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Frescoes and Xenia

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

THE POMPEIAN FRESCOES.

We certainly don’t feel the lack of news about the Vesuvius towns. A lot has been written and a lot has been excavated. Today Pompeii, Herculaneus, Oplontis and Stabia have been freed from the mountain of ashes and lapillus that buried them during the Vesuvius’ eruption of the 79 A.D. and now they are telling us a complete documentation of their days’ activities and of course also of their afternoon dinners. Life suddenly stopped in those town, but has been preserved, maintained intact in this enormous fire cocoon that enveloped them.
The people that was there are dead, but in their houses everything tells us of life. the brilliant colors of the frescoes that cover their walls show us not only vivid mythological scenes and heroic epopees, but also a quantity of little things connected with the everyday life. There are a lot of minor subjects of this kind, mainly still life, and in them we see exactly what they liked and what they ate. At those time these little pictures were called “Xenia”, a Greek word that meant “gifts”. They got this name because they represented the food provisions that a Greek host used to send to his guests. In Greece, as a matter of fact, the visitors who would stop for a certain period of time in a house, the first day were entertained at dinner, then they and all their servants were lodged in their host’s guest house. From this moment their host let them free to pursue their business. They had a place where to stay and there they had their meals, but everyday their host sent them all the necessary food to cook their dinners.
The Pompeian still lives represent those gifts and some of them are really very nice. In them we see cockerels tied by the feet and hanged in some kitchen, and we see fruits of all kind. In one of them there is even a leek set, as if it was a flower, in a glass jug full of water, in another we have dates and so on. In an exedra of the peristyle of the Vettii’s house there are two “fiscelle” (little cylindrical reed baskets) full of ricotta. One of them has just capsized and part of the ricotta felt on the table. It is so fresh, white and tender that one could wish to be able to hold out the hand and have a taste of it.
The “fiscelle” of the Pompeian fresco are normal ones, blackened by the use, absolutely similar to the one that I found in the shops when I was a young woman, the same “fiscelle” where ricotta was put to strain, the ones that were still there until the moment that plastic came in and poetry went out. This little still life was the painting of some local artist and he must have been very popular one because he reproduced it some other time and he did it for some other patrons. Thus a replica is today shown in the Napoli Museum and was found at Herculaneus, only some kilometres out of Pompeii.
But not only the frescoes have maintained their vivacity. Everything has remained exactly as it was in the terrible day of August. Everything is now at it was then, from the already baked bread that was never eaten and is still in the bakers’s shops, and near at the moment of the excavations were found the big ceramic “dolia” still full of wheat, the same wheat that the big heavy lavic stone mills would ground the day after.
In the storeroom of the houses everything was disposed in a neat, tidy manner and near by in the deposits baskets of nuts, almonds and hazelnuts were seen by the archeologues just as they had been stored away and nearby were the lined fresh eggs, eggs half the size than today ones, and also there all the fruits gathered for the winter to come, fruits that nobody ever tasted.
In the garum “officina” heaps of amphoras ready to be filled up with the tasty sauce are still empty, piled up in a empty space on the back of the factory. The big “dolia are still in a corner of the courtyard. They still contain the expensive and aromatic pickle today completely evaporated, but the colours of the deposits on the bottom of each “dolium” reveals the recipe used to prepare each one of them. Basing ourselves on the book of Gargilius Martial’s recipes and on the Geoponiche, both of which explain how to obtain the different quality of garum, we can still identify all of them. Here different quality were made included the one with red wine and they would satisfy all the clients tastes.

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

Academic papers
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Cucine e quartieri servili in epoca romana in Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia,Vol. LI-LII, (1978-79, 1979-1980), pp. 237-294,.
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – L'importanza del pesce nella vita, nel costume e nell'industria del mondo antico in RPAA Vol. LXXI, 1998-1999 pp.111-165