Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Sacrarium

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. 

SACRA'RIUM (ἱεροφυλάκιον). In a general sense any place where sacred things are kept, but more especially the sacristy of a temple, in which the utensils, vessels, implements, &c., used in the service of the deity, were preserved (Serv. ad Virg. Aen. xii. 199. Ov. Met. x. 691.); whence the town of Caere, to which the Vestals fled with the sacred fire and property of their temple when Rome was besieged by the Gauls, is termed by Livy the sacristy of the Roman people  — sacrarium populi Romani.

2. A private chapel in a man's own house (Cic. Fam. xiii. 2.), such as are attached to some of the mansions of our old nobility and great Catholic families. An apartment of this nature has been discovered in one of the houses at Pompeii, consisting of a square room, with an absis at one end for the statue of the divinity, an altar in the centre within a small peristyle of four columns which supported the roof, and furnished with a separate flight of stairs on each of its flanks, conducting to the suites of apartments situated in the upper story.

3. An apartment in the Imperial palace (Auson. Grat. Act.); so styled in order to flatter the emperor by insinuating his deification.