
philosopher; a teacher of silly arts is summoned in place of an orator,
the libraries are shut up like tombs, organs played by waterpower are
built, and lyres so big that they look like wagons! and flutes, and
huge machines suitable for the theater. The Romans have even sunk so
far, that not long ago, when a dearth was apprehended, and the
foreigners were driven from the city, those who practiced liberal
accomplishments were expelled instantly, yet the followers of actresses
and all their ilk were suffered to stay; and three thousand dancing
girls were not even questioned, but remained unmolested along with the
members of their choruses, and a corresponding number of dancing
masters.
On account of the frequency of epidemics in Rome, rich men take absurd
precautions to avoid contagion, but even when these rules are observed
thus stringently, some persons, if they be invited to a wedding, though
the vigor of their limbs be vastly diminished, yet when gold is pressed
in their palm they will go with all activity as far as Spoletum! So
much for the nobles. As for the lower and poorer classes some spend the
whole night in the wine shops, some lie concealed in the shady arcades
of the theaters. They play at dice so eagerly as to quarrel over them,
snuffing up their nostrils, and making unseemly noises by drawing back
their breath into their noses:---or (and this is their favorite
amusement by far) from sunrise till evening, through sunshine or rain,
they stay gaping and examining the charioteers and their horses; and
their good and bad qualities. Wonderful indeed it is to see an
innumerable multitude of people, with prodigious eagerness, intent upon
the events of the chariot race!
Source.
From: William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History:
Illustrative Extracts from the Sources, 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West, pp. 224-225, 239-244,
247-258, 260-265, 305-309.
