There are many special kinds of beds for reading, dining, and for sleeping. Of course the latter are the most elaborate, and in Calvus’s and Gratia’s chamber the wooden bed is so high that it has to be reached by a footstool. The legs are of bronze, elaborately turned and carved, the frame is veneered with tortoise shell and the supports at the sides of the sloping pillow-rest are set with plates of silver. As for the thick mattresses they are of the finest down and the ample blankets are dyed purple and embroidered with gold thread. The couches in the triclinium are lighter and lower although of very fine cabinet work,[24] but they have to be made larger for they must accommodate three diners. The reading couches (_lectuli_--“little beds”) are still lighter and simpler, although of elegant design, and those scattered under the peristylium are overlaid with plates of gold leaf. [Illustration: ROMAN LAMPS: collection in Naples Museum.] =43. Elegant Chairs and Costly Tables.=--Excluding the couches the furnishings of a Roman domus seem much simpler than those used in a later age. There are few carpets, no great loss in view of the beautiful mosaic floors, although there are rich, heavy portières across many passages. The chairs, frequently of light and elegant workmanship, are as a rule simple and often backless. Some, however, are splendidly inlaid with silver, and there are a few great _cathedræ_, ponderous arm chairs with lofty backs. [Illustration: ALTAR WITH DESIGN OF A CURULE CHAIR.] In the atrium, moreover, there stands an object surveyed with great pride by Calvus’s children--their father’s _sella curulis_, the folding, backless arm chair with a seat of leather straps which the senator had occupied while prætor. Presently (they hope) he will sit again thereon before the admiring Senate house, this time presiding as the veritable consul. The “curule chair,” despite its gold and ivory arms and cushions covered with purple Alexandrian fabrics, is anything but a comfortable seat through a tedious official ceremony; but who thinks of personal comfort when reckoning the glories of its public occupancy! Besides the chairs there are everywhere the tables. These are numerous but low and small. In the dining room they are round and barely two feet in diameter; but what a wealth of art and taste has gone into their making! All are of extremely fine wood, but the three reserved for the regular couches of the dinner guests have their legs overlaid with plates of magnificently embossed gold, and the material upon the tops is composed of single thin slabs cross-sawn from the trunks of the great citrus trees (a form of cypress) on Mount Atlas.