APOLLO AFTER THE SLAYING OF THE DRAGON AGAMEMNON IN THE SHRINE OF ARTEMIS] The excellent preservation of a large part of both the earlier and the later decoration gives the house the appearance of an art gallery. To describe fully and interpret all the paintings would require a small volume. The limitations of space make it possible to present here only the more important; we commence with those in the large room at the right of the peristyle, which are the most interesting of the entire series. This apartment (_q_) may have been used either as a dining room or as a sitting room. The scheme of decoration is indicated in Fig. 163, which presents the division of the end wall; the side walls had five large panels instead of three. [Illustration: Fig. 163.--Scheme of wall division in the large room opening on the peristyle.] The ground of the base is black. The stripe separating the base from the main part of the wall is red, except the small sections (4, 4), which have a black ground; the vertical stripes between the panels are black, and the same color forms the background of the border above. The ground of the panels is cinnabar red. The painting in the central panel (1) has not been preserved; in those at the sides (2) are floating figures. The upper division of the wall (6) is filled with an architectural framework upon a white background, against which many figures, skilfully disposed, stand out with unusual distinctness. The floating figures in the side panels differ from those found elsewhere in the choice of subjects. Here instead of satyrs and bacchantes we find gods and heroes. In one panel is Poseidon with a female figure, perhaps Amymone; in another, Apollo with Daphne. Bacchus and Ariadne also appear, and Perseus with Andromeda. The figures in the upper part of the wall at the end of the room belong to the bacchic cycle,--Silenus, satyrs, and bacchantes. Of those at the sides, one, near the right-hand corner, represents a poet with a roll of papyrus against his chin, the open manuscript case, _scrinium_, at his feet; opposite him sits a maiden clothed in white, drinking in his words. A comic mask on the left wall seems to suggest a writer of comedy, and the scene reminds one of the letter of Glycera to Menander, in Alciphron: "What is Athens without Menander, what Menander without Glycera? Without me, who make ready your masks, who lay out your costume, and then stand behind the scenes pressing my finger tips into the palms of my hands till the applause breaks forth. Then all a-trembling I breathe again, and enfold you, godlike poet, in my arms." The figures in which we are specially interested, however, are not those in the upper or middle division of the wall, but those in the black stripes (3), nine and ten inches wide, under the panels, in the narrow sections (4) and in the corresponding sections of the base. [Illustration: Fig. 164.--Psyches gathering flowers. Wall painting in the house of the Vettii.]