=205. Inns: Usually Mean and Sordid.=--The very nature of a city like Rome presupposes an enormous floating population. The metropolis is always full of strangers. The more distinguished of these almost inevitably find hospitality at least as “paying guests” in some private quarters, so that large hotels for the gentry are almost nonexistent; and as stated (p. 112) the universal custom of either dining at home or being a dinner guest of friends largely obviates the need of luxurious restaurants. But all visitors cannot command noble hospitality; and many a plebeian, freedman, or slave cannot go home from his work either to the noon-time prandium or to the regular evening dinner. Besides there are plenty of loose fellows who desire congenial places for tippling and carousing. The result is that Rome is provided with inns and with eating houses; although nearly all of both types are sordid and held in little aristocratic favor. The inns (_tabernæ_) usually combine the reception of travelers with the providing of meals for chance visitors. Since driving in the city is seldom permitted, nearly all wagons have to unload near the gates, and around these there is a perfect sprinkling of inns primarily for the accommodation of teamsters. [Illustration: GATEWAY AT POMPEII: present state. Note the small entrance for foot passengers, available after the main gate for beasts and wagons has been closed.] A few of these establishments are very large but the most are decidedly small. Take for example the “Inn of Hercules,” just outside the Porta Capena, where the Appian Way commences. It is kept by one Proxenus, a sly-eyed, strong-limbed fellow, who pretends he is an Athenian Greek, but who probably comes from somewhere much nearer the Orient. His inn stands side by side with a number of competitors, all much alike. There is a broad entrance through which wagons can drive; and on either side of this passage are rooms, one for the proprietor’s personal use, the others for serving meals, drinking, and idling. On the walls are coarse frescos, showing besides the Lares (the serpent Genius of the place, and the god Hercules) views of the wine trade, perhaps of a man pouring wine from a large jar into a still larger earthen hogshead. In the rear of these rooms there is a fairly large court for wagons, a stable, and a watering trough. Near these are three small chambers for teamsters who have to sleep near their beasts; but most of the guests are accommodated in small, dirty cubicles in the story above the wine-rooms. =206. Reckonings and Guests at a Cheap Inn.=--Proxenus is not more filthy or extortionate than the majority of his kind. He takes it as part of his perquisites to hear his tavern cursed as “dirty,” “smoky,” “vermin infested”--or things much worse, and laughs heartily when he finds that a departing guest has scratched upon the walls of his sleeping chamber such doggerel verses as