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

aked or roasted in a furnus, according to the instructions. 54 The variety of foods implies that
furnus may also have been applied to a stove of the simple counter type, on top of which cooking
fires were built. The diminutive fornacula, appearing rarely in the sources, has no association
with cooking food. It is twice used to describe a bath-furnace, and another time a cremation
chamber. 55 Sources do not describe in any detail the location of a cooking oven or furnace in the
house. Columella advises only to place a villa wine-cellar far away from the baths, oven (furnus),
manure pile, cistern, and other places that ruin wine with smell, moisture, or excessive heat. 56
Caminus
No source explicitly connects the caminus to the cooking of food, despite Frayn's opinion
to the contrary. 57 Caminus , derived from the Greek kãminow, is in fact most often used to
describe a place to heat metal, and thus is a synonym for fornax. 58 In a domestic context, the term
is commonly translated as "stove", primarily in the sense that a stove provides heat. 59 Food
preparation is merely implied in three passages. In the first instance, Horace and his companions
are brought to tears by the smoke from a caminus in a farmstead where they are housed (and
presumably fed). Secondly, a caminus sets fire to Vitellius' army camp dining room in the
January cold of Germany. 60 Finally, a "vaulted fireplace" (arcuatili camino) is described in a
winter dining room by Sidonius, but there is no specific mention of any cooking. 61 Caminus
cannot, in sum, be accepted as a common Roman term for a cooking installation.
54 Furnus appears twenty-five times in Apicius: 5.3.2, 5.4.6, 6.5.6, 7.2.1, 7.4.1-2, 7.5.1, 7.9.1, 7.10, 7.13.2, 8.1.1,
8.1.3, 8.6.8-10, 8.7.1, 8.7.5, 8.7.7-9, 8.7.14, 8.8.1, 8.8.3, 8.8.12, 10.1.4.
55 Char. Ars Grammatica I.92.95 defines fornacula merely as the diminutive of fornax. It is a bath furnace in
Fro. Aur. 1.3.5 and Vitr. 7.10.2, and Juv. 10.82 cleverly remarks that a magna fornacula is ready for all those
who are about to be killed at the Games.
56 Col. 1.6.11.
57 Frayn 1978, 28: "Caminus could also in some contexts indicate a closed-flame stove with one aperture on
the top for the cooking-vessel, and one at the side for stoking the fire. This must must have developed from
the raised hearth, but is quite different from it." There is absolutely no evidence for such a definition. See
Daremberg & Saglio, s.v. "Caminus" for a more realistic assesment for the meaning and use of the term.
58 Serv. A. 3.580 defines the term simply: Caminus fornacibus graece dixit (Thilo & Hagen 1961 text). Man.
4.250-251 opposes caminus (to describe a metal forge) and focus (to describe a cooking-fire) when he speaks
of the powers of fire that Vesta possesses: Quod ferrum calidi solvant atque aera camini consummentque foci
Cererem, tua munera surgent (Loeb text).
59 Cic. Fam. 7.10.2; Cato, Agr. 37.5 advises bundling vines and sticks for use as fuel in the caminus as work to
be done in wintertime, when a heat source was necessary in the home. See also Hor. Ep. 1.11.11-20.
60 Hor. S. 1.5.79-81; Suet. Vit. 8.2. The use of oleum in the metaphor "to add fuel to the fire" (oleum adde
camino) of Hor. S. 2.3.321 cannot necessarily be taken to mean that a cooking context is understood.
61 Sidon. Ep. 2.2.11.
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