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

The ancients did not have stibadia, but feasted upon three couches laid out with
coverlets, whence the expression 'to lay out a triclinium'. Thus Cicero says: 'he
was ordering the triclinia to be laid out, and laid out in the forum'. Whence it is
clear that those people are in error, who say that their basilica or cenatio is a
'triclinium'. 136
Servius implies that cenatio and basilica are terms which people commonly use to denote their
dining rooms in late antiquity. He also declares that people are using the term triclinium in an
incorrect or archaic manner, because the three-couch arrangement has gone out of fashion.
Replacing the three-couch arrangement with semicircular seating was a gradual process
that began with the introduction of the stibadium in the first century A.D. The earliest sources
that use the term stibadium are Martial, who makes its curved form quite clear, and the Younger
Pliny. 137 One curved dining-couch does appear as a permanent masonry fixture outdoors in
Pompeii, in the peristyle of VII.3.15, and several are depicted in painted scenes. 138 No stibadia are
present in this study sample, except for those painted on the inside faces of the open air masonry
dining couches in garden (23) of the Casa dell'Efebo (I.7.10-12).
The function of a room can be flexible. Pliny describes a room in his Laurentine villa
which can serve either as a place to sleep or a place to dine:
On the other side (of a cavaedium) is a most elegant cubiculum, then either a large
cubiculum or a modest cenatio which is lit strongly by the sun and by its reflection
off the sea. 139
Householders had rooms which were of dimensions, proportions, and location such that they
could serve several different uses (e.g. a cubiculum or a cenatio). 140 Because a cubiculum is a room
136 Serv. A. 1.698: Antiqui stibadia non habebant, sed stratis tribus lectis epulabantur, unde et triclinium sterni
dicitur. Sic Cicero 'sterni triclinia, et in foro sterni iubebat'. Unde apparet errare eos, qui triclinium dicunt ipsam
basilicam vel cenationem (Thilo & Hagen 1961 text, author's translation).
137 Mart. 14.87: "Receive a sigma couch inlaid with crescent lines of tortoise-shell. It takes eight: let
everyone come who shall be my friend"; Stibadia. Accipe lunata scriptum testudine sigma. Octo capit; veniat
quisquis amicus erit (Loeb text and translation); see also Mart. 10.48; Plin. Ep. 5.6.36-37.
138 Soprano 1950, 291, fig. 28.7 & 306-310 and Jashemski 1979, 90. The painted evidence for stibadia at
Pompeii is summarized by Dunbabin 1991, 133-134. See also Rossiter 1991, Förtsch 1993, 93-100, Salza Prina
Ricotti 1979.
139 Plin. Ep. 2.17.10: Ex alio latere cubiculum est politissimum; diende vel cubiculum grande vel modica cenatio, quae
plurimo sole, plurimo mari lucet. (Teubner text, author's translation). The same room is apparently mentioned
earlier in the letter, again as a large cubiculum (2.17.6): Huius a laeva retractius paulo cubiculum est amplum.
See Förtsch 1993, esp. p.101 & Taf. 42, for a discussion of the arrangement of the rooms in this text and their
hypothetical disposition on the ground.
140 The term cubiculum is commonly translated as "bedroom", and equated by many scholars with a sleeping
area (e.g. Elia 1932, Clarke 1991, 12). Allison (1992b, 14, 46-52, 80-85) however has thrown doubt on this
equation, noting the wide range of finds found in rooms traditionally labeled cubicula in her study houses,
and questioning the assumption that niches in the walls of these small, closed rooms always indicate the
location of beds. A more careful Latin term for rooms with direct evidence for sleeping (beds, bedding,
rectangular raised platforms at one end of the rooms, and sometimes niches) would be dormitorium
cubiculum (Adam 1984, 327-330, Förtsch 1993, 54-55).
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