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Meanwhile, the Roman was watching, with deep interest, the group in the court of the atrium. She had taken a position from which she could have an unobstructed view through the doorway, and her attendant had evidently informed herself as to the identity of the strangers, and was anxious to win approval by communicating her knowledge.

Up to the days of the Divine Augustus, the Pontifex Maximus inhabited the house next to the house of the Vestals and stood in the closest relation of fatherhood towards them. But since he went to live on the Palatine and made us a present of his house we have occupied all this Atrium which was built in the place of the two houses.

Casting a brief glance over it, they turned short to the left, by a branch of the Sacred Way, which led, skirting the market place, between the Comitium, or hall of the ambassadors, and the abrupt declivity of the Palatine, past the end of the Atrium of Liberty, and the cattle mart, toward the Carmental gate.

They passed the lupanaria gleaming with light, the grove, the line of mounted pretorians, and found the litters. "I will go with thee," said Petronius. They sat down together. On the road both were silent, and only in the atrium of Vinicius's house did Petronius ask, "Dost thou know who that was?" "Was it Rubria?" asked Vinicius, repulsed at the very thought that Rubria was a vestal. "No."

The Atrium was soon to become a palatial hall adorned with marble colonnades; the small yard with its humble portico at the back was to be transformed into the Greek Peristyle, a court open to the sky and surrounded by columns, which enclosed a greenery of shrubs and trees and an atmosphere cooled and freshened by the constant play of fountains.

He was alive, though; for when Tigellinus bent over him and inquired once again, "Wilt thou retract?" his white lips moved slightly, and from them came the barely audible whisper, "I cannot." Tigellinus gave command to stop the torture, and began to walk up and down in the atrium with a face distorted by anger, but helpless.

Farrer had two deep trenches dug at opposite ends of the atrium, so that I might examine the nature of the soil near the remains. The diagram is on a scale of 1/20 of an inch to an inch; but the trench, which was between 4 and 5 feet broad, and in parts above 5 feet deep, has necessarily been reduced out of all proportion.

He passed whole nights with Ursus at Lygia's door in the prison; if she commanded him to go away and rest, he returned to Petronius, and walked in the atrium till morning. The slaves found him frequently kneeling with upraised hands or lying with his face to the earth. He prayed to Christ, for Christ was his last hope. Everything had failed him.

The Greek part of the house, the peristylium and its belongings, was reserved for his family and his most intimate friends. In Pompeii, which was an old Greek town with Roman life and habits superadded, we find atrium and peristylium both together as early as the second century B.C. At what period exactly the house of the noble in Rome began thus to develop is not so certain.

"It is the Venus," the man stammered; "the Greek Venus of Praxiteles." The senator gave a cry of apprehension and rushed to the corner of the atrium, where a little shrine, curtained off by silken drapery, held the precious statue, the greatest art treasure of his collection perhaps of the whole world. He tore the hangings aside and stood in speechless anger before the outraged goddess.