Fig. 152.—Plan of the house of the Tragic Poet.
[View larger image]

The house received its name at the time of excavation, in consequence of a curious misinterpretation of a painting—now in the Naples Museum—which was found in the tablinum. The subject is the delivery to Admetus of the oracle which declared that he must die unless some one should voluntarily meet death in his place. On one side sits Admetus, with his devoted queen Alcestis; opposite them is the messenger who is reading the oracle from a roll of papyrus. The excavators thought that the scene represented a poet reciting his verses; and since they found, in the floor of the tablinum, a mosaic picture in which an actor is seen making preparations for the stage, they concluded that the figure with the papyrus in the wall painting must be a tragic poet.

Fig. 153.—View of the house of the Tragic Poet, looking from the middle of the atrium through the tablinum toward the shrine at the end of the peristyle.
At the right, the andron. In the foreground, a cistern curb, at the rear of the impluvium.

The plan ([Fig. 152]) presents slight irregularities; yet in essential points the arrangement of rooms does not differ materially from that which we have found in the houses of the pre-Roman time. As our section ([Fig. 154]) shows, all the parts of the house are comparatively low; the ceiling of the atrium and of the large dining room at the rear (15) were only a few feet higher than the colonnade of the peristyle. The entrances of the ala—here there is but one—and of the tablinum are not adorned with pilasters; plain wooden casings were used instead. The second story rooms are not an afterthought but a part of the architect's design; the stairways (4) leading to them are symmetrically placed at the sides of the atrium. There was no upper floor, however, over the fauces, the atrium, or the tablinum. To a modern visitor this dwelling would have seemed more homelike and comfortable than the monumental houses of the earlier time.

The large shops (2) are both connected with the house by doors opening into the fauces (1). They were doubtless the proprietor's place of business. In one of them gold ornaments were found, but we should scarcely be warranted in assuming from this fact that the master of the house was a goldsmith.

In the floor of the fauces, immediately behind the double front door, is a dog, attached to a chain, outlined in black and white mosaic, with the inscription, cave canem, 'Beware of the dog!' The picture was for many years in the Naples Museum. The black and white mosaic is well preserved in the atrium, the tablinum ([Fig. 153]), and the dining room opening on the peristyle, as well as in the fauces.

The purpose of the various rooms is in most cases easy to determine. The first at the left of the atrium (5) was the room of the porter, atriensis. The three rooms marked 6 were sleeping rooms, as were also 12 and 14 opening on the peristyle; 6' was a storeroom, 13 the kitchen. There was a colonnade on three sides of the peristyle; against the wall at the rear stands the shrine of the household gods (seen in [Fig. 153]) in which was found a marble statuette of a satyr carrying fruits in the fold of a skin hanging in front of him.