Chapter XI - House of the second Fountain
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The house of the second fountain of shells is fully equal
in interest to the former, and, in some respects, superior.
The entrance is from the street of the Mercuries, and the
staircase ascends from the vestibule.
There is a second entrance, from the same street, by which a
person might arrive at the garden, and the inmost recesses of
the house, without passing through the atrium -rather
a peculiar circumstance at Pompeii. There is also a second
staircase ; but the ornaments of this second entry are, by no
means, inferior to the rest of the house, so as to render it
probable that it was the entry for the domestics.
The compluvium of the atrium is furnished with
two mouths for cisterns, and, from one, the communication
with the inner fountain, by means of leaden pipes, is
visible, probably receiving the water after it had performed
its part at the fountain. We have here only one ala on
the right, but, on the left, is the faux, and, in the
centre, a small tablinum, the size of which is,
however, amply compensated for by a deep inner portico of
four columns placed on two sides of a court or garden, at the
further side of which is a second fountain of vitreous mosaic
and shells, in form, taste, and workmanship, very like that
in the house adjoining.
In a line with the tablinum are two other apartments
of the same size, one of which was probably the
triclinium, and the other an exedra or
pinacotheca. There are only two cubiculi in
this court, and only three in the atrium, the upper
floor probably supplying the other necessary bedrooms.
The step from the atrium to the tablinum is
faced with a remarkably pretty sculpture of leaves and
flowers. The triclinium is painted within in imitation
of brickwork -a taste which continues to prevail in modern
Italy.
The other room is decorated with pictures of game and
hunting, so that, if it be true that the ornaments were
analogous to the uses of the chamber, these would be more
appropriate to the dining-room than to the
pinacotheca.
Not only do the
leaden pipes, but even the brass cocks, called
epistomium and papilla by the ancients, remain
in this house of the second fountain. By these the water was
permitted to play or stopped with the same ease, and, in
precisely the same manner, as in the present stage of science
and art.
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The walls of this court or garden present us with three
pictures of a species quite different from any thing at
Pompeii. The general effect may be learned from plate LVI ;
but, as the pictures themselves are given in the three
following plates, it is unnecessary, at present, to notice
them more particularly.
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If the custodi can be believed, there was found, at
the time of the excavation, on the left side of the
brink of the fountain, the pretty sedent bronze figure
now in the museum at Naples. He had a basket, with a
little bronze fish in it, on his left arm. Under his
right was an outre, or skin full of liquor, and the
hand seemed as if he might have held a fishing-rod of
cane. On the little central column in the
piscina stood a cupid holding a dove which
spouted water. On the right brink was a marble
caryatis, of the same size as the fisherman on
the left. Water seems also to have fallen from a mask
in the centre of the schola or concave of the fountain.
The whole mass of the fountain projects five feet seven
inches from the wall. It is seven feet wide in front,
and the height, up to the eaves of the pediment, is
seven feet seven inches.
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