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

itself. For those interested in reclining at a meal, DR•(4), with its couch niche, was available for
rent, and perhaps the finely decorated room above it on the second floor. Rooms (5, KI◊6) were
used for storage, and to cook and prepare food and drink for these larger gatherings; the latrine
in (7) offered relief to satisfied customers. The large quantity of wine amphorae found both
downstairs and (empty) upstairs testifies to the consumption of significant amounts of drink on
the premises. Room (2) seems to have doubled as a bedroom and storage area. But given the
ithyphallic Priapus on the sales counter and the suggestive description of Masculus' troupe of
clients as "phalli" in one of the inscriptions outside the door, it is conceivable that room (2) was an
in-house cella meretricis. 68 Probable cooking and eating areas are all within complete sensory
range of each other; there is no attempt to divorce the processes of preparation and consumption.
Moreover, there seem to be different levels of food serving available to the customer, from the
cheaper and more public lunch at the counter to the furnished DR•(4) available for rent on the
ground floor, and perhaps a more secluded and exclusive upper floor cenaculum for rent. This
gradation in the settings for meals is a recognizable feature of diners. Starting up a diner at this
street corner would have been a wise business move, as it is within thirty meters of five different
insulae.
35. I.7.15-17, Officina degli scrittori murali, Tabernae,
(work)shop-house, (work)shops (Figs. 2.5, 5.4, 5.22, 5.94-5.98)
Synopsis
The workshop-house at #16 and its dependent shops at #15, 17, like their neighbor to the
E (I.7.13-14) are still unpublished, making the interpretation of the building difficult and the
analysis here provisory. Furthermore, the area was heavily damaged by Allied bombing in 1943,
which largely accounts for its precarious condition today.
The two shops that flank the entrance to #16 each have a few rooms centered on a room
(1) that fronts the street and has another door onto the entryway (1) for #16. Only traces of plain
plaster remain on the walls of these shops, but the presence of an upper story for each is clear in
the holes for floor joists and windows and doors high up in the walls (Figs. 5.94-5.95). No
cooking or eating evidence is known from either (work)shop. The upper floor rooms for both
shops were reached at the head of the stairway leading up from entrance (1) of #16. That
entranceway opens out into garden-court (2) with a DO and a HE on the E side, and surrounded
on the W and N by a simple portico (Figs. 5.96-5.97). From the NW corner, a stairway reaches the
upper floor over a suite of rooms on the N. All rooms in that suite (3-8) open onto the N portico
68 The inscription was to the E of the entrance: Masculus cum codatis ubique (rogat); see Della Corte 1954, 266,
#649b and CIL IV, 7240.
268