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Hence, though it keeps its colour perfectly when applied in the polished stucco finish of closed apartments, yet in open apartments, such as peristyles or exedrae or other places of the sort, where the bright rays of the sun and moon can penetrate, it is spoiled by contact with them, loses the strength of its colour, and turns black.
In rooms where there has to be a fire or a good many lights, they should be flat, so that they can be wiped off more easily. In summer apartments and in exedrae where there is no smoke nor soot to hurt them, they should be made in relief. It is always the case that stucco, in the pride of its dazzling white, gathers smoke not only from its own house but also from others.
Dining rooms ought to be twice as long as they are wide. The height of all oblong rooms should be calculated by adding together their measured length and width, taking one half of this total, and using the result for the height. But in the case of exedrae or square oeci, let the height be brought up to one and one half times the width.
Unfortunately this brought into prominence the irregularity of the size and position of the exedrae, and the pilasters were affixed correctly with reference to the arcade, as was absolutely necessary, but more or less trespassing on the width of the opening of these recesses, and notched into the original pilasters.
On the north side of the peristyle is a double portico containing the exedrae, or seats of the sophists, where each most cunning rhetorician delivered his opinions ex cathedrâ, and lay in wait for any passer whom he could insnare into an argument.
Such apartments have fine entrance courts with imposing front doors of their own; the colonnades of the peristyles are decorated with polished stucco in relief and plain, and with coffered ceilings of woodwork; off the colonnades that face the north they have Cyzicene dining rooms and picture galleries; to the east, libraries; exedrae to the west; and to the south, large square rooms of such generous dimensions that four sets of dining couches can easily be arranged in them, with plenty of room for serving and for the amusements.
The vault, if there was one, over the semi-circular exedrae must have been hemispherical. From the number of roofing tiles of local stone, shaped into hexagons, found, I think these arcades were roofed in with them, placed overlapping each other, giving a very good effect.
Greater variations exist in the circular recesses; for, commencing in the western one, on the south side, the width is 17ft. 3in., and the depth 7ft. 6in.; the eastern one is 14ft. 3in. wide, and 6ft. 9in. deep; the exedrae vis-a-vis on the north is 17ft. 3in. wide, and 8ft. 4in. deep; the remaining one, to the west, is 17ft. wide, and 7ft. deep.
His house at Rome was the theme of the debauchees, but also of the lovers of art; and the sculptors of Greece delighted to task their skill in adorning the porticoes and exedrae of an Athenian.
Not a single one would have stayed if I had not yielded to their demands, which, as regarded the bath, involved the addition of exedrae and of a sphaeristerium." "And what can they want with an amphitheatre?" groaned Plotinus. "They say it is for lectures," replied Porphyry; "I trust there is no truth in the rumour that the head of the Stoics is three parts owner of a lion of singular ferocity."
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