The wall decoration of both the temple and the colonnade was originally in the first style; a remnant of it may still be seen in the cella. After 63 it was modernized. The walls of the temple both within and without were done over in stucco, so as to resemble ashlar work of white marble; apparently it was the intention to give the appearance of real marble. The walls of the colonnade were painted in the latest Pompeian style, in bright colors, on a white ground. The decorative designs, to judge from the remains and from sketches, were not of special interest. There was a series of pictures representing scenes from the Trojan War,--the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, the embassy of the Greeks to Achilles, the battle between Achilles and Hector (the subject of this, however, is doubtful), the dragging of Hector's body about the walls of Troy, Priam making entreaty for the body of Hector, and the rape of the Palladium,--but they have long since perished and are known only from unsatisfactory drawings. Long before this modernizing of the temple the west side of the court had undergone a complete transformation. The peculiar bend in the street at the northwest corner (shown in Plan II), the diagonal line with which the small colonnade north of the court ends, and the narrow, quite inaccessible space between the west wall of the court and the houses lying near it, cannot easily be explained as a part of an original plan, but must rather be the result of later changes. The north and south street which now ends abruptly at the northwest corner must originally have been continued through the west colonnade, the ends of which were left open; this colonnade was then a public thoroughfare, on which the windows of houses opened, and perhaps also doors. We learn from an inscription that about the year 10 B.C. the city purchased from the residents whose property adjoined the colonnade, for the sum of 3000 sesterces (about $155), the right to build a wall in front of their windows; this explains how the narrow space between the wall on the north side of the court and the houses came to be cut off. The inscription reads: _M. Holconius Rufus d[uum] v[ir] i[uri] d[icundo] tert[ium], C. Egnatius Postumus d. v. i. d. iter[um] ex d[ecurionum] d[ecreto] ius luminum opstruendorum [=HS] ∞ ∞ ∞ redemerunt, parietemque privatum Col[oniae] Ven[eriae] Cor[neliae] usque ad tegulas faciundum coerarunt_,--'Marcus Holconius Rufus, duumvir with judiciary authority for the third time, and Gaius Egnatius Postumus, duumvir with judiciary authority for the second time, in accordance with a decree of the city council purchased for 3000 sesterces the right to shut off light (from adjoining buildings) and caused to be constructed a wall belonging to the colony of Pompeii to the height of the tiles,' that is, as high as the roofs of the houses.