Fig. 219.—Plan of a bakery.
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The appearance of a bakery to-day, with its mills and its large oven, may be seen in [Fig. 218]. The arrangements can more easily be explained, however, from the plan of another establishment, one of the largest, in the third Insula of Region VI. ([Fig. 219]). Entering from the street through the fauces, we find ourselves in an atrium of simple form (8) with rooms on either side; the tablinum (14) is here merely an entrance to the mill room (15). In the corner of the atrium is a stairway leading to a second story, which was particularly needed here, because the living rooms at the rear were required for the bakery; the floor of the second story was supported by brick pillars at the corners of the impluvium, joined by flat arches.

The four mills (b), were turned by animals; the floor around them is paved with basalt flags like those used for the streets. In the same room, at d, were the remains of a low table; at c there is a cistern curb, with a large earthen vessel for holding water on either side, while the wall above was ornamented with a painting representing Vesta, the patron goddess of bakers, between the two Lares. On one side of the oven (17) is the kneading room (18), on the other the storeroom (19). The room at the left (16) is the stall for the donkeys that turned the mills.

Fig. 220.—A Pompeian mill, without its framework.

The mills of Pompeii, with slight variations, are all of one type; if there were watermills on the Sarno, no trace of them has been found. The millstones are of lava ([p. 15]). The lower stone, meta, has the shape of a cone resting on the end of a cylinder, but the cylindrical part is in most cases partially concealed by a thick hoop of masonry, the top of which was formed into a trough to receive the flour, and was covered with sheet lead ([Fig. 220]). A square hole, five or six inches across, was cut in the top of the cone, in which was inserted a wooden standard; this supported a vertical iron pivot on which the frame of the upper millstone turned.