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Реферат A Roman Villa

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Текст реферата A Roman Villa

A Roman Villa
Fortythree 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