Nine hundred shops in a town which would hardly contain more than about twelve hundred is rather incredible—perhaps it should be ninety. Pergulæ were either porticos shaded with verdure, lattices with creeping plants, or small rooms above the shops, bedrooms for the shopkeepers. Cœnacula were rooms under the terraces. When they were good enough to let to the higher classes they were called equestria (as in the following advertisement). Plutarch informs us that Sylla, in his younger days, lived in one of them, where he paid a rent of £8 a year.

A. L. Millin, Description d’un Mosaique antique du Musée Pio. Clementin, à Rome, 1819, p. 9.

Glossary, cap. xxvii. “Wine-criers cry with open mouth the wine which is for sale in the taverns at four farthings.”