. Pompeii : its life and art . et room for meat and fish thereis another interesting picturerepresenting the local divinitiesof Pompeii—personifications ofthe Sarno, of the coast, and ofthe country round about, sug-gesting that here the productsof the sea, the river, and theland might be obtained. Besides the rooms thus farconsidered, which served a prac-tical end, we find in the Macel-lum two other rooms which gaveto the building a religious char-acter and placed it under thespecial protection of the imperial house. One, at the middleof the east end (5), is a chapel consecrated to the worship
. Pompeii : its life and art . et room for meat and fish thereis another interesting picturerepresenting the local divinitiesof Pompeii—personifications ofthe Sarno, of the coast, and ofthe country round about, sug-gesting that here the productsof the sea, the river, and theland might be obtained. Besides the rooms thus farconsidered, which served a prac-tical end, we find in the Macel-lum two other rooms which gaveto the building a religious char-acter and placed it under thespecial protection of the imperial house. One, at the middleof the east end (5), is a chapel consecrated to the worship ofthe emperors. The floor is raised above that of the rest of thebuilding, and the entrance is reached by five steps leadingup from the rear of the colonnade. On a pedestal againstthe rear wall, and in four niches at the sides, were statues, ofwhich only the two in the niches at the right have been found ;these represent Octavia, the sister of Augustus (Fig. 38), andher son Marcellus, the hope of Augustus and of Rome, whose. Fig. 38. — Statue of Octavia, sister of Augus-tus, found in the chapel of the is represented in an attitude of wor-ship, with a libation saucer in her righthand, and offerings in her left. THE MACELLUM 99 untimely death was lamented by Virgil in those touching versesin the sixth book of the Aeneid. An arm with a globe was alsofound, doubtless belonging to the statue of an emperor that stoodon the pedestal at the rear. The chapel contains no altar; sacri-fice was probably offered on a portable bronze coal pan in theform of a tripod. Several beautiful examples of these movablealtars have been found, and there are numerous representationsof them in reliefs and in wall paintings. The Macellum in its present form was at the time of theeruption by no means an ancient building. While finished andno doubt in use at the time of the earthquake of 63, it hadbeen built not many years before, in the reign of Claudius or ofNero, in the place of an older
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishernewyorkmacmillan
