The lower floor was given up to a bath (frigidarium, 8; tepidarium, 6; caldarium, 7) and to a bakery (3, 4).
In the vaulted ceiling of the frigidarium (8) and one of the rooms of the bakery (3) is a round hole for ventilation, opening upon the terrace above through a kind of chimney. The hollow walls of the caldarium (7) are carried to the crown of the vault, at the middle of which is a similar opening for the vent. The places of the three openings in the floor of the terrace are seen in the plan (2, μ).
At one end of the larger room of the bakery (3) is the oven; at the other two rectangular basins of masonry. In the corner near the basins was found the skeleton of a man who at the time of the eruption had taken refuge in this room and probably died of hunger. The appearance of the room at the time of excavation is shown in a sketch published by Mazois ([Fig. 177]).
The door near the corner, seen in the illustration, led outside the city. The proprietor of the house perhaps had a special permit enabling him to leave or enter the city at any time without surveillance; none of the other houses along the edge of the city have a private entrance of this kind.
CHAPTER XLIII
OTHER NOTEWORTHY HOUSES
The houses accorded a detailed description in the previous chapters are few in comparison with the number of those worthy of special study. He alone who has wandered day after day among the ruins, returning again and again to explore the parts of the city which are rarely seen by the hasty visitor, can realize what a wealth of interesting material lies behind the barren walls lining the streets on either side.
The location of the houses mentioned incidentally is given in [Plan VI], at the end of the volume. Such are, the house of Caecilius Jucundus, on Stabian Street (V. i. 26), the tablinum of which contains one of the most beautiful specimens of wall decoration yet discovered, in the third style; the house of Lucretius, on the same street (IX. iii. 5), with a little garden behind the tablinum adorned with quaint sculptures; the house of the Hunt on Nola Street (VII. iv. 48), so named from the large hunting scene on the wall at the rear of the garden; and further down on Nola Street (IX. vii. 6) the extensive house with three atriums and a large peristyle, excavated in 1879, eighteen centuries after the destruction of the city, and hence called the house of the Centenary, casa del Centenario.
In the same block with the house of the Hunt, opposite that of the Faun, is the house of the Sculptured Capitals, casa dei Capitelli Figurati (VII. iv. 57). It received its name from the figures carved in the tufa capitals of the pilasters at the entrance, one of which is shown in [Fig. 178]; the stucco with which the surface was coated has now fallen off. Such figures are not infrequently met with in pilaster capitals of the Tufa Period, the subjects being always taken, as here, from the bacchic cycle; the satyr at the left is well rendered. The plan of the house is simple, like that of other houses of moderate size dating from the pre-Roman time.
Near the west end of Nola Street is the house of Pansa, which occupies the whole of the sixth Insula of Region VI. Although of approximately the same size as the house of the Faun, and built in the same period, it contained fewer large rooms; its proportions were less impressive, its finish less elegant. The walls present many evidences of repairs and alterations, but of the wall decoration nothing remains.