DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1083#0025
160 POMPEIANA.
were not sufficiently splendid: art was
employed to give them tints they pos-
sessed not naturally. The Numidian and
Synnadic were used as thresholds, and a
method was discovered of veining slabs
with gold; until at length leaves of this
metal were introduced in profusion, cover-
ing the beams, walls, and even roofs of
the houses'.
The floors, also, were covered with
cement, in which, while yet unset, small
pieces of marble, or coloured stones, were
imbedded at intervals, forming various
patterns of geometrical figures, symmetri-
cally disposed2: but this was the practice
1 The taste of the Romans in preferring the coloured
marbles has been censured, and the works of the Greeks
referred to as purer models for imitation. The fact, however,
is, that no nation ever exhibited a greater passion for gaudy
colours, with which, in the absence of the rarer marbles,
they covered the surface of the beautiful pentelic. Blue mar-
ble is mixed with white in one of their best examples, the
temple of Minerva Polias, at Athens j while even their sta-
tues were seldom left colourless.
2 Pounded tile was put upon the stucco in the more
ordinary rooms.
were not sufficiently splendid: art was
employed to give them tints they pos-
sessed not naturally. The Numidian and
Synnadic were used as thresholds, and a
method was discovered of veining slabs
with gold; until at length leaves of this
metal were introduced in profusion, cover-
ing the beams, walls, and even roofs of
the houses'.
The floors, also, were covered with
cement, in which, while yet unset, small
pieces of marble, or coloured stones, were
imbedded at intervals, forming various
patterns of geometrical figures, symmetri-
cally disposed2: but this was the practice
1 The taste of the Romans in preferring the coloured
marbles has been censured, and the works of the Greeks
referred to as purer models for imitation. The fact, however,
is, that no nation ever exhibited a greater passion for gaudy
colours, with which, in the absence of the rarer marbles,
they covered the surface of the beautiful pentelic. Blue mar-
ble is mixed with white in one of their best examples, the
temple of Minerva Polias, at Athens j while even their sta-
tues were seldom left colourless.
2 Pounded tile was put upon the stucco in the more
ordinary rooms.