“It is well known,” he says, “that an artist restored a large portico at Rome which was threatening to fall, first by strengthening its foundations at all points, so that it could not be displaced.  He then lined the walls with sheep’s fleeces and thick mattresses, and, after having attached ropes to the entire edifice, he succeeded, by dint of manual force and the use of capstans, in giving it its former position.  But Tiberius, through jealousy, would not allow the name of this artist to appear in the newspapers.”

Now that you have been told a little concerning the ways of the Roman people, you may quit the Thermae, but not without easting a glance at the heating apparatus visible in a small adjacent court.  This you approach by a long corridor, from the apodytera.  There you find the hypocaust, a spacious round fireplace which transmitted warm air through lower conduits to the stove, and heated the two boilers built into the masonry and supplied from a reservoir.  From this reservoir the water fell cold into the first boiler, which sent it lukewarm into the second, and the latter, being closer to the fire, gave it forth at a boiling temperature.  A conduit carried the hot water of the second boiler to the square basin of the calidarium and another conveyed the tepid water of the first boiler to the large receptacle of the labrum.  In the fire-place was found a quantity of rosin which the Pompeians used in kindling their fires.  Such were the Thermae of a small Roman city.

VI.

THE DWELLINGS.

     PARATUS AND PANSA.—­THE ATRIUM AND THE PERISTYLE.—­THE DWELLING
     REFURBISHED AND REPEOPLED.—­THE SLAVES, THE KITCHEN, AND THE
     TABLE.—­THE MORNING OCCUPATIONS OF A POMPEIAN.—­THE TOILET OF A
     POMPEIAN LADY.—­A CITIZEN SUPPER:  THE COURSES, THE GUESTS.—­THE
     HOMES OF THE POOR, AND THE PALACES OF ROME.

In order, now, to study the home of antique times, we have but to cross the street of the baths obliquely.  We thus reach the dwelling of the aedile Pansa.  He, at least, is the proprietor designated by general opinion, which, according to my ideas, is wrong in this particular.  An inscription painted on the door-post has given rise to this error.  The inscription runs thus:  Pansam aedilem Paratus rogat.  This the early antiquarians translated:  Paratus invokes Pansa the aedile.  The early antiquaries erred.  They should have rendered it:  Paratus demands Pansa for aedile.  It was not an invocation but an electoral nomination.  We have already deciphered many like inscriptions.  Universal suffrage put itself forward among the ancients as it does with us.

Hence, the dwelling that I am about to enter was not that of Pansa, whose name is found thus suggested for the aedileship in many other places, but rather that of Paratus, who, in order to designate the candidate of his choice, wrote the name on his door-post.