The materials commonly used in the erection of a house were stones and bricks. In the manufacture of the latter[370] the ancients exhibited more skill and care than we; they had bricks of a very large size, and half bricks for filling up spaces, which prevented the necessity of shortening them with the trowel. Of these some were simply dried in the sun, used chiefly in building the dwellings of the poor.[371] At Utica in Africa there were public inspectors of brick-kilns,[372] to prevent any from being used which had not been made five years. In several cities on the Mediterranean bricks were manufactured of a porous earth, which when baked and painted, as it may be conjectured, on the outside, were so light that they would swim in water.[373] To diminish the weight of bricks, straw was introduced into them in Syria and Egypt, which was altogether consumed in the baking. In roofing such of their houses as were not terraced they employed slates, tiles, and reed-thatch.[374] Possibly, also, the wealthy may have tiled their houses with those elegant thin flakes of marble, with which the roofs of temples were occasionally covered. ----- Footnote 370: Winkelm. Hist. de l’Art. ii. 544. Cf. Xen. Memor. iii. 17. Cyropæd. vi. 3. 25. Plin. xxxv. 14. Polyb. x. 22. Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 15. Footnote 371: Sanchon. ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 10. p. 35. Footnote 372: Vitruv. ii. 3. Footnote 373: Id. ibid. 3. In lieu of these light bricks, pumice stones are now frequently used on the shores of the Mediterranean, more particularly in turning arches. They are, consequently, cut into parallelopipeds, and exported in great quantities from the Lipari islands.—Spallanzani, Travels in the Two Sicilies, &c. vol. ii. pp. 298, 302, sqq. Footnote 374: Poll. x. 170. Luc. Contemplant. § 6. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 174. ----- CHAPTER II. HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE.