At the farther end from the entrance you will perceive to right and left two large recesses or bays, generally with pilasters on either side.  These “wings” were utilised for a variety of purposes.  One of them might occasionally serve for a smaller dining-room, or it might hold presses and cupboards.  In noble houses one of them would contain certain family possessions of which the occupants were especially proud.  These were the effigies of distinguished ancestors, which served as a family-tree represented in a highly objective form.  At our chosen date there would be a series of portrait busts or else of portrait medallions, in relief or painted, while in special receptacles, labelled underneath with name and rank, were kept life-like wax masks of the line of distinguished persons, which could be brought out and carried in procession at the funeral of a member of the family.  Though there was no “College of Heralds” in antiquity, it was commonly quite possible for a wealthy parvenu to get a pedigree invented for him.  It is true that by use and wont the “right of effigies” was confined to those families which had held the higher offices of state, but there was no specific law on the subject, and the Roman nouveau riche could act exactly like his modern representative in securing his “portraits of ancestors.”

[Illustration:  FIG. 32.—­HOUSE OF CORNELIUS RUFUS. (Pompeii.)]

Having thus glanced to right and left, to the ceiling and the floor, we now look at the end of the hall facing us.  The middle section of this is open, and is framed by a couple of high pillars or pilasters and a cornice, which together formed perhaps the most distinguishing feature of this part of the house.  Between the pillars is an apartment which may or may not be raised a step or two above the level of the hall.  This, unlike the hall itself, is of the nature of a sitting-room, reception-room, or “parlour” (in the old sense of that word), and contains appropriate furniture.  In it the master receives a guest, interviews his clients, makes up his accounts, and transacts such other private business as may fall to his lot.  At the back it may be entirely closed, or it may contain a large window, through which we can catch a vista of the colonnaded and planted court beyond.  The floor may here consist of a large carpet-like mosaic, such as that famous piece, taken from the House of the Faun at Pompeii and now in the Naples Museum, which represents a battle between Alexander and the Persians.  To one side of the entrance to this “parlour” there will often stand on a pedestal the bust of the owner, as “Genius of the home.”  On the other side there is a passage serving as the means of access to the second or inner division of the house.

[Illustration:  FIG. 33.—­PERISTYLE WITH GARDEN AND AL FRESCO DINING-TABLE.]