Room d
Description
Thomas Staub
This room is situated to the north of the central courtyard b and opens up towards it in nearly its entire width. The north wall, the partition wall towards the house of Caecilius Iucundus (V 1,26) is one of the few walls in this house still showing the original building material, a opus incertum of nearly exclusively lava stone set into a yellowish mortar. The other three walls of the room belong to one or several later rebuilding phases, using a more mixed variety of stones. Where preserved, the floor consisted of brick sheeting with remains of several structures set into it. These are too badly preserved as to allow for a clear identification, one of them at the west wall is probably a remain of a small basin, perhaps out of use in AD 79 (see below). Remains of the reddish water resistant plaster are preserved on the lower parts of all four walls, on the west wall still showing remains of a simple decoration with painted red stripes. The "middle-zone" seems to have had a verry simple decoration of white fields separated by probably red stripes, as can be seen for the N wall in the background of a Photo by T. Warsher from between 1937 - 1939. (Photo American Academy in Rome, Photographic Archive, Warsher collection no. 653, online zugänglich unter:
pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R5/5%2001%2028.htm
The function of this room needs some consideration. It has earlier been identified as the dining room of the house (Overbeck â€" Mau, 271), but judging by the floor and the installations as well as the water protecting plaster a function related to some kind of production might seem more plausible. Both the remains of the small basin and remains of a drain towards the courtyard could indicate the use of water, may be collected from the basin in the courtyard, in the course of the work carried out here.
Remains of en early layer of plaster can be seen on the north wall, mainly at the north-west corner, where it continuous towards the west, hidden behind the west wall of the house, constructed in a later phase of the building history. This plaster reappears in the apodyterion/tepidarium (room 19) of the adjacent House of the Bronze Bull (V 1,7) at some areas on its north wall, where the plaster belonging to the 3. Style decoration of this room has fallen down. This is a distinct indication for the original different parcelling of this part of the insula, where the house of Tofelanus Valens originally continued further to the west, an area that later was integrated into the dominating house of the Bronze Bull.
