MILL AND BAKERY AT POMPEII.[ToList]
The work-room is about thirty-three feet long by twenty-six. The centre is occupied by four stone mills, exactly like those found in the other two stores, for all the bakers ground their own flour. To give more room they are placed diagonally, so as to form, not a square, but a lozenge. Mazois was present at the excavation of this house, and saw the mills at the moment of their discovery, when the iron-work, though entirely rust-eaten, was yet perfect enough to explain satisfactorily the method of construction. This will be best understood from the following representation, one half of which is an elevation, the other half a section. The cut on page 365 gives some idea of them.
The base is a cylindrical stone, about five feet in diameter and two feet high. Upon this, forming part of the same block, or else firmly fixed into it, is a conical projection about two feet high, the sides slightly curving inwards. Upon this there rests another block, externally resembling a dice-box, internally an hour-glass, being shaped into two hollow cones with their vertices towards each other, the lower one fitting the conical surface on which it rests, though not with any degree of accuracy. To diminish friction, however, a strong iron pivot was inserted in the top of the solid cone, and a corresponding socket let into the narrow part of the hour-glass. Four holes were cut through the stone parallel to this pivot. The narrow part was hooped on the outside with iron, into which wooden bars were inserted, by means of which the upper stone was turned upon its pivot, by the labor of men or asses. The upper hollow cone served as a hopper, and was filled with corn, which fell by degrees through the four holes upon the solid cone, and was reduced to powder by friction between the two rough surfaces. Of course it worked its way to the bottom by degrees, and fell out on the cylindrical base, round which a channel was cut to facilitate the collection. These machines are about six feet high in the whole, made of a rough gray volcanic stone, full of large crystals of leucite. Thus rude, in a period of high refinement and luxury, was one of the commonest and most necessary machines—thus careless were the Romans of the amount of labor wasted in preparing an article of daily and universal consumption. This, probably, arose in chief from the employment of slaves, the hardness of whose task was little cared for; while the profit and encouragement to enterprise on the part of the professional baker was proportionately diminished, since every family of wealth probably prepared its bread at home. But the same inattention to the useful arts runs through everything that they did. Their skill in working metals was equal to ours; nothing can be more beautiful than the execution of tripods, lamps, and vases, nothing coarser than their locks; while at the same time the door-handles, bolts, etc., which were seen, are often exquisitely wrought. To what cause can this sluggishness be referred? At present we see that a material improvement in any article, though so trifling as a corkscrew or pencil-case, is pretty sure to make the fortune of some man, though unfortunately that man is very often not the inventor. Had the encouragement to industry been the same, the result would have been the same. Articles of luxury were in high request, and of them the supply was first-rate. But the demands of a luxurious nobility would never have repaid any man for devoting his attention to the improvement of mills or perfecting smith's work, and there was little general commerce to set ingenuity at work. Italy imported largely both agricultural produce and manufactures in the shape of tribute from a conquered world, and probably exported part of her peculiar productions; but we are not aware that there is any ground for supposing that she manufactured goods for exportation to any extent.
