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

and putting all the utensils in their proper places. 219 Columella's housekeeper does not actually
have to cook the meals herself; she has only to inspect those who do prepare the family food. 220
The woman's role at the hearth in poorer families (or even larger families that had slaves to cook)
consistently involves managerial duties. The model is Lucretia, who is shown in a central
position of authority (in medio aedium), surrounded by her servants; they are all busy with
spinning wool even late at night. 221 Women valued this administrative role highly; when
Pomponia, the wife of Quintus Cicero, is not given the responsibility of organizing a meal at an
estate where they were to spend the night, she complains that she is 'just a guest' (Ego ipsa
sum...hic hospitia) in her own household. 222 Later, she refuses to eat the meal in her husband's
and brother-in-law's company. Cicero does not understand her anger because he underestimates
the importance of the managerial power that she expects to wield in her house.
Roman women and men commonly dined together (Figs. 1.24-1.26). Not all dinners
included women (several banquets described by the literary sources list only male
participants). 223 However, Richardson's recent suggestion that women regularly dined
separately from men (based on the identification of 'ladies' dining rooms' in the houses and villas
of Vesuvius) is insupportable. 224 In the early Republican period, women are said to have been
seated at dinner, but by the Empire custom dictated that both sexes recline. 225
To what extent did women participate in the meal? Salza Prina Ricotti has conservatively
stated that women were thought to be a distraction at dinner, and that they did not make
invitations, receive guests, or conduct conversation during the meal. 226 Juvenal disagrees in the
sixth satire, rebuking the erudite woman who belittles rhetors and grammarians in her dinner
table remarks. 227 He exaggerates, but no less than to imagine that women took absolutely no
part in dinner socializing. Catullus did not consider a dinner good without wine, wit, laughter,
219 Cato, Agr.143; Col. 12.1-3.
220 Col. 12.3.8: eos qui cibum familiae conficiunt, invisere (Loeb text).
221 Liv. 1.57; Ov. Fast. 2.742-747.
222 Cic. Att. 5.1.3-4 (Gardner & Wiedemann 1991, 55-56); see also Gardner 1986, 70-71.
223 All-male banquets: Hor. Sat. 2.8; Mart. 10.48; Plu. Quaestiones Conviviales.
224 Richardson 1983, Richardson 1988a, 389-399. Wallace-Hadrill 1988, 93 & n.147 and Ling 1991a, 251-252,
refute Richardson's argument, providing a number of literary references that support mixed dining. Similar
efforts (Maiuri 1954b) to identify whole separate female areas of the Roman house (gynaecea) which included
their own dining rooms have also failed (Wallace-Hadrill 1988, 50-52). It was Greek custom, however, for
men and women to dine separately (Cic. Ver. 2.66; Vitr. 6.7.4; Nep. praef. 6-7).
225 V. Max. 2.1.2, Isid. Orig. 20.11.9.
226 Salza Prina Ricotti 1983, 23: "...non era lei che faceva gli inviti, non era lei riceveva gli ospiti, non era lei
che conduceva la conversazione: se assisteva era soltanto comme appendice."
227 Juv. 6.434-456: "The grammarians make way before her; the rhetoricians give in; the whole crowd is
silenced: no lawyer, no auctioneer will get a word in, no, nor any other woman; so torrential is her speech
that you would think that all the pots and bells were being clashed together."; cedunt grammatici, vincuntur
rhetores, omnis turba tacet, nec causidicus nec praeco loquetur, altera nec mulier; verborum tanta cadit vis, tot pariter
pelves ac tintinnabula dicas pulsari (Loeb text and translation).
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