In a passage of the poet Alexis, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, quoted by Athenæus[909], some one asks, “Boy, is there a kitchen? Has it a chimney?” “Yes, but it is a bad one—the eyes will suffer.” The question here alludes without doubt to a passage for carrying off smoke; but information is not given us sufficient to determine its form and construction. Athenæus has preserved also a passage of the poet Diphilus[910], in which a parasite says, when he is invited to the house of a rich man, he does not look at the magnificence of the building or the elegance of the furniture, but to the smoke of the kitchen. “If I see it,” adds he, “rising up in abundance, quick and in a straight column, my heart is rejoiced, for I expect a good supper.” In this passage, however, which according to Maternus is clearly in favour of chimneys, I can find as little proof as in the words of the poet Sosipater, quoted likewise by Athenæus[911], who reckons the art of determining which way the wind blows to be a part of the knowledge requisite in a perfect cook. “He must know,” says he, “to discover from what quarter it comes, for when the smoke is driven about it spoils many kinds of dishes.” Instead of agreeing with Ferrarius that this quotation seems to show that the houses of the ancients were provided with chimneys, I conclude rather from it, that they were not; for, had there been chimneys in their kitchens, the cooks must have left the smoke to make its way through them without giving themselves any trouble; but if they were destitute of these conveniences, it would be necessary for them to afford it some other passage; it would consequently be the business of the cook to consider on what side it would be most advantageous to open a door or a window; and in this he would undoubtedly be guided by the direction of the wind. That this really was the case, appears from a Greek epigram, which by an ingenious thought, gives us an idea of the passage of smoke through a window[912].
These, as far as I know, are all the passages which have been collected from Greek authors respecting this question. But instead of proving that the houses of the ancients were built with chimneys, they seem much rather to show the contrary: especially when we consider what the Roman writers have said on the same subject; for the information of the latter, taken together, affords good grounds to believe that no chimneys were to be found in the houses at Rome, at least at the time when these authors wrote; and this certainly would not have been the case had the Romans ever seen chimneys among the Greeks. I shall now lay before my readers those passages which appear on the first view to refute my conjecture.
When the triumviri, says Appian[913], caused those who had been proscribed by them to be sought out by the military, some of them, to avoid the bloody hands of their persecutors, hid themselves in wells, and others, as Ferrarius translates the words, “in fumaria sub tecto, qua scilicet fumus e tecto evolvitur.” The true translation however is “fumosa cænacula.” The principal persons of Rome endeavoured to conceal themselves in the smoky apartments of the upper story under the roof, which in general were inhabited only by poor people; and this seems to be confirmed by what Juvenal[914] expressly says, “Rarus venit in cænacula miles.”
Those passages of the ancients which speak of smoke rising up from houses have with equal impropriety been supposed to allude to chimneys, as if the smoke could not make its way through doors and windows. Seneca[915] writes, “Last evening I had some friends with me, and on that account a stronger smoke was raised; not such a smoke however as bursts forth from the kitchens of the great, and which alarms the watchmen, but such a one as signifies that guests are arrived.” Those whose judgements are not already warped by prejudice, will undoubtedly find the true sense of these words to be, that the smoke forced its way through the kitchen windows. Had the houses been built with chimney-funnels, one cannot conceive why the watchmen should have been alarmed when they observed a stronger smoke than usual arising from them; but as the kitchens had no conveniences of that kind, an apprehension of fire, when extraordinary entertainments were to be provided in the houses of the rich for large companies, seems to have been well-founded; and on such occasions people appointed for that purpose were stationed in the neighbourhood to be constantly on the watch, and to be ready to extinguish the flames in case a fire should happen[916]. There are many other passages to be found in Roman authors of the like kind, which it is hardly necessary to mention, such as that of Virgil[917]:
Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant.
and the following words of Plautus[918] descriptive of a miser:
Quin divûm atque hominum clamat continuo fidem,
Suam rem periisse, seque eradicarier,
De suo tigillo fumus si qua exit foras.
If there were no funnels in the houses of the ancients to carry off the smoke, the directions given by Columella to make kitchens so high that the roof should not catch fire, was of the utmost importance[919]. An accident of the kind, which that author seems to have apprehended, had almost happened at Beneventum, when the landlord who entertained Mæcenas and his company was making a strong fire in order to get some birds sooner roasted:
... ubi sedulus hospes
Pæne arsit, macros dum turdos versat in igne;
Nam vaga per veterem dilapso flamma culinam
Vulcano summum properabat lambere tectum[920].
Had there been chimneys in the Roman houses, Vitruvius certainly would not have failed to describe their construction, which is sometimes attended with considerable difficulties, and which is intimately connected with the regulation of the plan of the whole edifice. He does not, however, say a word on this subject; neither does Julius Pollux, who has collected with great care the Greek names of every part of a dwelling-house; and Grapaldus, who in later times made a like collection of the Latin terms, has not given a Latin word expressive of a modern chimney[921]