Far more important than these chambers is the great dining room (_triclinium_). Calvus’s friends tell him he really ought to rebuild his residence and provide a special “summer dining room” on the north side of the house, and a warmer “winter dining room” on the south side as in all the newer mansions.[19] However, his triclinium is very handsome; with good pilasters of Hymettus marble, fine statuary, sideboards loaded with rare old plate, and a ceiling fretted with ivory and arranged so that it can be partly opened at the climax of a feast to drop garlands and to spray down unguents upon the guests. In the rear of the house there are also a smaller breakfast room, and a special hall (_oecus_) for the display of even additional art objects, likewise a library, and a private bathroom, both to be described later; while in the rear of the peristylium is one of the most important rooms assuredly in the entire mansion--the kitchen (_culina_), where Gratia’s proudest possession, a truly superior cook, prepares dinners that atone for the sorrowful fact that “we have only one dining room.” Off the peristylium, too, one notes what amounts to a miniature chapel. Before a temple front composed of short columns mounted on a kind of table are set several little images of beautiful fairy-like creatures of both sexes. These are the family _lares_, the honored guardians of the old house of the Calvi. Once they stood in the atrium, but in later days although withdrawn to the more private peristylium, they have not ceased to be dear. Calvus discusses with his philosopher friends, “Are there really any gods?”; but he never fails to cast his incense night and morning upon the small gilt brazier which smokes before his family lares. In the kitchen, also, there is a second little niche and still other images of the lares, where they receive bits of food and innocent prayers from all the servants--even more devotedly than from the lordly folk in the peristylium. =36. The Garden and the Slaves’ Quarters.=--Another passage beside the kitchen leads us into what can be just glimpsed as one enters the atrium--the rear garden set in by high walls. Land is too valuable in Rome for Calvus to permit himself much more than a short graveled walk under a few fine old box trees, but by an intensive gardening that another age might style “Japanese” there is laid out a miniature brooklet, a cascade plunging into a little pool containing tame lampreys, and some small pines, which have been forced into the semblance of a tiny forest. A broad marble seat now strewn with cushions, a good statue of a dancing Pan, the rushing music of the water, and the breeze rustling the foliage--all these make the tumultuous, squalid street and the dirty garrets of the _Flavia Victoria_ seem very far away.--In reality they are barely a stone’s throw down the hill. [Illustration: CORNER IN A GARDEN IN REAR OF A ROMAN HOUSE.]