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

designed to hold dinners, but also other sorts of gatherings and receptions where dining-couches
were not needed. A dining-hall is a large multi-purpose reception room, a salon, a basilica, in
which dining can take place when couches are set up inside. Consistent with this description is
the Latin term oecus or oecus tricliniaris. 261 Dining-halls of square shape or of greater width than
length are perhaps the oeci quadrati to which Vitruvius refers in his discussion of proper room
proportions. Particularly large dining-halls could have accommodated more than one set of three
dining-couches, like oeci Cyziceni. 262
Type DI, "Dinette"
There are a number of rooms in the study sample that are not large enough to contain a
full set of even the smallest three dining couches within their walls. The 'dinette' has no
proportional restrictions; it can be either particularly wide or particularly long, but not both wide
and long enough (more than 3.20 m. wide and 3.60 m. long) to hold a set of couches (Figs. 2.45,
5.87, 5.142, 5.161). 263 This type appears largely in small to medium sized houses and
(work)shop-houses. Sometimes they are the largest and only well-decorated room in the house,
and can be considered a dining area by default. Most of these appear in the traditional position
of the tablinum. 264 In these cases, it seems likely that one particularly well-equipped room on a
small property served as a multi-functional eating, sitting, and reception room.
Because three standard couches cannot fit in a 'dinette', it must have accommodated
either smaller couches for one or two people (a biclinium), only one or two couches, or even chairs
or benches around a table. 265 Dining couches were used in some dinettes; a couch niche was
found in IX.2.4 (c), and dining-couch fittings were found in I.7.2-3 (c). The dinette is best
described by cenatiuncula, diminutive of the general term cenatio. In a 4th century A.D. letter of
Sidonius, a cenatiuncula is depicted as comparable in size and appearance to a diaeta (a small
daytime sitting and resting room, usually with a view). 266 The term does not appear in literary
sources with any regularity, but it clearly implies a room with a dining function, and of a size
smaller than the average dining room.
261 A traditional definition for oecus comes from Ling 1991, xi: "saloon; large living-room used frequently
for entertainments and dining"; likewise Clarke 1991, 376.
262 Square oeci: Vitr. 6.3.8; Cyzicean oeci: Vitr. 6.3.10; see above, p. 94, n. 187.
263 Examples in the study sample (see the gazetteer) include: I.4.11 (b); I.6.4 (i); I.7.2-3 (c); 1.7.10-12 (16);
I.7.19 (e); I.8.10 (3); I.9.5-7 (13); I.10.2-3 (6); I.10.8 (2); I.10.18 (3); VII.1.32 (4); VII.1.36-37 (h); VII.14.5 (4, 10);
IX.1.8 (b); IX.1.31-32 (c); IX.2.4 (c); IX.2.5 (c); IX.2.6 (b); IX.2.7-8 (k); IX.2.12 (e).
264 Examples in the study sample include: I.10.2-3 (6); IX.2.4 (c); IX.2.5 (c); IX.2.6 (b); IX.2.12 (e).
265 See Marquardt I, 358-359 for literary evidence of less than three people on a dining couch, and Maiuri
1958, 419 for couches of different size possibly used by adults and children in the Casa a Graticcio (III.14) at
Herculaneum (see also above, p. 109, n. 251).
266 Sidon. Ep. 2.2.11, (p. 87, n. 142). Definintion for a diaeta: Förtsch 1993, 48-58; Clarke 1991, 374.
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