Life in the Roman world of Nero and StPaul . agle, or the Ele-phant, and that there was good keeper might either be its proprietor, or merely aslave or other tenant put into it by the owner of aneighbouring estate and country-seat. Your horses or TRAVEL WITHIN THE EMPIRE 21 mules would be put up — with a reasonable suspicionon your part that the poor beasts would be cheatedin the matter of their fodder — and you would beshown into a room which you might or might nothave to share with someone else. In any case youwould have to share it with the fleas, if not withworse. Perhaps
Life in the Roman world of Nero and StPaul . agle, or the Ele-phant, and that there was good keeper might either be its proprietor, or merely aslave or other tenant put into it by the owner of aneighbouring estate and country-seat. Your horses or TRAVEL WITHIN THE EMPIRE 21 mules would be put up — with a reasonable suspicionon your part that the poor beasts would be cheatedin the matter of their fodder — and you would beshown into a room which you might or might nothave to share with someone else. In any case youwould have to share it with the fleas, if not withworse. Perhaps you have brought your food with you,perhaps you send out aslave to purchase it, per-haps you obtain it fromthe innkeeper. That isyour own affair. For therest you must be preparedto bear with very pro-miscuous and sometimesunsavoury company, andto possesG neither too nicea nose nor too delicate asense of propriety. Youronly consolation is thatthe charges are low, andthat if anything is stolenfrom you the landlord is legally Fig. 3. — Plan of Inn at Pompeii. Doubtless there were better and worse establish-ments of this kind. There must have been sometolerably good quarters at Rome or Alexandria, andat some of the resorts for pleasure and health, such asBaiae on the Bay of Naples, or Canopus at the Nilemouth. It is true also that for those who travellod 22 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap. on imperial ser^ice there were special lodgings keptup at the public expense at certain stations alongthe great roads. Nevertheless it may reasonably beasked why, in view of the generally accepted standardsof domestic comfort and even luxury of the time —what may be called middle-class standards — there wasno sufficienc} of even creditable hotels. The answeris that in antiquity the class of people who in moderntimes support such hotels seldom felt the need oftheir equivalent. In the first place, they commonlytrusted to the hospitality of individuals to whom theywere personal
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