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

The master gets the dinner he asked for sooner than he or the audience expects, and the fact that
it is a diet of wit from the mouth of the boy-slave, not actually the food itself, amplifies the jest.
Not only does Ballio not get the real meal right away, he is the butt of a joke based on his own
impatience.
Trimalchio shrewdly uses his guests' expectations of time to perform a small illusion at
his dinner. 122 After having presented three pigs of various ages to the company, and asked them
which they would prefer to eat, Trimalchio himself orders the cook to prepare the eldest. Shortly
thereafter the cooked pig arrives and the guests are amazed at the speed of preparation (Mirari
nos celeritatem coepimus). They think they understand why the pig was cooked so fast when the
trembling cook admits he forgot to gut the pig, but the drama is resolved when the cook slices
open the pig's belly right at the table, and numerous prepared sausages and puddings pour out.
Trimalchio's trick, of course, was that the pig at the table had long been prepared, and his mock
selection of a live pig for slaughter was but a device to fool the company into thinking that
Trimalchio's kitchen could cook a dish in record time.
There must have been a host of practical problems in timing a dinner correctly. Larger
houses (with kitchens far removed from the dining rooms) presumably had larger service staffs
to traverse the distance, communicate orders promptly and prevent the food from losing its heat.
Alternatively, hosts could deploy braziers to keep food warm; Seneca remarks that the newest
luxury in his day was a portable stove that was brought from the kitchen into the dining
room. 123 This apparatus required that the cooks themselves, normally located mainly in the
kitchen, work at least part-time in the dining room. If they spent dinner-time cooking and
serving their master, when did the slaves and servants of a household dine? In better houses
they ate the leftovers after the meal had finished and the guests had taken away choice morsels in
their napkins. 124 The social order determined the temporal order, and slaves were the last to eat.
Seasonal considerations
Some meals marked special occasions; religious holidays and private events such as
weddings and funerals almost always included a feast. 125 Columella prescribes different dining
practices on festival days for servile members of a (rural) household:
He [the farm bailiff] should accustom the farm labourers always to take
their meals at the master's hearth and household fire; and he should
122Petr. 47-49. See the quote heading the Introduction, p. 1.
123Sen. Ep. 78.23 See chapter two, p. 73, n. 81 for the text.
124See D'Arms 1991, 174 and n.24, referring to Petr. 64 (slave getting scraps during the meal), 67 & 74
(slaves eating after dinner has been cleared), 70 (slaves crowding onto couches with the guests). See also
Hor. S. 2.6.65-67.
125D'Arms 1984, 334-338. Sometimes the religious feasts were public celebrations involving a general
distribution of food; see below, pp. 32-34.
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