Mau, August: Pompeii: its life and art (New York , London: The MacMillan Company, 1899)

3°8

POMPEII

reading the oracle from a roll of papyrus. The excavators
thought that the scene represented a poet reciting his verses;
and since they found, in the floor of the tablinum, a mosaic
picture in which an actor is seen making preparations for the
stage, they concluded that the figure with the papyrus in the
wall painting must be a tragic poet.
The plan (Fig. 145) presents slight irregularities; yet in
essential points the arrangement of rooms does not differ mate-


Fig. 146. — View of the house of the Tragic Poet, looking from the middle of the atrium
through the tablinum toward the shrine at the end of the peristyle.
At the right, the andron. In the foreground, a cistern curb, at the rear of the impluvium.

rially from that which we have found in the houses of the pre-
Roman time. As our section (Fig. 147) shows, all the parts of
the house are comparatively low; the ceiling of the atrium and
of the large dining room at the rear (15) were only a few
feet higher than the colonnade of the peristyle. The entrances
of the ala — here there is but one — and of the tablinum are
not adorned with pilasters ; plain wooden casings were used
instead. The second story rooms are not an afterthought but