try as they
became more and more separated from them by the lapse of ages and the
decay of old manners and customs.

To the left of the tablinum opened the library, where were found some
volumes, unfortunately almost destroyed; and off to the right of the
tablinum ran the fauces, a narrow corridor leading to the peristyle.

Thus, a show-room, two reception rooms, a library, six bedchambers for
slaves or for guests, and all these ranged around a hall lighted from
above, paved in white mosaic with black edging between and adorned with
a marble basin,--such is the atrium of Pansa.

I am now going to pass beyond into the fauces. An apartment opens upon
this corridor and serves as a pendant to the library; it is a bedroom,
as a recess left in the thickness of the wall for the bedstead
indicates. A step more and I reach the peristyle.

The peristyle is a real court or a garden surrounded with columns
forming a portico. In the house of Pansa, the sixteen columns, although
originally Doric, had been repaired in the Corinthian style by means of
a replastering of stucco. In some houses they were connected by
balustrades or walls breast high, on which flowers in either vases or
boxes of marble were placed, and in one Pompeian house there was a frame
set with glass panes. In the midst of the court was hollowed out a
spacious basin (_piscina_), sometimes replaced by a parterre from which
the water leaped gaily. In the peristyle of Pansa's house is still seen,
in an intercolumniation, the mouth of a cistern. We are now in the
richest and most favored part of the establishment.

At the end opens the _oecus_, the most spacious hall, surrounded, in the
houses of the opulent Romans, with columns and galleries, decorated with
precious marbles developing into a basilica. But in the house of Pansa
do not look for such splendors. Its oecus was but a large chamber between
the peristyle and a garden.

To the right of the oecus, at the end of the court, is half hidden a
smaller and less obtrusive apartment, probably an _exedra_. On the right
wing of the peristyle, on the last range, recedes the triclinium. The
word signifies triple bed; three beds in fine, ranged in horse-shoe
order, occupied this apartment, which served as a dining-room. It is
well known that the ancients took their meals in a reclining attitude
and resting on their elbows. This Carthaginian custom, imported by the
Punic wars, had become established everywhere, even at P