3. Cubiculum. The next room in order flanks a side entrance. It is white with a yellow dado. The wall facing the atrium has a square picture of a poet or bookseller, and a comedian. On each side of this picture are painted tall, thin, yellow columns, with yellow shields suspended between them. Medusa and Lion heads are in the centre of these shields, as they were found in the house described by Mr. Falkener (p. 46). The poet, in the picture opposite the door, sits on the left, with his legs crossed. His head is crowned with ivy, and the lower part of his figure wrapt in blue and red drapery. He holds an open scroll in his left hand, and with his right seems to be giving instructions to the player, who stands before him with his mask raised over his head, as may also be seen in the mosaic from the tablinum of the Tragic Poet’s house. (Gell, Pompeiana, pl. 45, vol. i. p. 174). The comedian is dressed in a purple tunic with sleeves, and a full yellow mantle like a pallium thrown over it. In his left hand he holds a lituus or curved stick much used by the players. It resembles the crooked staff borne by the augurs, and so often seen upon gems, Roman coins, and Etruscan paintings. It was generally carried by actors. (Wieseler, Theatergebaüde, &c. Pl. 11, No. 3, Pl. 12, Nos. 23 to 28; and Pitture d’Ercolano, vol. ii. tav. 3. p. 19). The lituus was curved more than the pedum or shepherd’s crook, which is simply a stick with a hook at the end of it.
At the foot of the sitting figure is a round box called capsa or scrinium, it has rings and cords on the outside. This box is, in fact, a library, it contains the volumes or rolls such as have been discovered in the villa at Herculaneum (see ante, [p. 20]), one of which the poet may be supposed to have taken out and to be holding in his hand. Many instances of these scrinia occur among the Pompeian paintings, with tickets or titles of the books hanging out at the top. (See also a statue of Sophocles, No. 322, where the scrinium is open and the rolls clearly displayed.)
Above this composition, is a landscape in an oblong frame. It contains a long villa and trees with awnings extended for shade, a yellow isolated column and a separate ædiculum. This is one of the examples of landscape painting prevalent during the time between Nero and Titus. Landscape painting did not at first become a separate branch of art but Ludius appears to have introduced the style. The ancients rarely indulged in the modern taste for representing wild and romantic scenery; all their compositions are made of long lines of building, basilicas, villas, trees pleasantly disposed, bird’s-eye views of sea ports and artificially arranged gardens. Places in fact to go to and not in accordance with the feeling of our own times, which leads us to enjoy a grand scene, a combination of earth and sky without any desire to move from the spot upon which we have been placed. A description of the Vale of Tempe in Ælian has always been referred to as implying that the ancients had some feeling for the picturesque, and surely the back grounds to many of their figures show considerable invention and romantic appreciation, although deficient in the modern arts of aërial perspective and chiaroscuro. Above this landscape, is a female figure, the lower part draped, with an elephant’s trunk on the head, and a lion at her right side. In this manner Africa is personified on coins both of Hadrian and Septimius Severus, (Millin, Gal. Myth., Nos. 371 and 372).[58] The left foot of this figure is placed on an elephant’s head, of which the trunk and tusks only appear (compare Falkener, page 52, note). The yellow dado is ormented with white swans, holding purple ribands. On the left wall, opposite the side vestibule, is a pretty little group of a winged Cupid leading an ibex or chamois, painted on a very dark purple ground.
[58] The skin with trunk and tusks of an elephant’s head may be seen applied in a similar manner upon the coins of the Bactrian Demetrius. Compare also a small double Hermes in the Roman Gallery, No. 385.
4. Vestibulum. The side entrance, light and narrow. The ceiling consists of one flat sunk panel, white, with blue and red stars. The lower part of wall red, the dado black. The SALVE inlaid in the pavement is taken from the house of the Vestals.
5. The Ala: here, of necessity, very shallow, but in many Pompeian houses of much greater depth, has a white curved ceiling, with broad blue, red, and green lines on it. The upper part of walls white, a frieze of black below it, yellow panels with white borders, black dado.
The paintings of the Ala have been taken from a house near the Basilica. The great picture is called Cupid Condemned to Labour. The height of the mountain in the background is very remarkable.
The picture is surrounded with red, and flanked with white columns, having bright patterns spirally arranged upon them. On either side of the chief picture are two floating figures upon a yellow ground, surrounded by a chaste white patterned border, that has been published by Zahn. To the left are two Cupids bearing a square pharetra or quiver. To the right a lovely Cupid with crimson drapery, carrying a lyre such as Apollo sometimes plays; he is assisted in the operation by a Psyche with purple butterfly wings, a purple undervest and green over it, wearing pale blue boots. These little figures are copied from a house near the forum. In the spandril is an architectural scroll-work in gay colours, with two lions leaping through it, a peculiarity to be seen in the Temple of Isis, at Pompeii, and in the Theatre of Myra, in Lycia.
6. The wall adjoining the Ala, and forming part of the Atrium, has been very gracefully decorated. It is occupied by a highly finished picture of Bacchus enthroned. The god of wine in the bloom of youth and beauty is crowned with the vine; a fawn’s skin—the nebris—is tied across his chest; in his right hand he holds the cantharus—a two-handled cup sacred to Bacchus—and with the other he grasps the thyrsus. His sandalled feet rest on a square foot-stool, and a leopard sits on the ground to the right of the throne; a drum or tympanum is placed at the opposite side. The main ground of this composition is blue, the architecture of the shrine or canopy around the figure green, yellowish-brown and red. The central group is engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 53. The dado coloured rich deep red. From the House of Ceres.
7. Next to this is the left-hand Fauces or passage to the interior, and more private parts of the house. The white ceiling is delicately covered and spangled with blue and red stars. The right side of the fauces is white at the top, with alternate divisions below of red and blue having arabesques upon them. The dado black, with green and yellow patterns upon them, published by Zahn.