of Sunium, that of Jupiter on mount Panhellenius in Aegina, 
and of Apollo on mount Cotylus in Arcadia, built by the 
most celebrated architect of Greece, and still standing in the 
depth of the same forest, and amidst the descendants of 
those oaks by which it was anciently surrounded, are a few 
among the numberless examples sufficient to attest the 
prevalence of the practice in the best ages of the art. It has 
likewise been remarked', that the villas and country-houses 
of the ancients were quite irregular in appearance, and 
adapted to local circumstances; and, therefore, had they still 
existed, would have furnished more just notions for the 
construction of our own mansions. This too, as far as we 
can learn, is erroneous. The enormous extent of the villa 
of the emperor Hadrian, as well as of those of other princes, 
must, undoubtedly, have comprised every variety in form and 
situation; bearing, in fact, more resemblance to cities than 
to individual dwellings; but there is no reason to imagine 
that the generality of their country residences were not in 
their exterior perfectly simple and regular. On the contrary, 
it is evident from the minute descriptions of Vitruvius, that 
they consisted of bare walls, without any architectural 
ornament’, every thing of this kind being lavished on the 
interior fronts which looked towards the inclosed courts'. 
The villa of Pliny which appears to have been of considerable 
1 Knight, Anal. Inq. Pt. ii. sect. 38. 
The town houses of the Romans very rarely boasted of exterior architectural 
décoration; in all common cases such a display appears to have been forbidden. 
Julius Caesar obtained a decree of the senate which empowered him to adorn his 
house like the front of a temple, and to add a fastigium, or pediment, to it. Cic. 
Phil. ii. 43. 
Vitruv. lib. vi. c. 3. 10.