You enter then, usually, by a small entrance passage (called _vestibulum_) into a hall, sometimes with (but more frequently without) the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors communicating with several bed chambers, (among which is the porter's,) the best of these being usually appropriated to country visiters. At the extremity of the hall, on either side to the right and left, if the house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tesselated pavement of the hall is invariably a square shallow reservoir for rain water (classically termed _impluvium_,) which was admitted by a hole in the roof above; the said aperture being covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes (but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome) placed images of the household gods; the hospitable hearth, often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, was, at Pompeii, almost invariably formed by a moveable _brasier_; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal so firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its position. This chest was supposed to be the money-box or coffer of the master of the house; though, as no money has been found in any of the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes rather designed for ornament than use.