sure corresponding to the modern hatchment, except that it was
permanently fixed. This regularly remained as a mark of the house even
when it changed owners. It was in such a vestibule of his Golden House
that Nero erected his own colossal statue, destined afterwards to give
its name to the Colosseum. Over the larger vestibules there might be a
partial roof, but generally, and perhaps always at this date, they
were without cover.

Facing you in the middle of the vestibule are double or folding doors,
more or less ornate with bronze, ivory, and other work, and generally
bearing a large ring or handle to serve either as a knocker or to pull
the door to. Above them is a bronze grating or fretwork for further
adornment and to admit light and air. Some householders, more
superstitious or conventional than the rest, affected an inscription,
such as "Let no evil enter here," and over some humbler entrance you
might find a cage containing a parrot or magpie, which had been
trained to say "Good luck to you" in Greek. At either side of the
door, or of the actual entrance to the vestibule, is a column or
pilaster, either made of timber and cased with other woods of a more
beautiful and costly kind, or consisting of coloured marble with an
ornate capital. These "doorposts" were wreathed with laurel or other
foliage on festal occasions, such as when the occupant had won some
distinguished honour in the field, in the courts, or at the elections,
or when a marriage took place from within. At funerals small cypress
trees or branches would be placed in and about the vestibule. At one
side of it you might sometimes find a smaller door, to be used for the
ordinary going in and out when it was unnecessary or inconvenient for
the larger doors to be opened.

[Illustration: FIG. 30.--ENTRANCE TO HOUSE OF PANSA. (Pompeii.)]

The doors themselves turn, not upon hinges of the modern kind, but
upon pivots, which move, often too noisily, in sockets let into the
threshold and lintel. The fastenings consisted of locks--often highly
ingenious--of a bar laid across from wall to wall, of bolts shot
across or upward and downward, and sometimes of a prop leaning against
the inside of the door and entering a cavity in the floor of the
passage. The floor of the entrance passage itself might be paved with
marble tiles, or made simply of a polished cement with or without
patterns worked in it; or it might consist of small cubes of stone,
white and black o