Originally mills were turned by hand, (many establishments may still be seen in the streets of Naples for grinding corn by means of a hand-mill, turned by a man. Such flour-shops have always a picture of the Madonna inside,) and this severe labor seems, in all half-savage times, to have been conducted by women. It was so in Egypt; it was so in Greece in the time of Homer, who employs fifty females in the house of Alcinous upon this service. It was so in Palestine in the time of the Evangelists, and in England in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. We find a passage of St. Matthew thus rendered by Wicliffe: "Two wymmen schulen (shall) be grinding in one querne," or hand-mill; and Harrison the historian, two centuries later, says that his wife ground her malt at home upon her quern. Among the Romans poor freemen used sometimes to hire themselves out to the service of the mill when all other resources failed; and Plautus is said to have done so, being reduced to the extreme of poverty, and to have composed his comedies while thus employed. This labor, however, fell chiefly upon slaves, and is represented as being the severest drudgery which they had to undergo. Those who had been guilty of any offense were sent to the mill as a punishment, and sometimes forced to work in chains. Asses, however, were used by those who could afford it. That useful animal seems to have been employed in the establishment we are describing, for the fragment of a jaw-bone, with several teeth in it, was found in a room which seems to have been the stable; and the floor about the mill is paved with rough pieces of stone, while in the rest of the rooms it is made of stucco or compost. The use of water-mills, however, was not unknown to the Romans. Vitruvius describes their construction in terms not inapplicable to the mechanism of a common mill of the present day, and other ancient authors refer to them. "Set not your hands to the mill, O women that turn the millstone! sleep sound though the cock's crow announce the dawn, for Ceres has charged the nymphs with the labors which employed your arms. These, dashing from the summit of a wheel, make its axle revolve, which, by the help of moving radii, sets in action the weight of four hollow mills. We taste anew the life of the first men, since we have learnt to enjoy, without fatigue, the produce of Ceres."
In the centre of the pier, at the back, is the aperture to the cistern by which the water used in making bread was supplied. On each side are vessels to hold the water. On the pier above is a painting, divided horizontally into two compartments. The figures in the upper ones are said to represent the worship of the goddess Fornax, the goddess of the oven, which seems to have been deified solely for the advantages which it possessed over the old method of baking on the hearth. Below, two guardian serpents roll towards an altar crowned with a fruit very much like a pine-apple; while above, two little birds are in chase of large flies. These birds, thus placed in a symbolical picture, may be considered, in perfect accordance with the spirit of ancient mythology, as emblems of the genii of the place, employed in driving those troublesome insects from the bread.
The oven is on the left. It is made with considerable attention to economy of heat. The real oven is enclosed in a sort of ante-oven, which had an aperture in the top for the smoke to escape. The hole in the side is for the introduction of dough, which was prepared in the adjoining room, and deposited through that hole upon the shovel with which the man in front placed it in the oven. The bread, when baked, was conveyed to cool in a room the other side of the oven, by a similar aperture. Beneath the oven is an ash-pit. To the right is a large room which is conjectured to have been a stable. The jaw-bone above mentioned and some other fragments of a skeleton were found in it. There is a reservoir for water at the further end, which passes through the wall, and is common both to this room and the next, so that it could be filled without going into the stable. The further room is fitted up with stone basins, which seem to have been the kneading-troughs. It contains also a narrow and inconvenient staircase.
Though corn-bread formed the principal article of nourishment among the Italians, the use of bread itself was not of early date. For a long time the Romans used their corn sodden into pap, and there were no bakers in Rome antecedent to the war against Perseus, king of Macedonia, about B.C. 580. Before this every house made its own bread, and this was the task of the women, except in great houses, where there were men-cooks. And even after the invention of bread it was long before the use of mills was known, but the grain was bruised in mortars. Hence the names pistor and pistrinum, a baker and baker's shop, which are derived from pinsere, to pound. The oven also was of late introduction, as we have hinted in speaking of the goddess Fornax, nor did it ever come into exclusive use. We hear of bread baked under the ashes; baked in the bread-pan, which was probably of the nature of a Dutch oven; and other sorts, named either from the nature of their preparation or the purpose to which they were to be applied. The finest sort was called siligineus, and was prepared from the best and whitest sort of wheaten flour. A bushel of the best wheat of Campania, which was of the first quality, containing sixteen sextarii, yielded four sextarii of siligo, here seemingly used for the finest flour; half a bushel of flos, bolted flour; four sextarii of cibarium, seconds; and four sextarii of bran; thus giving an excess of four sextarii. Their loaves appear to have been very often baked in moulds, several of which have been found; these may possibly be artoptæ, and the loaves thus baked, artopticii. Several of these loaves have been found entire. They are flat, and about eight inches in diameter. One in the Neapolitan Museum has a stamp on the top:—