A typical upper- and probably also middle-class Roman house in the classical age contained a peristylium or peristylum, or so I was told. I wonder why they used a Greek word for such a standard Roman architectural feature. Did they also have a Latin term for it? Or was the feature adopted from Greek architecture?
Bonus question: if the construction was borrowed from the Greeks, when did this happen, and what did Roman houses look like before?
"The early Italian house consisted only of the atrium and the surrounding rooms, with, in most cases, a small garden at the back.... Out of the small plot at the back of the early house developed the peristylium, a garden surrounded by colonnades on to which rooms opened on all sides,... The peristylium, both in general appearance and in name, reproduced the men's room of a Greek house. Whilst the names of the front rooms of a Roman house are Italian (sic) (atrium,fauces, alae, tablinum) those of the back are Greek (peristylium, triclinium, oecus, exhedra)"
Rome: It's people, life and customs, Ugo Enrico Paoli, 1940, trans. R. D. Macnaghten, English version 1958.
Comment and link incorporated as suggested by @Cerberus
This link discusses the House of the Surgeon and the architectural development mentioned :-
https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/regio-vi/reg-vi-ins-1/house-of-the-surgeon
L&S give this as the derivation of peristylium :-
peristylium The Greek adjective περίστυλος is applied either to a court surrounded by colonnades on the inside, or to a building surrounded by them on the outside, as a temple. It is then used alone, in all three genders, with a substantive understood, for a court with colonnades: hence the Latin peristylum, or more commonly the substantive form peristylium. It is especially used for the courts of a Greek dwellinghouse, and for that introduced into Roman houses in imitation of them.
