32 THE ATRIUM VESTZ. 
Architectural Details: The original height of the rooms of this group 
can not be determined, since the period of the upper part of the walls is 
uncertain. The height of the exedra is at present 11 meters, while that of 
the rooms adjoining is but a little less. The court on the south, the upper 
part of which is wholly rebuilt, is 8 meters high. The walls of the court on 
the north are too much destroyed to allow of the possibility of any decision 
concerning them. There are no traces in any of the rooms of the original 
pavements. They were possibly of opus sectile of the same type as those 
still preserved in the rooms? of the same period on the south. For the first 
time in the history of the building, a system of permanent hypocausts* was 
constructed. Arched openings‘ 75 centimeters wide and 70 centimeters high 
were placed beneath the windows of the small rooms, through which these 
hypocausts were supplied with fuel. In the rooms on the south of the exedra 
an upper floor, supported by amphorze cut in halves, was added at a later 
time as a protection against the dampness. The original decoration has in 
no case been preserved. The marble posts and wall-facings in the exedra 
belong to a much later period. No traces of an upper story or of a stairway 
leading to one are left. The existence of an upper story over the central 
rooms is, however, suggested by the thickness of the walls. 
The Rooms on the South: The group of rooms on the south’ is much 
smaller than that just described, filling merely the space occupied in the 
earlier periods by the tablinum.® In orientation and level the rooms in 
general conformed to those immediately adjoining them. The walls are in 
large part preserved for several meters above the ground. 
Arrangement and Description of the Rooms: The independence of this 
group of rooms is clear from the lack of any structural connection between 
them and the rooms on either side and from their dissimilarity in type of 
construction. In the walls between which the rooms have been inserted, 
moreover, doors’ have been cut into the adjoining rooms for the admission 
of light and air and to afford greater ease in communication between the 
various parts of the building. These doors would certainly have been built 
and not cut, had the rooms under discussion been erected at the same time 
as those adjoining them or earlier. They must, therefore, have been built 
at another and a later period. That they form not only an independent 
1 The pavement of large slabs of fine marble which ‘4 The most of these openings have been filled in at 
still remains in the exedra is much later. a later time; one of them, however, in the 
2 Plan C,13.candd. The pavement in room 11 was north court still remains open. 
inserted, probably, at this time. » Plan’ C3113 a-2- 
§The hypocausts of the Atrium do not form a_ Cf. plan B, 13 and plan C, 13 a-d. 
single system supplied with heat from a 7 The doors have been cut down to the level of this 
common source, but were arranged in small period, as is shown by the traces of stucco 
groups, which were heated by fires placed on the lower part of the posts. This would 
directly underneath the upper floor. These not have been done, had the doors belonged 
fires were supplied with fuel through openings to the next period, in which the level was 
in the rear of the various rooms. raised. 
