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Christian at Herculaneum
This conclusion is strengthened by a consideration of the other piece of furniture which the room held. It was a small wooden cupboard, thirty six inches or so high and half as wide, found directly beneath the cross on the wall. It looks as if it was used for worship. Indeed, it bears a striking resemblance to the wooden chests so common in Pompeii and Herculaneum, in which the household gods were housed. I suggest that this Christian prayer desk, if such it is, was directly developed from the pagan wooden chest and furnishes us, therefore, with yet another example of pagan customs, cult objects, words and symbols "baptized" by the growing Christian movement.1
The Christian Home
If this admittedly very speculative reconstruction is anywhere near the truth, it gives concrete attestation of the process which we know must have been going on at the time, the gradual infiltration of the middle and upper classes of Roman society by Christianity through the lives and words of slaves and freedmen in their environment. This is how that unique institution, the Christian home, began to make an impression on surrounding paganism.1
1"Evangelism in the Early Church" by Dr. Michael Green.
"The house at Herculaneum has a chapel."
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