consisting of a lava trough (mortarium) with a central pillar
(milliarium) to support a horizontal axle (cupa) which had a plano-convex stone
(orb) at each end. Turned by hand the stones could also be raised or lowered to
the desired height to insure that the olive pit was not damaged and so ruin the
oil.7
A few trapeta have been recovered from Pompeii but one wonders to what extent oil processing occurred in town. So, for example, when one comes to the second step, pressing, the evidence is not great. Four paintings, one of which comes from the House of the Vettii (Reg. VI.xv.1), depict a wedge press being used to extract oil from the olive pulp, but in each instance the context is that of the flower industry. A recent study of these paintings and the scarce archaeological evidence for wedge presses in Pompeii and Herculaneum concludes that the wedge press was used strictly to extract high quality, low viscosity oil, from green olives to make perfumes, while lower quality oil went for other uses, such as food.8 Processing of this latter type oil seems concentrated in rural areas where large quantities could be extracted using the lever and windlass type press commonly used for pressing grapes, such as has been found in the Villa of the Mysteries just outside Pompeii's Herculanean Gate. These presses were expensive and so were probably reserved for high volume production on villas and not for household use in the city.9 Following separation from the amurca, the oil was placed in amphorae and then taken into town to be distributed or sold in the market.
Fishing was an active occupation for many Campanians, as finds of fish nets, sinkers, and hooks attest.10 Fish frequently form the focus of still-life paintings and mosaics to decorate elegant homes, many peristyles sport fish pools where live fish playing in the water add an element of natural life to the garden setting, and along the Campanian coastline maritime villas possessed large piscinae for raising rare or expensive fish for pleasure or for food.11
Fisherman caught and ate fish or sold them in the town market. In either case consumption followed catching fairly closely because fish begin to spoil soon after removal from water and death. Many fish, however, were preserved by several processes which allowed for delayed consumption and long distance transportation. These processes include drying, smoking, and salting. The first two are difficult to document because they require no or minimal facilities. Large-scale salting of whole or parts of fish, on the other hand, often required facilities of substantial size, such as appear at numerous sites in Spain, Gaul, and Africa.12 Papyri from Egypt and a few literary sources, however, indicate that the fish sauces¬garum, liquamen, allec, and muria¬could be prepared by anyone, fisherman or not, from small fish and fish innards in most any size container to produce whatever quantity was required.13 The process was quite simple and involved the autolysis of fish material in the presence of a salt solution of varying salinity over a specified time. As the author of the cook book De re coquinaria¬attributed to the first century A. D. gourmet chef Apicius, though clearly of later date¬indicates, they were particularly popular as condiments to season numerous food dishes, in much the same way as the ubiquitious fish sauces of Southeast Asia are used today.14
No fish salting installation typical of Spain and elsewhere has been found in Campania¬in fact, nowhere in Italy¬ even though it possessed the necessary fish, salt, and fresh water. Literary sources, however, indicate that Pompeii operated a saltery and was especially noted for its fish sauce.15 One can only assume that its industrial facilities remain to be discovered somewhere along the Campanian coast. Nevertheless, archaeological and epigraphical evidence for Pompeian fish sauce has come to light in the city.
Over 200 one-handled terracotta vessels, called urcei, found scattered throughout the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, bear inscriptions indentifying their contents as one of the four fish sauces, many of which were associated with A. Umbricius Scaurus who delighted in advertizing his products in the atrium of his home near the Porta Marina (Ins. Occ. 12-15).16 Only one house (Reg. I.xii.8), however, contains identifiable facilities for making fish sauce.17 This Garum Shop, a renovated private house, contained several dolia, which, when excavated, held the desiccated remains of the sauce, identified as such by fish bones, primarily of anchovies
(Fig. 2).
