After this description of what may be considered a representative Roman house, it is necessary to repeat that it is but typical.  Many were considerably smaller, containing, for example, no peristyle.  Many on the contrary were far more spacious and sumptuous, possessing more than one hall and more than one peristyle, and varying the nature as well as the number and position of those portions of the house.  In exceptional cases the hall had no opening in the ceiling and therefore no basin below, but was covered with a simple gabled roof which shed the rain-water into the street.  In exceptional cases also there was no “parlour” of the kind described a little while ago.  The situation of the house, enlargements made after the main part was built, the joining of two houses into one, or other causes, often modified the rectangular and symmetrical appearance presented in the plan hitherto given.  Such modifications are, however, better illustrated by a comparison of the plans of two well-known Pompeian houses than by any amount of verbal description.  The first is that of Pansa, which forms the main portion of a whole block, smaller dwellings and shops unconnected with the Pansa establishment being built round and into it at various points.  The arrangements of this house closely approach the normal or simple type described in this chapter.  The second is the famous house of the Vettii, which departs somewhat freely from the customary disposition of apartments.

[Illustration:  FIG. 41.—­HOUSE OF PANSA AT POMPEII.]

The parts within the dark lines belong to the one house; the rest are other houses and shops built into the block.

1.  Vestibule             11.  Rooms
2.  Passage               12.  Dining-Room
3.  Hall                  13.  Winter Dining-Room
4.  Rooms                 14.  Saloon (Drawing-Room)
5.  Wings                 15.  Kitchen
6.  Dining-Room           16.  Carriage Room
7.  Parlour               17.  Boudoir
8.  Passage               18.  Portico
9.  Library?              19.  Saleroom
10.  Peristyle             20.  Passage to Side Door

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

[Illustration:  FIG. 42.—­HOUSE OF THE VETTII AT POMPEII.  A second storey extended over the corners and front parts included under the nine small crosses.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 43—­SPECIMEN OF PAINTED ROOM.]

It would be tempting to indulge in rhetoric and to dwell upon the magnificence of some of the more luxurious houses of the wealthy Romans; to describe their ostentation of rich marbles in pillar, wall, or floor—­the white marbles of Carrara, Paros, and Hymettus; the Phrygian marble or “pavonazzetto” its streakings of crimson or violet; the orange-golden glow of the Numidian stone of “giallo antico”; the Carystian marble or “cipollino” with its onion-like layers of white and pale-green; the serpentine variety from Laconia, and the porphyry from Egypt.