The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

known by a great variety of names--_The Quaestor_, _the Centaur_, _Castor and Pollux_. The latter name (Dioscuri also) is derived from the spirited figures of the sons of _Leda_, painted reining in their horses on the side walls of the left-hand vestibulum. A running _Mercury_, with purse in hand, was painted on one of the posts of the same entrance. The exterior of this house is much more carefully decorated than was usual among the Pompeians. Many of the stucco ornaments have been picked out with colour. Highly-decorated wooden chests, lined and bound externally with iron, were found in the atrium, at the entrance of the left-hand ala, which still contained a few gold and silver coins that had escaped the grasp of some one who had returned to the spot after the destruction of the city, and made excavation, evidently directed to that particular spot. This house is one of the finest for the grandeur and taste displayed in every part of it. The celebrated paintings, _Perseus and Andromeda_, _Medea and her Children_, were found on the piers at the lower angles of the great central Peristyle. The great Exedra, or Triclinium, at its extremity, was closed with folding doors, the sockets of which still remain, and the floor was decorated with the famous circular mosaic of _The Lion crowned with Garlands by young Cupids_. (Engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. vii., tav. 61.) (Plan given in Gell’s Pompeiana, vol. ii., pl. 63.)