And
tucked away between them in narrow bands of black are the gayest little
scenes in the world. They are worth going all the way across the ocean
to see. Psyches--delicate little winged girls like fairies--are picking
slender flowers and putting them into tall, graceful baskets. They are
so light and so tiny that they seem to be flitting along the wall
like bright butterflies. In other panels plump little cupids--winged
boys--are playing at being men. They are picking grapes and working a
wine press and selling wine. It is big work for tiny creatures, and they
must kick up their dimpled legs and puff out their chubby cheeks to do
it. They are melting gold and carrying gold dishes and selling jewelry
and swinging a blacksmith's hammer with their fat little arms. They are
carrying roses to market on a ragged goat and weaving rose garlands and
selling them to an elegant little lady. Everywhere these gay little
creatures are skipping about at their play among the beautiful red
spaces and large pictures. This was surely a charming dining room in the
old days. The guests must have been merry every time their eyes lighted
upon the bright wall. And if they looked out at the open side, there
smiled the garden with its flowers and statues and splashing fountains
and columns.

There lived in this house two men by the name of Vettius. We know this
because the excavators found here two seals. In those days men fastened
their letters and receipts and bills with wax. While the wax was soft
they stamped their names in it with a metal seal. On the stamps that
were found in this house were carved Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus
Vettius Conviva. Perhaps they were freedmen who once had been slaves of
Aulus Vettius. But they must have earned a fortune for themselves, for
there were two money chests in the house. And they must have had slaves
of their own to take care of their twenty rooms and more. In the tiny
kitchen the excavators found a good store of charcoal and the ashes of
a little fire on top of the stone stove. And on its three little legs
a bronze dish was sitting over the dead fire. A slave must have been
cooking his master's dinner when the volcano frightened him away.

Vettius' dining room is empty of its wooden tables and couches. But some
houses had stone ones built in their gardens for pleasant summer days.
These the ashes did not crush, and they are still in place. Columns
stood about the tables and vines climbed up t