I enter right foot foremost, according to the Roman custom (to enter with the left foot was a bad omen); and I first salute the inscription on the threshold (salve) which bids me welcome.  The porter’s lodge (cella ostiarii) was usually hollowed out in the entryway, and the slave in question was sometimes chained, a precaution which held him at his post, undoubtedly, but which hindered him from, pursuing robbers.  Sometimes, there was only a dog on guard, in his place, or merely the representation of a dog in mosaic:  there is one in excellent preservation at the Museum in Naples retaining the famous inscription (Cave canem)—­“Beware of the dog!”

[Illustration:  The Atrium in the House of Pansa, restored.]

The atrium was not altogether a court, but rather a large hall covered with a roof, in the middle of which opened a large bay window.  Thus the air and the light spread freely throughout the spacious room, and the rain fell from the sky or dripped down over the four sloping roofs into a marble basin, called impluvium, that conveyed it to the cistern, the mouth of which is still visible.  The roofs usually rested on large cross-beams fixed in the walls.  In such case, the atrium was Tuscan, in the old fashion.  Sometimes, the roofs rested on columns planted at the four corners of the impluvium:  then, the opening enlarged, and the atrium became a tetrastyle.  Some authors mention still other kinds of atria—­the Corinthian, which was richly decorated; the dipluviatum, where the roof, instead of sloping inward, sloped outward and threw off the rain-water into the street; the testudinatum, in which the roof looked like an immense tortoise-shell, etc.  But these forms of roofs, especially the last mentioned, were rare, and the Tuscan atrium was almost everywhere predominant, as we find it on Pansa’s house.

Place yourself at the end of the alley, with your back toward the street, and you command a view of this little court and its dependencies.  It is needless to say that the roof has disappeared:  the eruption consumed the beams, the tiles have been broken by falling, and not only the tiles but the antefixes, cut in palm-leaves or in lion’s heads, which spouted the water into the impluvium.  Nothing remains but the basin and the partition walls which marked the subdivisions of the ground-floor.  One first discovers a room of considerable size at the end, between a smaller room and a corridor, and eight other side cabinets.  Of these eight cabinets, the six that come first, three to the right and three to the left, were bedrooms, or cubicula.  What first strikes the observer is their diminutive size.  There was room only for the bed, which was frequently indicated by an elevation of the masonry, and on that mattresses or sheepskins were stretched.  The bedsteads often were also of bronze or wood, quite like those of our time.  These cubicula received the air and the light through the door, which the Pompeians probably left open in summer.