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Updated: June 15, 2025
There was the hall of audience, with its throne of gold, its sixteen columns of Phrygian and Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed, carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all sides in order to dazzle the world.
Above the chambers round the atrium was a second story, approached by a staircase from the peristylium; here were the apartments of the ladies and of the female slaves. As Beric entered the atrium, a man, who was reading a roll of parchment, rose to his feet. "Welcome, Beric!" he said warmly. "All hail, preceptor!" the lad replied. "Are all well here?" "All well, Beric.
Thus the house came to be practically divided into two parts, the atrium with its belongings, i.e. the Roman part, and the peristylium with its developments, forming the Greek part; and the house reflects the composite character of Roman life in its later period, just as do Roman literature and Roman art.
From the courtyard opened the triclinium, or dining room, and also rooms used as storerooms, kitchen, and the sleeping places of the slaves. At the back of the peristylium was the oecus, or state apartment, where Caius received distinguished guests, and where, in the lifetime of Julia, entertainments were given to the ladies of the colony.
The floor was raised about a foot above that of the atrium, and it was partly open both on that side and on the other, looking into the peristylium, so that, while at work, he commanded a view of all that was going on in the atrium and in the courtyard. In the centre of this was a fountain surrounded by plants.
The door to the rear street was flung open, and they were out in a narrow alleyway. Just as they did so, a howl of many voices proclaimed that the peristylium door had yielded. "Guide me by the straightest way," commanded the sea rover. "Where?" was Agias's question. "To the wharves. The yacht is the only safe place for the lady. There I will teach her how I can honour a friend of Sextus Drusus."
And the door, beaten from its fastenings by a mighty stroke, tumbled inward on to the mosaic pavement of the peristylium. The light was streaming bright and free into that court, but the passageway from the atrium was shrouded in darkness. Mamercus, sword drawn, stood across the entrance. "By the god Tarann!" shouted Dumnorix, who from the rear of his followers was directing the attack.
Mago disappeared like magic, but in an instant a din was rising from the front of the house, cries, blows, clash of steel. Into the peristylium, where the angry young master was standing, rushed the old slave woman, Laïs. "Hei! hei!" she screamed, "they are breaking in! Monsters! a hundred of them! They will kill us all!" Drusus grew calm in an instant.
The clients and freedmen and male slaves were almost all in the fields. The veteran, Falto, and Pausanias, who had come in, and who was brave enough, but nothing of a warrior, were the only defenders of the peristylium. "You two," shouted Mamercus, "guard the other door! Move that heavy chest against it. Pile the couch and cabinet on top. This door I will hold."
The aula regia, or throne-room, the basilica, or hall of justice, the triclinium, or dining-room, and the peristylium seem certainties; but for all the rest, and especially the small chambers of the private part of the structure, only more or less fanciful conjectures can be offered.
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