The common hearth could no longer serve as the sphere of the culinary operations of an expensive cook with his retinue of menials; the cooking fire was removed to one of the rooms near the back-gate of the house, which finally became an ample kitchen replete with all the imported means of satisfying the growing luxury of the table; and the member of the family loitering in the hall, or the visitor admitted through its portals, was spared the annoyances of strong smells and pungent smoke. The Roman family also discovered the discomfort of dining in a large and scantily furnished room, not too well lit and accessible to the intrusions of the chance domestic and the caller. It was deemed preferable to take the common meal in a light and airy upper chamber, and the new type of Coenaculum satisfied at once the desire for personal comfort and for that specialisation in the use of apartments which is one of the chief signs of an advancing material civilisation. The great hall had become the show-room of the house, but even for this purpose its dimensions proved too small. Such was the quantity of curios and works of art collected by the conquering or travelled Roman that greater space was needed for the exhibition of their rarity or splendour. This space was gained by the removal from the Atrium of all the domestic obstacles with which it had once been cumbered. It might now be made slightly smaller in its proportion to the rest of the house and yet appear far more ample than before. The space by which its sides were diminished could now be utilised for the building of two wings or Alae, which served the threefold purpose of lighting the hall from the sides, of displaying to better advantage, as an oblong chamber always does, the works of art which the lord of the mansion or his butler[28] displayed to visitor or client, and lastly of serving as a gallery for the family portraits, which were finally removed from the Atrium, to be seen to greater advantage and in a better light on the walls of the wings. These now displayed the family tree through painted lines which connected the little shrines holding the inscribed _imagines_ of the great ancestors of the house.[29] It is also possible that the Alae served as rooms for more private audiences than were possible in the Atrium.[30] From the early morning crowd which thronged the hall individuals or groups might have been detached by the butler, and led to the presence of the great statesman or pleader who paced the floor in the retirement of one of these long side-galleries. [31] Business of a yet more private kind was transacted in the still greater security of the Tablinum, the archive room and study of the house. Here were kept, not only the family records and the family accounts, but such of the official registers and papers as a magistrate needed to have at hand during his year of office.[32] The domestic transaction of official business was very large at Rome, for the State