Fig. 149.—Plan of the house of Epidius Rufus.
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The contrast between this atrium and the lofty halls of the houses of Sallust and the Faun was indeed marked. Here the atrium had become more like a court than a hall; yet the impluvium, paved with tufa, was retained, and we find the same arrangement for the flow of water as in many houses with Tuscan and tetrastyle atriums. On the edge of the impluvium at the rear is the pedestal of a fountain figure which threw a jet into a basin resting on two rectangular standards; the places of these, as well as the course of the feed pipe, are indicated on the plan. Behind the pedestal is a round cistern curb; another jet rose in the middle of the impluvium.

The apartment at the right of the tablinum (20) was a dining room. Of the smaller rooms about the atrium, three (6, 8, and 12) were sleeping rooms for members of the family; some of the others were so poorly decorated as to prompt the suggestion that they were intended for slaves. That next the stairs (14) was a storeroom; the traces of the shelving are easily distinguished. Under the stairs was a low room (16), perhaps used for a similar purpose; the small double room (17) was also low, and used as a sleeping room.

Fig. 150.—Façade of the house of Epidius Rufus, restored.
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The domestic apartments were reached by the andron (18). In the kitchen (21) is a broad hearth (b); a dim light was furnished by narrow windows. The little room at the entrance of the kitchen (a) was perhaps a storeroom; the closet, as often, was in the corner of the kitchen.

At the opposite end of the colonnade is the gardener's room (23). The main part of the garden (24), as indicated by the arrangement of the ground, was used for vegetables; the small flower garden at the rear (25) was on a higher level.

In the house originally there was no second floor. In the Roman period, apparently near the end of the Republic, a large upper room—probably a dining room—was built over the kitchen; and there may have been one or two small storerooms at the head of the stairway which was built in one of the side rooms of the atrium.