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

The brazier was generally smaller and more convenient than a fixed hearth. 43 It was
portable and could be carried wherever it was needed. Braziers or cooking stands were the most
common cooking devices in small or poor households without kitchens, but were also found in
larger, more elite residences with their own fixed kitchens. Martial describes the move of a poor
family, thrown out of their apartment for not paying rent:
There went along a three-legged truckle bed and a two-legged table, and,
alongside a lantern and bowl of cornel, a cracked chamberpot was making water
through its broken side; the neck of a flagon was lying under a brazier (focus)
green with verdigris. 44
Martial uses focus to describe a bronze brazier, but the diminutives foculus and foculare were more
common. 45 A foculus may also describe a portable altar, akin to a miniature brazier, on which
offerings and libations were consumed during public (and perhaps private) ritual. 46
Furnus/fornax, fornacula
These words are etymologically related, and refer to a structure constructed for the
purpose of attaining high temperatures that can be sustained for an extended period of time. It
was generally cylindrical in shape with a domed or conical roof, and closed off except for small
openings. The openings are used to insert raw material and fuel, to remove the cooked product
and ashes, and to allow smoke to escape. 47 Any of these terms may mean oven, furnace, forge,
bath furnace or kiln (the latter two are sometimes called praefurnium). The meaning of each
varies according to the nature of the different materials (e.g. dough, limestone or metals), cooked
in the structure.
Furnus tends to designate an oven used to bake bread and bakery goods, whether in a
commercial bakery or a private house. According to Seneca, quoting Posidonius, the baking of
bread was originally done simply in a fire or under a ceramic baking cover (such as the clibanus
43 Literary sources say little about the material, form or construction of hearths, with the exception of the
"grassy" or "turf-built" hearths (graminei foci) in the army camps of Luc. 4.199.
44 Mart. 12.32.11-14: Ibat tripes grabatus et bipes mensa et cum lucerna corneoque cratere matella curto rupta latere
meiebat; foco virenti suberat amphorae cervix (Loeb text and translation). See also Juv. 3.261-263, in which poor
folk puff on the foculus to start the fire.
45 See Cat. Agr. 10.3 & 11.4 for inventories of proper equipment needed to run an oliveyard and a vineyard
respectively; each list contains two braziers (foculos), on which the slaves and overseers presumably cook
their daily meals.
46 Cic. Dom. 123-125; Var. L. 6.14; Plin. Nat. 22.11. For miniature braziers used as altars, see chapter one, p.
19, n. 66).
47 Fulvio 1879, Daremberg & Saglio, s.v. "Furnus" and "Fornax", Mayeske 1972, 23-25 and Frayn 1978 are the
primary sources that discuss these terms and their archaeological manifestations. A lime-kiln is built in
room (s) of the Casa del Sacello Iliaco, I.6.4; see Fig. 5.52.
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