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Regio
I
House
of Menander
This house, like the House
of the Cupids, belonged to Quintus
Poppćus. His family, the Poppći,
were very influential and were relatives of the Empress Poppća
Sabina. In the right corner there is a lararium (domestic
oratory) in the shape of a little temple.
A hall decorated with paintings of the Iliadic cycle
opens on the atrium: Ulysses tearing
Cassandra away from the Palladium (but it is Ajax
in the Homeric version), Cassandra,
The Trojan Horse and Laocöon. The garden (peristilium)
is closed by a parapet decorated with herons. On the northern side
there is a room (oecus) with a
green background and on top a frieze portraying the rape of the Lapiths
women by the centaurs.
At the center of the floor there is a small mosaic
portraying pygmies on the Nile.
At the bottom of the garden there is a library, a private votive chapel and a rectangular exedra framed by two other
exedras with apse. In the central exedra there is a painting of two
sitting poets: the one
reciting is Menander, while
the other one is probably Euripides.
The exedras with apse are decorated with Artemis
and Aphrodite.
The private
votive chapel contains a domestic oratory made of masonry; there we can
see two casts of the wooden portraits of the ancestors (imagines
maiorum). The reception rooms are on the eastern side of the
garden. At the center there is a huge hall (oecus
triclinare). The house has a small bath area. The
reconstruction of a farm cart (only parts in iron and bronze are
original) is exhibited in the stable (equile).
A case containing 118 pieces
of silverware weighing 24
kilograms was hidden in the basement of the house. The silverware is
exhibited at the National
Archaeological Museum in Naples.
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