For those familiar with Pompeii, the mosaic with the guard dog and its Latin inscription Cave canem (Warning of the dog) is a well-known symbol of the Roman city that was fatally buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. Less well known is that this entrance mosaic is not the only one of its kind from Pompeii.

For the Roman official, the atrium was a place for both private life and public light. In the morning, the doors to the house could be left open and show the entrance fauces as well as the atrium, for example during the salutatio when the house owner was being courted by his clients. Some house owners chose to present themselves at the threshold with a mosaic floor, as is the case with some 30 in Pompeii.

In my doctoral thesis in Ancient Culture and Society, Greeting the visitor in Pompeii. Roman fauces mosaics contextualized, I have collected all the fauces mosaics in Pompeii with the aim of gaining new knowledge about the entrance of the atrium house as a borderland between the street space and the private property - both public spheres, albeit in different ways. The black-and-white mosaics are dated from the Late Republic to the Early Imperial period (c. 80 BC-79 AD). The iconography includes both figurative and ornamental motifs as well as Latin inscriptions. Based on studies of mosaic iconography, the function of the entrance and the location of the houses in the city, I ask the main question of whether the mosaics, more than other art forms, reflected the house owner's own voice in a dialog with the outside world.