Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Faux

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. 

FAUX. From its original meaning, the gullet or entrance to the stomach, is used to designate any narrow pass or confined entrance either in natural or artificial objects; and expressly to a narrow passage which formed a communication between the two principal divisions of a Roman house, the atrium and peristylium. It was situated by the side of the tablinum; and as there were frequently two of these, one on each side of the above-named apartment, the word is commonly used in the plural (fauces, Vitruv. vi. 3. 6.) The object of it was to obviate the inconvenience of making a passage room of the tablinum, as well as to afford a ready access from one part of the house to the other, when that apartment was closed in with screens. The relative position which it bore to the other members of the house will be understood by referring to the ground-plan at p. 248., where it is marked E, and its general appearance in elevation by the annexed engraving (Faux/1.1), which presents a view from the house of the Dioscuri at Pompeii, with the ceiling only restored. The foreground shows the interior of the atrium, with its impluvium in the floor; the large deep recess on the left at the back is an open tablinum, showing the peristyle through it; and the low dark door at the side is the faux, which opens at its further end into the peristyle in the same way as it does upon the atrium on the side here shown.

2. Also in the plural; the stalls or stables for the horses and chariots in the Circus. (Ennius ap. Cic. Div. i. 48. Cassiodor. Var. Ep. iii. 51.) See CARCER, 2., where the object is described and illustrated.

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  Faux/1.1