KITCHENS AND DINING ROOMS AT POMPEII ... - Get a Free Blog

Rustics and Romans of the past are said to have both cooked and eaten in common areas
(vestibulum and atrium) near the front of the house. When spatially distinct kitchens appear (ca.
the turn of the second century B.C.), only slaves are mentioned eating there; masters and guests
dine in a dining room. Cooking and eating are re-acquainted for masters and guests only in the
Imperial period, when cooking is reported in dining rooms.
In the dining room Seneca reports that it was current fashion to move the kitchen
(consisting of the kitchen staff, the cooking equipment and the cooking itself) right into the
dining room. In describing a friend who is sick and cannot attend his customary dinners, he
remarks:
'Such an unfortunate sickness,' people say. Why?... Because there is no bustling
of cooks about the dining room, bringing in the very fire-places along with the
food? For these days, this is considered luxury: the kitchen accompanies the
dinner so that no food cools off and becomes insufficiently scalding for today's
callused palates. 'Such an unfortunate sickness,' they say. Well, he'll be eating
just as much as he digests. 81
Seneca is referring to portable metal braziers, normally called foculi or foculares, that could be
carried into a dining room to cook the food or keep it warm. 82 Seneca uses the word focus
(normally used to describe a fixed hearth), perhaps because he is arguing against excess at table,
and the image of tearing up a fixed hearth and carrying it into the dining room is more shocking
and vivid than a common scene of bringing in a brazier.
Juvenal describes the throng of clients that visit the houses of their patrons every day,
each with his own portable kitchen on the back of a slave:
Surely you see with how much smoke the give-away is being practiced? There
are a hundred guests; a personal kitchen follows each one. Even Corbulo could
hardly carry so many huge vessels, so much stuff laid upon the head, as that
which a miserable little slave bears with head straight, fanning the flame as he
trots behind. 83
By using the word culina to describe the portable brazier that the slave carries to heat the daily
sportula offered by patron to client, Juvenal comically exaggerates the load of the slave, and
81 Sen. Ep. 78.23:'O infelicem aegrum!' Quare?...Quia non circa cenationem eius tumultus cocorum est ipsos cum
opsoniis focos transferentium? Hoc enim iam luxuria commenta est: ne quis intepescat cibus, ne quid palato iam
calloso parum ferveat, cenam culina prosequitur 'O infelicem aegrum!' Edet quantum concoquat (Loeb text,
author's translation).
82 Suet. Vit. 8.2 repeats a story that a stove (caminus) set fire to Vitellius' dining room at his camp
headquarters. It is not clear if the stove was intended for cooking, heating or both, because the scene of this
passage takes place in Germany at the beginning of January.
83 Juv. 3.249-253: Nonne vides quanto celebretur sportula fumo? Centum convivae, sequitur sua quemque culina.
Corbulo vix ferret tot vasa ingentia, tot res inpositas capiti, quas recto vertice portat servulus infelix et cursu ventilat
ignem (Loeb text, author's translation).
73