A Roman Villa
A Roman Villa Forty-three years after the birth of Christ the finest
soldiers the world had known came against the ancient Britons and
conquered their land. These soldiers were called Romans, after their
chief city Rome in Italy. They ruled Britain for nearly four hundred
years & have left many traces behind them. While in Britain, one
can still see the remains of their splendid roads, the ruins of the
forts they built and parts of the great walls they erected to defend
their towns. In the southern parts of the country homes called villas
have been found. Villas are not great castles with thick walls &
towers built as a protection against enemies, but simple dwelling -
houses unfitted for defense. That shows how peaceful the country was
when first these villas were built under Roman rule. On the heights of
Greenwich Park overlooking the Thames there is a piece of pavement about
two feet square. It was once part of the floor of one of these country
houses. It is made of small pieces of red tile, each about a square in
size, set in a bed of cement. No one can tell what part of the is
belonged to; perhaps, it was a bit of the floor of a room, or a passage
or even of a stable. What did the Roman villa look like from the
outside? We can scarcely tell. Perhaps, it was a long whitewashed
building with a corridor running its whole length. Or, perhaps, it stood
round two sides of a square or round three, and had the corridor on its
inner side. Some people think that only the lower walls of villas were
built of stone, while the upper walls were made of rough plaster held
together with a framework of wood. The roof was made of red tiles or
slabs of gray stone. The floors of the lower rooms were raised a little
on pillars, so that hot air from a furnace might circulate underneath.
And their were special pipes in the walls, so that the hot air might
rise through the walls, so that the hot air might rise through the walls
and warm them. The Romans brought this way of warming houses from their
old homes in Italy, & they found it very useful in the cold
climate of Britain. The rooms on the ground floor were paved with small
pieces of tile laid very closely together in cement. By using pieces of
different colors, pictures were made on the floors of the living rooms.
Some of these have been dug up today & can be seen in museums.
They are called mosaics. The walls of the rooms were decorated with
painted pictures. Somewhere in the villa the was a bath, for the Romans
were very careful to keep themselves clean. And certainly, too, there
would be statues, either roughly made in Britain useful or brought by
merchants from Italy, where the best sculptors were. Then the owner
bought these statues to decorate his villa. And beautiful dishes of red
pottery would be seen everywhere in the house. Some of them would be
used for decoration, & some for eating from or for holding
things. And in the grounds near the house there would be an orchard, for
the Romans loved orchards. Their were fond of growing trees of all
kinds, so their would be cherry trees & apples trees. The Romans
were the first to grow cherries in England. Let us pretend we are
visiting a Roman villa many years after the conquest. A great many trees
have been cut down since the Romans first come to Britain, so there is
more room to grow corn then there used to be in the time of the ancient
Britons. And many Romans who leave near the villa we are reading about
have made much mon...
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