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

Cooking and dining were clearly segregated according to status in the casa grande I.7.10-
12 (Figs. 5.21, 5.84-5.91). Entertainment for guests was centered around a pendant of dining areas
(17, 23) that faced each other amidst an extravagant collection of columns, statuary, garden
greenery, painted walls, fountains and aedicular shrines. The owner had numerous options
when planning dinners. Large banquets could be held in (17) and (23) concurrently. A dining
room could be chosen according to the occasion or season: (23) outdoors in summer, the
sheltered dining room (10) in winter, the dinette (16) for small parties, or the dining hall (17), at
any time. Dining hall (17) was equipped with shutters that controlled its interior environment.
Guests in any of these well-decorated areas were served by either or both kitchens (8) and (21),
out of sight from the banquet areas.
In I.7.10-12, a specific part of the property was set aside for the servants, creating a home
within a home centered on its own 'private' atrium (A'), complete with a separate hearth, dining
couches and a household shrine. 19 The rooms were small and undecorated, but the staff had
their own cooking and eating scheme within the system that they operated for the benefit of their
masters. These servants' quarters are sequestered from the rest of the house by a single door, and
are given a separate entrance onto the street. The staff may also have varied their meals
according to season, dining upstairs in summer and downstairs next to the hearth in winter.
Slaves and servants, because they made the household operate, were everywhere in the
house, but they did not do everything everywhere. They might serve food in one of the fine dining
areas, but it is doubtful they were welcome to eat it there, which is why Trimalchio's invitation to
his slaves to share the meal is humorously unlikely. 20 In the largest households, slaves were given
their own place to dine and allowed their own company at table. They were left alone and left to
serve themselves. Given the literary evidence for hierarchies of large household staffs, it seems
inevitable that social jockeying for privilege was also played out in slave dining areas, with slave
procurators presiding over meals, just as Columella prescribes for the bailiff of a country villa. 21
Conclusion
The location of any given household along the Roman socio-economic spectrum was
crucial in determining its cooking and dining arrangements. Dinners in smaller households
tended to integrate more closely free and slave family members across lines of rank and status.
Dinners in larger households more strongly emphasized lines of social standing. The elevated
social status that came with wealth and the ownership of larger houses included a commensurate
responsibility to fulfill social obligations by entertaining outside guests within the home.
19See also I.10.4, atrium (41) and I.4.5, court (21) for similar servants' quarters.
20Petr. 70.
21Col. 11.1.19 (see chapter one, p. 30-31). For hierarchy within slave staffs, see chapter one, p. 54.
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