[Footnote 4:  2200 feet.]

Though Cicero often speaks of this house of his, he nowhere describes its general arrangements.  We shall probably be not far wrong if we borrow our idea of this from the letter in which the younger Pliny tells a friend about one of his own country seats.

“The courtyard in front is plain without being mean.  From this you pass into a small but cheerful space inclosed by colonnades in the shape of the letter D. Between these there is a passage into an inner covered court, and out of this again into a handsome hall, which has on every side folding doors or windows equally large.  On the left hand of this hall lies a large drawing-room, and beyond that a second of a smaller size, which has one window to the rising and another to the setting sun.  Adjoining this is another room of a semicircular shape, the windows of which are so arranged as to get the sun all through the day:  in the walls are bookcases containing a collection of authors who cannot be read too often.  Out of this is a bedroom which can be warmed with hot air.  The rest of this side of the house is appropriated to the use of the slaves and freedmen; yet most of the rooms are good enough to put my guests into.  In the opposite wing is a most elegant bedroom, another which can be used both as bedroom and sitting-room, and a third which has an ante-room of its own, and is so high as to be cool in summer, and with walls so thick that it is warm in winter.  Then comes the bath with its cooling room, its hot room, and its dressing chamber.  And not far from this again the tennis court, which gets the warmth of the afternoon sun, and a tower which commands an extensive view of the country round.  Then there is a granary and a store-room.”

This was probably a larger villa than Cicero’s, though it was itself smaller than another which Pliny describes.  We must make an allowance for the increase in wealth and luxury which a century and a half had brought.  Still we may get some idea from it of Cicero’s country-house, one point of resemblance certainly being that there was but one floor.

What Cicero says about his “Tusculanum” chiefly refers to its furnishing and decoration, and is to be found for the most part in his letters to Atticus.  Atticus lived for many years in Athens and had therefore opportunities of buying works of art and books which did not fall in the way of the busy lawyer and statesman of Rome.  But the room which in Cicero’s eyes was specially important was one which we may call the lecture-room, and he is delighted when his friend was able to procure some appropriate ornaments for it.  “Your Hermathena” he writes (the Hermathena was a composite statue, or rather a double bust upon a pedestal, with the heads of Hermes and Athene, the Roman Mercury and Minerva) “pleases me greatly.  It stands so prettily that the whole lecture-room looks like a votive chapel of the deity.  I am greatly obliged