This broad central space, both as regards its dimensions and
decorations, is wholly copied from the Tablinum of the house of Apollo.
The entire upper part is white, with delicate lines of blight colours
forming elegant patterns upon it. In the centre of the ceiling, which is
gently curved, is a naked Venus upon a green hippocamp or sea monster. A
flying Cupid holds reins, and another flying Cupid holds a mirror with a
long handle. Mus. Bor., vol. viii., tav. 10. Pitture d’Ercalano, vol.
ii., p. 247. The ground of the original group, found at Herculaneum, is
black. The Museo Borbonico text describes the second Cupid as holding
an umbrella, but the form is peculiarly that of a mirror, and
Appuleius, Met. 4, in his account of the train attending Venus as she
proceeded to the palace of Oceanus, makes especial mention of one
holding a mirror. The passage is so illustrative of the ideas of the age
that produced these paintings, that some part of it may be transcribed
with advantage.
“The daughters of Nereus, too, were present singing in tuneful harmony;
Portunus, too, rough with his azure-coloured beard; and Salacia, weighed
down with her lapful of fish; with little Palaemon, their charioteer,
upon a dolphin, and then troops of Tritons furrowing the main in all
directions. One softly sounded his melodious shell; another with a
silken canopy protected her from the sun; a third held a mirror, while
others, again, swam yoked to her car.”
The spandrils formed by the architrave of the peristyle and atrium are
filled with green marine animals on white ground.