Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Peristylium

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

PERISTYL'IUM (περιστύλιον). A peristyle; that is, a colonnade round a courtyard, or in the interior of a building, which has the columns on the inside and the walls without; whereas the term peripterus is used to express a structure designed upon a plan precisely the reverse of this; viz. a colonnade on the exterior of a building, which has the columns on its outside, and the wall within. Suet. Aug. 82. Plin. Ep. x. 23. 2. Schneider. Vitruv. iii. 3. 9.

2. The peristyle of a Roman house, which formed the second or inner division of the general ground-plan, corresponding in locality with the Gynaeconitis of a Greek domicile; and was regarded as the internal or private portion of the edifice, containing the domestic apartments in the ordinary occupation of the proprietor and his family, to which none but their immediate friends and acquaintances had access. It consisted of an open space, surrounded internally with a colonnade, like the Atrium, but covering a larger area, open to the sky, and sometimes laid out as a garden, with a fountain and impluvium in the centre; the apartments occupied by the family being distributed round its sides, and opening upon the colonnade in question. It was separated from the Atrium by the tablinum and fauces, which made passages of communication between the two divisions. (Vitruv. vi. 3. 7.) The illustration (Peristylium/2.1) above represents an elevation of half the peristyle of a house at Pompeii, restored by Mazois; and its relative situation with respect to the rest of the house will be understood by referring to the ground-plan at p. 248. col. 2 on which it is marked F F.

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  Peristylium/2.1