CHAPTER XLIX
INNS AND WINESHOPS

Wineshops, cauponae, were numerous in Pompeii, and the remains are easily identified. Like the Italian osterie, they were at the same time eating houses, but the arrangements for drinking were the more conspicuous, and give character to the ruins. The Roman inn, hospitium, or simply caupona, was a wineshop with accommodations for the night, provision being also made in most cases for the care of animals. Keepers of inns, caupones, are frequently mentioned in Pompeian inscriptions, sometimes in election notices, more often in graffiti.

Several inns have been identified from signs and from scribblings on the walls within. At the entrance of one (west side of Ins. IX. vii) is painted Hospitium Hygini Firmi, 'Inn of Hyginius Firmus.' The front of the 'Elephant Inn' (west side of Ins. VII. i) was ornamented with the painting of an elephant in the coils of a serpent, defended by a pygmy. The name of the proprietor is perhaps given at the side: Sittius restituit elephantu[m], 'Sittius restored the elephant,' referring no doubt to the repainting of the sign. Evidently the owner, whether Sittius or some one else, was anxious to rent the premises; below the elephant is the painted notice: Hospitium hic locatur—triclinium cum tribus lectis,—'Inn to let. Triclinium with three couches.' The rest of the inscription is illegible.

The plan of another inn in the same region (west side of VII. xii) well illustrates the arrangements of these hostelries ([Fig. 231]). The main room (a), which probably served as a dining room, is entered directly from the street. At one side is the kitchen (h); six sleeping rooms (b-g) open upon the other sides. But the landlord did not provide merely for the entertainment of guests from out of town; he endeavored to attract local patronage also, by means of a wineshop (n), which opened upon the street and had a separate dining room (o). A short passage (i) led from the main room to the stalls (k), in front of which was a watering trough. The vehicles were probably crowded into the recess at m, or the front of a. The two side rooms (l and p) were closets.

Fig. 231.—Plan of an inn.
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The walls of several of the rooms contain records of the sojourn of guests. C. Valerius Venustus, 'a pretorian of the first cohort, enrolled in the century of Rufus,' scratched his name on the wall of c, to which also an affectionate husband confided his loneliness: 'Here slept Vibius Restitutus all by himself, his heart filled with longings for his Urbana.' Four players, one of them a Martial, passed a night together in the same apartment. In the next room (d) a patriotic citizen of Puteoli left a greeting for his native town: 'Well be it ever with Puteoli, colony of Nero, of the Claudian line; C. Julius Speratus wrote this.' This city, as we learn from Tacitus, received permission from Nero to call itself Colonia Claudia Neronensis. Lucifer and Primigenius, two friends, spent a night in room f, Lucceius Albanus of Abellinum (Avellino) in g.

The arrangement of rooms here is so unlike that of an ordinary house that the building must have been designed at the beginning for a tavern. Sometimes a dwelling was turned into an inn, as in the case of the house of Sallust, which, as we have seen, in the last years of the city must in part at least have been used as a hostelry.

Inns near the gates had a paved entrance for wagons, interrupting the sidewalk. A good example is the inn of Hermes, in the first block on the right as one came into the city by the Stabian Gate ([Fig. 232]). On either side of the broad entrance (a), are winerooms (b, d). Behind the stairway at the right, which leads from the street to the second story, is a hearth with a water heater. On the wall at the left was formerly a painting with the two Lares and the Genius offering sacrifice; below was the figure of a man pouring wine from an amphora into an earthen hogshead (dolium), and beside it was written Hermes, apparently the name of the proprietor. The wagons stood in the large room at the rear (f), with which the narrow stable (k) is connected; in one corner is a watering trough of masonry. On the ground floor were only three sleeping rooms (e, g, and h), but there were upper rooms at the rear, reached by a flight of stairs in f; these were probably not connected with the upper rooms of the front part, which (over a, b, c, d, e), having a street entrance, may have been rented separately.