There were no shops in the front of this house, but in one respect our restoration of the façade (Fig. 150) can not be taken as indicating the appearance of such houses in general. Here the front line was set back several feet from that of the adjoining houses on either side, and the space thus gained was given to a terrace or ramp about four feet high, mounted by steps at either end. The elevation of the front entrance above the sidewalk and the placing of the approaches at the ends of the ramp gave the house an appearance of seclusion. CHAPTER XL _THE HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET_ In the "Last Days of Pompeii" the house of the Tragic Poet is presented to us as the home of Glaucus. Though not large, it was among the most attractive in the city. It received its present form and decoration not many years before the eruption, apparently after the earthquake of 63, and well illustrates the arrangements of the Pompeian house of the last years. [Illustration: Fig. 152.--Plan of the house of the Tragic Poet. 1. Fauces. 2, 2. Shops. 3. Atrium. 4, 4. Stairways to upper floor. 5. Porter's room. 6, 6. Sleeping rooms. 6'. Storeroom. 7. Ala. 8. Tablinum. 9. Andron. 10. Peristyle. 11. House shrine. 12, 14. Sleeping rooms. 13. Kitchen. 15. Dining room. 16. Posticum.] The house received its name at the time of excavation, in consequence of a curious misinterpretation of a painting--now in the Naples Museum--which was found in the tablinum. The subject is the delivery to Admetus of the oracle which declared that he must die unless some one should voluntarily meet death in his place. On one side sits Admetus, with his devoted queen Alcestis; opposite them is the messenger who is reading the oracle from a roll of papyrus. The excavators thought that the scene represented a poet reciting his verses; and since they found, in the floor of the tablinum, a mosaic picture in which an actor is seen making preparations for the stage, they concluded that the figure with the papyrus in the wall painting must be a tragic poet. [Illustration: Fig. 153.--View of the house of the Tragic Poet, looking from the middle of the atrium through the tablinum toward the shrine at the end of the peristyle. At the right, the andron. In the foreground, a cistern curb, at the rear of the impluvium.]