Although it remains possible that the entire salting process was
conducted in this peristyle, it seems more likely that the sauce had been
produced in facilities located along the shore and then brought here to be
processed further, probably according to a particular recipe, and then
distributed or sold. What is certain is that no other evidence of fish sauce
preparation has been identified in Pompeii or any other Campanian city.
Campania was an active grain-producing area and the bread and pastries made from it formed a staple food in the daily life of its inhabitants.18 The Latin term pistor originally meant "one who pounds or crushes," that is, a miller, and presumably reflected the early practice of milling grain into flour, probably in a mortar, on the farm for transport to the city for baking into bread. By the first century A. D. the pistor was both miller and baker, who performed all the steps in making bread in the city. In Pompeii over 30 commercial bread-making establishments (pistrina) have been identified.19 They are easily recognized by the presence of large rotary mills and one or more ovens. Early excavators in Pompeii found several loaves of baked bread in a sealed oven, and in Herculaneum one pastry shop yielded twenty-four baking pans of various sizes.20
The large mills
show functioning mills of the same type.22 Turned by animal power, the
upper stone moved around crushing the grain fed through a hopper into the small
space separating the two stones. The flour fell onto the ledge below the stone.
This could be further ground and sifted to produce various grades of flour and
then kneaded into dough by hand or by mechanical kneading machines.23 A few
private houses, such as the House of the Labyrinth (Reg. VI.xi.9-10), had large
mills while others had smaller ones, scaled-down versions powered by human,
probably slave, labor.24 The former facilities served the commercial
establishments; the latter, the homes of the wealthy. But what of the common
man?
Individuals might use small mortars or hand querns as in times before the appearance of mills, but bread and gruels made from grains so processed were probably rather coarse. A very few small cylindrical mills (45-64 cm in diameter and formed of a lower stone and an upper one which was turned by hand) have been found in only five houses, not identified as bakeries, and in villas outside of town.25 Their size seems to preclude their commercial use. Their appearance in villas and their shape and apparent function recall the poem, Moretum, or "Vegetable Salad," by an anonymous author, though traditionally ascribed to Vergil, who describes a poor farmer grinding grain to make his bread:
...the left hand is stretched out for assistance; the right for work. The latter continually rotates and quickly moves the disk in circles (the ground grain runs down the stone from the swift blow), occasionally the left hand takes over from her tired sister and alternates by turns (25-29).
He goes on to describe how the ploughman sieved the flour, kneaded the dough, scored each loaf, and then baked them (lines 29-50). The author, by describing the poor farmer in mock-heroic terms and by glorifying his self sufficiency while showing his poverty, evokes a realistic picture probably meant to be seen in opposition to the city dweller.26
The presence of small Pompeian mills certainly implies that some people did grind their own grain, perhaps purchased in the market, to make their bread. Hand mills are rarely encountered, however, and evidence for private baking is scarce. One could also surmise that some individuals purchased flour from the miller and baked it at home, but houses with ovens are not in large supply either. Commercial bakeries, on the other hand, are numerous and are found distributed throughout the city to such an extent that no one would be more than a couple of blocks from a source of ready-baked bread.27 It would seem then that most Pompeians¬only the wealthiest, perhaps, excluded¬bought their bread and took it home for consumpion.
What, then, can we conclude from this brief look at these three foods about the state of food technology during the first century A. D. in Campania? Any conclusion, based on a preliminary investigation of a small number of processed foods, must, of necessity, be tentative, but one inference begins to appear, at least in outline. Roman knowledge of various technological processes is clearly established, but the actual application of that knowledge was not necessarily widespread among the urban populace. Most Pompeians purchased their oil already pressed on the farm or villa in the countryside and acquired fish sauce produced earlier in installations operating along the coast. Their bread came already baked from flour constituted from grain ground in large mills in commercial bakeries operating throughout the city. Like most city dwellers of the late 20th century, the ancient urbanites of Campania concerned themselves more with consumption of the finished product than with the technological processes employed to produce them.
Robert I. Curtis
Department of Classics
University of Georgia
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