is arae sunt, his foci, his di penates: his
sacra, religiones, caerimoniae continentur." And this was in the heart
of the city; in the country-house there was doubtless more leisure and
opportunity for such feeling. In the second century B.C. old Cato had
described the paterfamilias, on his arrival at his farm from the
city, saluting the Lar familiaris before he goes about his round of
inspection; and even Horace hardly shows a trace of the agnostic when
he pictures the slaves of the farm, and the master with them, sitting
at their meal in front of the image of the Lar[378]. We may perhaps
guess that with the renewal of the love of country life, and with
that revival of the cultivation of the vine and olive, and indeed of
husbandry in general, which is recognisable as a feature of the last
years of the Republic, and which is known to us from Varro's work
on farming, and from Virgil's _Georgics_, the old religion of the
household gained a new life.

It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the shape
and divisions of a Roman house of the city; full and excellent
descriptions may be found in Middleton's article "Domus" in the
_Dictionary of Antiquities_, and in Lanciani's _Ruins and Excavations
of Ancient Rome_; and to these should be added Mau's work on Pompeii,
where the houses were of a Roman rather than a Greek type. What we are
concerned with is the house as a home or a centre of life, and it is
only in this aspect of it that we shall discuss it here.

The oldest Italian dwelling was a mere wigwam with a hearth in the
middle of the floor, and a hole at the top to let the smoke out. But
the house of historical times was rectangular, with one central room
or hall, in which was concentrated the whole indoor life of the
family, the whole meaning and purpose of the dwelling. Here the human
and divine inhabitants originally lived together. Here was the hearth,
"the natural altar of the dwelling-room of man," as Aust beautifully
expresses it;[379] this was the seat of Vesta, and behind it was the
_penus_ or store-closet, the seat of the Penates; thus Vesta and the
Penates are in the most genuine sense the protecting and nourishing
deities of the household. Here, too, was the Lar of the familia with
his little altar, behind the entrance, and here was the _lectus
genialis_,[380] and the Genius of the paterfamilias. As you looked
into the atrium, after passing the _vestibulum_ or space between
street and doorw