28. Great gallery, lighted by windows which looked upon the two terraces, 34, separated by the large hall, 33. This gallery furnished an agreeable promenade, when the weather did not permit the enjoyment of the external porticoes or terraces.
29, 29. These two small apartments, which were open to the gallery, and probably were closed by glass, may very well have been, one a library, the other a reading-room, since the place in which books were kept was not usually the place in which they were read; being small and confined, suitable to the comparatively small number of volumes which an ancient library generally contained, and also to the limited space within which a considerable number of rolls of papyrus might be placed.
A bust, painted on the wall of one of them, confirms this supposition, for it is known that the ancients were fond of keeping the portraits of eminent men before their eyes, and especially of placing those of literary men in their libraries.
30. The form of this hall is suitable to a triclinium, and its situation, protected from the immediate action of the sun's rays, would seem to mark it as a summer triclinium. Still the guests enjoyed the view of the country and of the sea, by means of a door opening upon the terrace. In front of the little chamber, 31, is a square opening for the staircase, which descends to the point B upon the floor below. It is to be remarked, that at the entrance of each division of the building there is a lodge for a slave. No doubt each suite of rooms had its peculiar keeper. The chamber, 10, seems to have been reserved for the keeper of the peristyle; the apartment, 15, belonged to the slave of the bed-chamber, who watched the apartment of his master; a recess under the staircase, 35, was, without doubt, the place of the atriensis, or attendant on the atrium, when the hall, 8, was open, to give admission to the interior of the house; and when this hall was closed, he attended in the chamber, 12, which commanded the entrance through the passage, or fauces.
Lastly, the small lodge, 31, is so placed as to keep watch over all communication between the upper floor, where is the peristyle, and the lower floor, in which the apartments of the family seem to have been chiefly situated.