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

individual spills, and later were used to carry home leftovers which were often eaten for
breakfast the next morning. 75 Table services included ceramic, glass, bronze and silver items,
depending upon the financial means of the owner and the appropriateness of the occasion. 76
Luxurious serving and table wares conspicuously showed off wealth to table guests in an active
manner; some guests were able to use precious vessels that they could not afford at home. 77 The
Elder Pliny tells a story of table wares grown to unmanageable extremes (a historical
phenomenon fueled by competition amongst elites), and finally too ponderous to serve anything
but the function of ostentation:
Under the Emperor Claudius his slave Drusillanus, who bore the name of
Rotundus, the Emperor's steward of Nearer Spain, possessed a silver dish
weighing five-hundred pounds for the manufacture of which a workshop had
first been specially built, and eight others of two-hundred and fifty pounds went
with it as side-dishes, so that how many of his fellow-slaves, I ask, were to bring
them in or who were to dine off them? 78
Conspicuous display of the best table wares to create a favorable impression of the host was also
a custom common to Victorian England, as Dickens noted:
"Hideous solidity was the characteristic of the Podsnap plate. Everything was
made to look as heavy as it could and to take up as much room as possible.
Everything said boastfully, 'Here you have as much of me in my ugliness as if I
were only lead; but I am so many ounces of precious metal worth so much an
ounce -- wouldn't you like to melt me down?' " 79
No dinner was complete without wine, and as instruments of a dinner-party, drinking
vessels were as important as eating wares. In wealthy houses, mixing bowls, jugs, and cups were
75 These 'doggie-bags' were called sportulae. See Catul. 12; Mart. 2.37, 7.20; Plin. Ep. 2.14.4; Var. L. 9.47. Plin.
Nat. 19.19 describes fire-proof napkins.
76 For examples of vessels of silver, bronze, glass, and terracotta used at table, see: Rediscovering Pompeii
1990, 189-213, #87-89, 93, 98, 101-142; Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli 1990, 118-221; Alimentazione 1987, #18-51; Dosi
& Schnell 1986b, 62-76; Künzl 1979, Morel 1979, Ward-Perkins & Claridge 1976, #106-117, 263-275;
Collezioni 1989, 174-175 (#1-15), 194-197 (#145-171), 204-217 (#15-17, #1a-55), 222-223 (#35-36); Hilgers 1969;
Maiuri 1933 (the silver service from the Casa del Menandro, I.10.4), 241-378, 434-452.
77 See Hudson 1989; Cic. Ver. 2.4.62; Rhet. Her. 4.64; Ulp. dig. 13.6.5.14; Juv. 4; Luc. 10.121; Man. 5.292; Petr.
26-74; Plin, Nat. 33.144. The Lex Fannia of 161 B.C. failed to check the amount of silver allowed at table;
eventually, an elite was unrefined if he had no silver service (Cic. Pis. 67).
78 Plin. Nat. 33.146: ...quingenariam lancem habuit, cui fabricandae officina prius exaedificata fuerat, et comites eius
octo ad CCL libras, quaeso, ut quam, ut quam multi eas conservi eius inferrent, aut quibus cenantibus? (Loeb text
and translation). For elite competition, see Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 143-174.
79 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, excerpted in Pool 1993, 74.
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