The house had no porch, unless we take as such the uncovered space between the house door and the street, which obtained its name -vestibulum-, i.e.

dressing-place, from the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around them when they went abroad.

There was, moreover, no division of apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided around the dwelling-room; and still less were there stairs, or stories placed one above another.
Earliest Hellenic Influence Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose o ut of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts as possibly had preceded it.

The very oldest Italian architecture with which we are acquainted is not much less under the influence of that of Greece than the architecture of the Augustan age.

The primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the oldest one also of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly like the -- thesauroi--of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping, and closed by a large stone cover.