Next to the cubicula came laterally the alae, the wings, in which Pansa (if not Paratus) received his visitors in the morning—friends, clients, parasites. These rooms must have been rich, paved, as they were, with lozenges of marble and surrounded with seats or divans. The large room at the end was the tablinum, which separated, or rather connected, the two courts and ascended by two steps to the peristyle. In this tablinum, which was a show-room or parlor, were kept the archives of the family, and the imagines majorum, or images of ancestors, which were wax figures extolled in grand inscriptions, stood there in rows. You have observed that they were conducted with great pomp in the funeral processions. The Romans did not despise these exhibitions of vanity. They clung all the more tenaciously to their ancestry as they became more and more separated from them by the lapse of ages and the decay of old manners and customs.
To the left of the tablinum opened the library, where were found some volumes, unfortunately almost destroyed; and off to the right of the tablinum ran the fauces, a narrow corridor leading to the peristyle.
Thus, a show-room, two reception rooms, a library, six bedchambers for slaves or for guests, and all these ranged around a hall lighted from above, paved in white mosaic with black edging between and adorned with a marble basin,—such is the atrium of Pansa.
I am now going to pass beyond into the fauces. An apartment opens upon this corridor and serves as a pendant to the library; it is a bedroom, as a recess left in the thickness of the wall for the bedstead indicates. A step more and I reach the peristyle.
The peristyle is a real court or a garden surrounded with columns forming a portico. In the house of Pansa, the sixteen columns, although originally Doric, had been repaired in the Corinthian style by means of a replastering of stucco. In some houses they were connected by balustrades or walls breast high, on which flowers in either vases or boxes of marble were placed, and in one Pompeian house there was a frame set with glass panes. In the midst of the court was hollowed out a spacious basin (piscina), sometimes replaced by a parterre from which the water leaped gaily. In the peristyle of Pansa's house is still seen, in an intercolumniation, the mouth of a cistern. We are now in the richest and most favored part of the establishment.
At the end opens the œcus, the most spacious hall, surrounded, in the houses of the opulent Romans, with columns and galleries, decorated with precious marbles developing into a basilica. But in the house of Pansa do not look for such splendors. Its œcus was but a large chamber between the peristyle and a garden.
To the right of the œcus, at the end of the court, is half hidden a smaller and less obtrusive apartment, probably an exedra. On the right wing of the peristyle, on the last range, recedes the triclinium. The word signifies triple bed; three beds in fine, ranged in horse-shoe order, occupied this apartment, which served as a dining-room. It is well known that the ancients took their meals in a reclining attitude and resting on their elbows. This Carthaginian custom, imported by the Punic wars, had become established everywhere, even at Pompeii. The ancients said "make the beds," instead of "lay the table."
To the right of the peristyle on the first range, glides a corridor receding toward a private door that opens on a small side street. This was the posticum, by which the master of the house evaded the importunate visitors who filled the atrium. This method of escaping bores was called postico fallere clientem. It was a device that must have been familiar to rich persons who were beset every morning by a throng of petitioners and hangers-on.
The left side of the peristyle was occupied by three bedchambers, and by the kitchen, which was hidden at the end, to the left of the œcus. This kitchen, like most of the others, has its fireplaces and ovens still standing. They contained ashes and even coal when they were discovered, not to mention the cooking utensils in terra cotta and in bronze. Upon the walls were painted two enormous serpents, sacred reptiles which protected the altar of Fornax, the culinary divinity. Other paintings (a hare, a pig, a wild boar's head, fish, etc.) ornamented this room adjoining which was, in the olden time among the Pompeians, as to-day among the Neapolitans, the most ignoble retreat in the dwelling. A cabinet close by served for a pantry, and there were found in it a large table and jars of oil ranged along on a bench.
Thus a large portico with columns, surrounding a court adorned with a marble basin (piscina); around the portico on the right, three bedchambers or cubicula; on the right, a rear door (posticum) and an eating room (triclinium); at the end, the grand saloon (œcus), between an exedra and kitchen—such was the peristyle of Pansa.