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Rome - Campanian Inns without kitchens. Ostienses with masonry banks.

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

INNS WITHOUT KITCHENS.
Speaking of ancient inns and pubs there is a mystery that we have to confront and try to solve. It was something that in reality was present only in the Campanian towns destroyed by the Vesuvius, places like Pompeii and Herculaneus where many ancient restaurants offered to their clients only wine and triclinia to rent. Now the fact that is more interesting was that in all of them there were no kitchens, not one of these big masonry cooking banks that we always find in the private houses. And not only this was noteworthy because we notice that, often, those ancient time restaurants were installed in some important and wealthy private house, the kind that had a large kitchen, but this was not there any more, and why? Because the first thing that the innkeeper did taking possession of his new installment was to raze to the ground its cooking range. We have a very notable example of this phenomenon in the Cryptoporch domus. This, once, had been a very elegant residence, but later on it was bought by an innkeeper, and, also here, immediately out went its kitchen. It was probably at the same moment that the new owner added to his just acquired property a beautiful cryptoporch that had been part of the adjacent Lararium domus. Notwithstanding the fact that this gallery was sumptuously decorated with frescoes; that it gave access to a splendid hall adorned with scenes from the Iliad and that, moreover, it was connected with elegant baths, the cryptoporch was used as a cellar piling there a great quantity of amphoras filled with wine. Of course after the destruction of the masonry banks of the kitchen over which the praefurnium of the baths was set, also this beautiful part of the house was lost.
However the inn was active and working. The cryptoporch was found still full of wine amphoras and on its first floor, in a loggia set just over it, there was a very interesting masonry triclinium. It was a fine and complete dining arrangement. As the loggia was very extended, the tricliniar couches were longer than the ones normally in use. This meant that the triclinium was able to host more than the nine people of a traditional dinner. In the middle of the couches there was the ordinary stand to sustain the trays but, for the guests’s confort, all along the masonry couches ran a lower shelf on wich people could put their glasses and whatever else could be of hindrance when they needed their hands to eat.
On the front of the triclinium there were masonry benches that, bent at a straight angle, ran along the walls, benches that were destined to the lower condition persons who would take part to the banquet. People as freemen, children and even “umbrae” - the latin name given to those persons who came following some important guest who had the right to bring with him some friends- who would not lay on the couches
On the right side of the loggia, always along the wall, there was a huge masonry cube over which the slaves would display all the jug, glasses and the rest of the recipients necessary for the dinner’s drinks and, afterward, for the symposium.
The inn, as we have just said did not have a kitchen, so the host came with all the dishes prepared for the feast, but here, set near the entrance to the loggia, the innkeeper had provided a small kitchenette on which the slaves could heat what they had brought with them and even roast some meat or grill some big piece of meat. A downright barbecue for the clients’ use.
The destruction of the “cauponae” masonry kitchens look strange, but more strange it becomes if we compare the situation of Pompeii’s and Herculaneus’s with what is found in another well preserved Roman town: Ostia Antica. Here, while in the private house we don’t find any masonry cooking ranges of the kind we found in Campania, all the inns and restaurant have it. At first the problem seemed incapable of being solved, but as always lot of work and a good research succeeded in finding the explanation. The reason of the lack of kitchens in the Campanian restaurants was the consequence of some edicts of Tiberius who prohibited those eateries to sell cooked food. With the passing of time the followings emperors made more and more strict edicts. Thus very soon the innkkepers could only sell wine and rent triclinia. Those laws intended to avoid that group of loafers and rebellious hoodlums could spend their time in those pubs, and, congregating together, create disorders. The fines and the penalties must have been very severe if, just to prevent from being accused to transgress the laws, the innkeepers chose to destroy the kitchens.
Luckily the laws did not say anything about the clients bringing with them their dinner. Then the innkeeper furnished them with the place where to dine, and all the wine they needed. Even more, in the triclinia they often created a little masonry bank, just large enough for broiling something.
Those laws were maintained until the end of the first cent. A.D.. Then, under Domitian, they were lifted, and it is at this period the we can date the Campanian style kitchens of the Ostienses “cauponae”. Those restaurants immediately recovered their ancient abundance and became again those “fat” eateries - as Horace, the Latin poet used to call them - the plentiful eateries they had been just before the restrictive laws.

Bibliography
Scientific Popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Cibi, cucine e triclini in L'alimentazione nel mondo antico. I Romani: etá imperiale, from Archeo. Rome 1987. pp. 70-140
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, : L'arte del bere nell'antichità, from Archeo nº 81, November 1991, pp.62-105