9. House of the Female Musician, the Flute Player or “Sonatrice.”—Excavated by Mr. Falkener.
10. From ancient Marble Map of Rome, representing Private Houses.
[3]. House of Queen Caroline (1813), now called that of Adonis, remarkable for the width of Atrium when viewed from vestibule. The kitchen has windows opening to the street. In an open court is a permanent semicircular couch of stone, the sigma of Martial, and so called from the shape that the Greek letter had at this period acquired. (See notice on the changes in the Greek alphabet, in the Catalogue of Greek Court, p. 22). In the Atrium, plants were painted on the wall, as if sprung up out of the ground. A celebrated caricature painting of the studio of a portrait painter was discovered by Mazois in this house.
[4]. House of the Meleager or Apollo (1830-31), called also the House of Isis, or of the Nereids. The house is very extensive, and the various apartments are arranged in a different manner from what is generally seen at Pompeii. The block plan, [No. 4], will sufficiently explain the distribution of the various parts. The vestibulum is very long and narrow.
[5]. House of Sallust (1809). Known also as the House of Actæon. The venereum is the peculiar feature of this house. The skeleton of a young female, with four rings on one of her fingers, was discovered as if just in the act of escaping; five gold bracelets, two ear-rings, and thirty-two pieces of money were lying near her. The skeletons of three other females, probably slaves, were found near her. The doorway of the Prothyrum was very broad, and was closed with a quadrivalve door, folding back like our shutters.
[6]. Two houses side by side, called from the features of their peristyles, the Greater and the Smaller Fountain (1826). The small fountain itself made of shells, the greater one encrusted with mosaics. In the former house a remarkable painting of a sea-port, supposed to represent Dicæarchia, or Puteoli, was discovered. Two staircases indicate the former existence of upper rooms. Here they found oil, in vases, with olives still swimming in it.
[7]. House of the Coloured Capitals (1833-34). A very large house near the so-called Pantheon.
It is a magnificent specimen of arrangement and decoration. The long range of colonnade, forming a second peristyle or decorated garden, is peculiar to this habitation. (Plan given in Mus. Bor., vol. x., tav. A & B.)
[8]. House of the Dioscuri (1828-29). This beautiful mansion has been known by a great variety of names—The Quaestor, the Centaur, Castor and Pollux. The latter name (Dioscuri also) is derived from the spirited figures of the sons of Leda, painted reining in their horses on the side walls of the left-hand vestibulum. A running Mercury, with purse in hand, was painted on one of the posts of the same entrance. The exterior of this house is much more carefully decorated than was usual among the Pompeians. Many of the stucco ornaments have been picked out with colour. Highly-decorated wooden chests, lined and bound externally with iron, were found in the atrium, at the entrance of the left-hand ala, which still contained a few gold and silver coins that had escaped the grasp of some one who had returned to the spot after the destruction of the city, and made excavation, evidently directed to that particular spot.