Location of the House (Ins II, 1) .. View of Cardo III looking North, with the House of Aristides on the left and the entrance to the House of Argus centre right Plan of the House .. ...................................Plan of the House Key: A. Atrium Note: The use of the rooms has not been established due to the damage sustained by the property. Description .. .. The first building on the left on reaching Cardo III is the House of Aristides. The house derives its name from a statue found in the building. Unfortunately the statue was wrongly identified as that of Aristides, a Greek politician, whereas it was, in fact, a bust of Aeschines, the Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators. The original name, however, remains. ,, .. The entrance to the building opens directly onto a small atrium complete with central impluvium (pictured left) but the remainder of the house is not particularly well preserved. The use of the rooms is not clear because of the damage caused by the tunnels dug during the Bourbon period and the arbitrary restoration work carried out at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Like its neighbour, the House of Argus, the main entrance to the property may have been off Cardo II. The property had a lower floor, which was probably used for storage. This level had been built by extending the edge of the promontory toward the sea by means of a monumental wall in opus reticulatum (top left). Investigation of the gravel levels at the foot of the cliff beneath the House of Aristides reveals that at least part of the beach at the time of the eruption had been used as a dumping ground for waste building material. Brick and other spoils were found in this layer together with an accumulation of domestic painted plaster, probably as a result of renovations carried out after the earthquakes that preceded the eruption of AD79.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------