You
will half expect a slave to bring out old drinking cups and wine bowls
and set them here for his master's pleasure, or tablets and stylus for
him to write his letters. Everything is in order and beautiful. It was
not quite so when the excavators uncovered this house. The statues were
thrown down. The flowers were scorched and dead under the piled-up
ashes. But it was easy for the modern excavators to tell from the ground
where the flower beds had been and where the gravel paths. Even the
lead water pipe that carried the stream to the fountain needed little
repairing. So the excavators set up the statues, cleaned the marble
tables and benches, planted shrubs and flowers, repaired the porch roof,
and we have a garden such as the old Romans loved and such as many
houses in Pompeii had.
Several rooms look out upon this garden. One of them is perhaps the most
interesting place in all Pompeii. You will walk into it and look around
and laugh with delight. The whole wall is painted with pictures, big and
little--pictures of columns and roofs, of plants and animals, of men
and gods. They are all framed in with wide spaces of beautiful red.
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