slave to purchase it, perhaps you obtain it from the innkeeper. That
is your own affair. For the rest you must be prepared to bear with
very promiscuous and sometimes unsavoury company, and to possess
neither too nice a nose nor too delicate a sense of propriety. Your
only consolation is that the charges are low, and that if anything is
stolen from you the landlord is legally responsible.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.--PLAN OF INN AT POMPEII.]

Doubtless there were better and worse establishments of this kind.
There must have been some tolerably good quarters at Rome or
Alexandria, and at some of the resorts for pleasure and health, such
as Balae on the Bay of Naples, or Canopus at the Nile mouth. It is
true also that for those who travelled on imperial service there were
special lodgings kept up at the public expense at certain stations
along the great roads. Nevertheless it may reasonably be asked why, in
view of the generally accepted standards of domestic comfort and even
luxury of the time--what may be called middle-class standards--there
was no sufficiency of even creditable hotels. The answer is that in
antiquity the class of people who in modern times support such hotels
seldom felt the need of their equivalent. In the first place, they
commonly trusted to the hospitality of individuals to whom they were
personally or officially known, or to whom they carried private or
official introductions. If they were distinguished persons, they were
readily received, whether in town or country, on their route. In less
frequented districts they trusted to their own slaves and to the
resources of their own baggage. Their own tents, bedding, provisions
and cooking apparatus were carried with them. If they made a stay of
any length in a town, they might hire a suite of rooms.