Fig. 229.—Plan of the vat room of the tannery.
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The vats, fifteen in number, are in a room formerly used as an atrium ([Fig. 229]). They are about 5 feet in diameter, and from 4 to about 5½ feet deep; they were built of masonry, and plastered; two holes were made in the side of each to serve as a convenience in climbing in and out. Between adjacent pairs of pits was an oblong basin about twenty inches deep, lined with wood. On either side of this was a large earthen jar, sunk in the earth; a small, round hole between the basin and each jar seems to mark the place of a pipe tile, connected with the former at the bottom. The large pits were for ordinary tanning; the oblong basins were probably used in making fine leather (aluta), a process in which alum was the principal agent, the chemicals being placed in the jars on either side, and supplied to the basins through the pipe tiles.

In the same building four tools were found, similar to those used by tanners at the present time. One was a knife, of bronze, with a charred wooden handle on the back of the blade; two were scraping irons, with a handle on each end; and there was another iron tool with a crescent-shaped blade.

The garden on which the colonnade opened contains an open-air triclinium. The table was ornamented with a mosaic top, now in the Naples Museum, with a characteristic design ([Fig. 230]). The principal motive is a skull; below is a butterfly on the rim of a wheel, symbols of the fluttering of the disembodied soul and of the flight of time. On the right and on the left are the spoils that short-lived man leaves behind him,—here a wanderer's staff, a wallet, and a beggar's tattered robe; there, a sceptre, with a mantle of royal purple. Over all is a level, with the plumb line hanging straight, symbolic of Fate, that sooner or later equalizes the lots of all mankind. The thought of the tanner, or of the earlier proprietor of the house, is easy to divine: Mors aurem vellens, Vivite, ait, venio,

'Death plucks my ear, and says,

"Live!" for I come.'

Fig. 230.—Mosaic top of the table in the garden of the tannery.