Brading, by a female figure, closely wrapped, holding a lifeless bough
and a dead bird. Satyrs and fauns, flowers, Graces and wood-nymphs,
horns of plenty, gladiators fighting, one with a trident, the other with
a net--all these and countless other fanciful representations look at us
from these old Roman pavements. The Roman villa at Brading is an
excellent type of such a dwelling, with its magnificent suites of rooms,
colonnades, halls, and splendid mosaic pavements. As at Silchester, we
see there fine examples of hypocausts. The floor of the room, called a
_suspensura_, is supported by fifty-four small pillars made of tiles.
Another good example of a similar floor exists at Cirencester, and many
more at Silchester.

[Illustration: TESSELATED PAVEMENT]

Here is a description of a Roman gentleman's house, as drawn by the
writer of _The History of Oxfordshire_:--

"His villa lay sheltered from wild winds partly by the rising brow of
the hill, and partly by belts of trees; it was turned towards the south,
and caught the full sun. In the spring the breath of his violet beds
would be as soft and sweet as in Oxfordshire woods to-day; in the summer
his quadrangle would be gay with calthae, and his colonnade festooned
with roses and helichryse. If we are to believe in the _triclinium
aestivum_ of Hakewill, it says much for the warmth of those far-away
summers that he was driven to build a summer dining-room with a north
aspect, and without heating flues. And when the long nights fell, and
winter cold set in, the slaves heaped higher the charcoal fires in the
_praefurnium_; the master sat in rooms far better warmed than Oxford
country houses now, or sunned himself at midday in the sheltered
quadrangle, taking his exercise in the warm side of the colonnade among