The columns constructed of bricks were covered with a stucco that offered a fine surface for painting.

Pompeii had been a polychrome city.

All the columns, red or yellow, had capitals of divers colors.

The center of the walls was generally occupied with a little picture, usually erotic, painted on black varnished walls varied with red and amber hues.

On the friezes were processions of cupids and tritons, between rustic and maritime emblems.
Tired of his excursion through the dead city, Ferragut seated himself on a stone bench among the ruins of the temple, and looked over the map spread out on his knees, enjoying the titles with which the most interesting constructions had been designated because of a mosaic or a painting,--Villa of Diomedes, the House of Meleager, of the wounded Adonis, of the Labryinth, of the Faun, of the Black Wall.