[935] Plutarch. Apophthegm. p. 180.
[936] Plutarch. Sympos. lib. vi. 7.
[937] Æl. Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 31.
[938] See also Tavernier, Voyages, vol. i.—Olearius, vol. i.—Schweigger’s Reisebeschreibung nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem, p. 264.—Voyage de Chardin, 12mo, vol. iv. p. 236.—Voyage Littéraire de la Grèce, par M. Guys, Paris, 1776, 2 vols. 8vo, i. p. 34. Because this author is one of the latest who has taken the trouble to compare the manners of the ancient and modern Greeks, I shall here give his account at full length:—“The Greeks have no chimneys in the apartments of their houses; they make use only of a chaffing-dish, which is placed in the middle of the apartment to warm it, or for the benefit of those who choose to approach it. This custom is very ancient throughout all the East. The Romans had no other method of warming their chambers; and it has been preserved by the Turks. Λαμπτὴρ, says Hesychius, was a chaffing-dish placed in the middle of a room, on which dry wood was burned to warm it, and resinous wood to give light. This chaffing-dish was supported, as those at present, by a tripod; lamps were not introduced till long after. To secure the face from any inconvenience, and from the heat of the chaffing-dish, oftentimes dangerous, the tendour was invented. This is a square table under which the fire is placed. It is covered with a carpet which hangs down to the floor, and with another of silk, more or less rich, by way of ornament. People sit around it either on a sofa or on the pavement, and they can at the same time put their hands and their feet under the covering, which, as it encloses the chaffing-dish on all sides, preserves a gentle and lasting heat. The tendour is destined principally for the use of the women, who during the winter pass the whole day around it, employed either in embroidering or in receiving the visits of their friends.”
[939] As a proof of this, Faber, in his Archæologie der Hebräer, Halle, 1773, 8vo, p. 432, quotes Kelim, v. 1, and Maimonides and Bartenora, p. 36, Tamid, c. 50. Compare Othon. Lex Rabbin. p. 85.
[940] As it would be tedious to transcribe all these passages, I shall, as examples, give only the following:—
Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco
Large reponens.—Horat. lib. i. od. 9.
These lines show that the poet had an aversion to cold when enjoying his bottle, and that he wished for a good fire; but they do not inform us whether the hearth, focus, had a chimney. We learn as little from the advice of Cato, c. 143: “Focum purum circumversum quotidie, priusquam cubitum eat, habeat.” It was certainly wholesome to rake the fire together at night, but it might have burned either with or without a chimney. Cicero, Epist. Famil. lib. vii. 10: “Valde metuo ne frigeas in hibernis; quam ob rem camino luculento utendum censeo.” Cicero perhaps understood under that term some well-known kind of stove which afforded a strong heat. Suetonius, in Vita Vitellii, cap. viii.: “Nec ante in Prætorium rediit, quam flagrante triclinio ex conceptu camini.” As Vitellius was proclaimed emperor in January, a warm dining-room was certainly necessary. Du Cange in his Glossarium quotes the word fumariolum from the Paræneticum ad Pœnitentiam of the Spaniard Pacianus; but the latter takes the whole passage from Tertullian, who wrote more than a century before. Sidonius Apollin. lib. ii. epist. i.: “A cripto porticu in hyemale triclinium venitur, quod arcuatili camino sæpe ignis animatus pulla fuligine infecit.” No one can determine with certainty the meaning of arcuatilis caminus. A covering made of a thin plate of metal, or a screen, was perhaps placed over a portable stove; we however learn, that even where the arcuatilis caminus was used, the beauty of the dining-room was destroyed by smoke and soot. Ammianus Marcell. lib. xxv. in the end of the life of Jovian: “Fertur recente calce cubiculi illiti ferre odorem noxium neqnivisse, vel extuberato capite periisse succensione prunarum immensa.” This in an apartment where there was a stove or a chimney would have been impossible.
The passage of Athenæus, lib. xii. p. 519, which speaks of πύελοι, will admit of various explanations. Dalechamp thinks that they were the poëles of the French (something like our stoves). Casaubon says they were bathing-tubs. This opinion is in some measure confirmed by Suidas, who gives that meaning to πύελος; and by Jul. Pollux, in whom it occurs in the same sense more than once. Lipsius however rejects these explanations, and considers πύελοι to have been thecæ, or vessels similar to those which in low German are called riken, and which, instead of our stoves, are much used in Holland by the women, who seldom approach the chimney.
[941] Seneca, ep. 90.