I 10, 5 and 6

Abstract

This complex, straddling the north-west angle of the Casa del Menandro and the northeast angle of the Casa del Fabbro, consists of two separate elements. The first, occupying the ground floor, is a shop-cum-workshop (measuring approximately 3.50 m. × 4.60 m.) entered from entrance 6 (Pl. 73), with what is perhaps a living room (6A, measuring 2.30 m. × 4.50 m.) to the east of it. The second is a staircase (5), 1 m. wide, which ascends directly from a street doorway (Pl 73 (at the left)), between the two ground-floor rooms, to an apartment above Menandro rooms 5-7. There is no connection between the ground-floor establishment and the upstairs apartment, though the latter could clearly not have been installed without the cooperation of whoever owned the former (indeed, they were probably both the property of the owner of the Menandro (pp. 250-1)). The space underneath the staircase was exploited to create two arched recesses opening from the living room of the downstairs establishment (Pl 74; Fig- 39 (S22)), while the passage linking the living room with the shop passes under the higher part of the stairs (cf. Pl 76). The living room was lit by a square window in the north wall (Pl 75); the staircase by a window directly above its door. The apartment above Menandro rooms 5-7 has been mentioned in the discussion of the Casa del Menandro (pp. 51, 55, 56). The angle of the stairs and the level of the doorway at the top of them (Pl 76 ; Fig- 39 (S21, S23)) is consonant with a floor-level of 3.30 to 3.50 m. above the pavement of the Menandro ground floor. There was an upper floor also above our room 6A, with a latrine at the east end of the north wall, flushed by a downpipe which descends in the angle of the room (Pl 75). The level of this upper floor can be estimated at 3.25 m. above the ground floor, which (since the floor level in 6A is slightly higher than that of the adjacent rooms of the Casa del Menandro) would have tallied closely enough with the independent apartment entered from 110, 5.