The andron is lacking only in small houses, or in those in which a different connection is made between the front and rear portions by means of a second atrium, or other rooms.
VI. Garden, Peristyle, and Rooms about the Peristyle
A few Pompeian houses, like those of the olden time, are without a peristyle, having a garden at the rear. In such cases there is a colonnade at the back of the house, facing the garden; this is the arrangement in the houses of the Surgeon, of Sallust, and of Epidius Rufus. In the large house of Pansa ([Fig. 179]), we find both a peristyle and a garden, the latter being at the rear of the peristyle; and in many houses a small garden was placed wherever available space could be found.
The peristyle is a garden enclosed by a colonnade, or having a colonnade on two or three sides. When this was higher on the north side than on the other three, as in the house of the Silver Wedding, the peristyle was called Rhodian. In the Tufa Period the colonnade was frequently in two stories, on all four sides or on the front alone. Fragments of columns belonging to the second story have been found in many houses, but in only one instance, that of the house of the Centenary, are they of such a character as to enable us to make an accurate restoration; here the double series of columns extended only across the front.
PLATE VII.—INTERIOR OF A HOUSE, LOOKING FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE ATRIUM TOWARD THE REAR
A separate entrance, posticum ([Fig. 115]), usually connected the peristyle with a side street. At the rear there was often a broad, deep recess, exedra, corresponding with the tablinum. The location of the other rooms in this part of the house is determined by so many conditions, and manifests so great a diversity that it may be spoken of more conveniently in connection with their use.
VII. Sleeping Rooms
The small, high rooms about the atrium were in the earlier times used as bedrooms; and such they remained in some houses, as that of the Faun, down to the destruction of the city.