The Italic house in the beginning was not a city residence shut in by party walls, but the isolated habitation of a countryman. The design of the alae, as of the recesses in the Low Saxon farmhouse, was to furnish light to the atrium, which, as we have seen, was completely covered by a roof, there being only a small hole to let out the smoke. The large windows in the rear of the alae of the house of Sallust may be looked upon as a survival; but in city houses generally light could not be taken in this way from the sides. After the compluvium had come into general use, a conservative tradition still retained the alae whenever possible, though they no longer answered their original purpose. V. THE ROOMS ABOUT THE ATRIUM. THE ANDRON In front there were rooms at either side of the entrance, ordinarily fitted up as shops and opening on the street, but sometimes used as dining rooms or sleeping rooms, or for other domestic purposes. On each side of the atrium were two or three small sleeping rooms; in narrow houses these, as well as one or both of the alae, were occasionally omitted. At the rear were one or two rooms of the same depth as the tablinum, used in most cases as dining rooms. They frequently had a single broad entrance on the side of the peristyle or the garden (Fig. 134, 22), but were sometimes entered by a door from the atrium or from one of the alae (Figs. 115, 121). The door on the side of the atrium seems generally to have been made when the house was built; if the owner did not wish to use it, it was walled up and treated as a blind door, an ornament of the atrium. The rooms about the atrium in the pre-Roman period were made high, those in front and at the sides often measuring fifteen feet to the edge of the ceiling, which had the form of a groined vault. The rear rooms were still higher, the crown of the vaults being as far above the floor as the flat ceiling of the tablinum. A corresponding height was given to the doors; those in the house of the Faun measure nearly fourteen feet. The upper part of the doorway was doubtless pierced for the admission of light in the manner indicated by wall paintings, and shown in our restoration of one side of the atrium in the house of Sallust (Figs. 261, 262). The andron was a passage at the right or the left of the tablinum, connecting the atrium with the peristyle (Figs. 115, 121). The name was used originally to designate an apartment in the Greek house, but was applied by the Romans to a corridor. In modern times the passage has often been erroneously called fauces. The andron is lacking only in small houses, or in those in which a different connection is made between the front and rear portions by means of a second atrium, or other rooms. VI. GARDEN, PERISTYLE, AND ROOMS ABOUT THE PERISTYLE