Ancient Roman Possessions, Tools, Kitchen Stuff and Personal Objects | Early European History And Religion

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ANCIENT ROMAN POSSESSIONS

Pompeii tools

A typical Roman bedroom contained a chamber pot, chair and a wooden bed, often made of oak, maple or cedar. Mattresses were stuffed with either straw reeds, wools, feathers or swansdown, depending on what the owner could afford. Pliny described several kinds of mattresses. Noblemen and women used sheets made from silk or linen.

Archaeologists have discovered numerous artifacts bearing the images of the Romans’ gods and goddesses. These include a sheet gold amulet with a naked male figure clutching his throat; a silver plaque showing Vulcan with hammer and tongs is inscribed with a dedication; and a tinned bronze mask with eye slits on the face and hair. [Source National Geographic]

Handkerchiefs (sudaria), the finest made of linen, were used by both sexes, but only for wiping the perspiration from the face or hands. For keeping the palms cool and dry, ladies seem also to have used glass balls or balls of amber, the latter, perhaps, for the fragrance also. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used towel-like napkins and finger bowls of water scented with things like rose petals, herbs and rosemary. In the 7th century B.C., Roman nobility were given doggie bags at banquets which they were expected to use to carry delicacies home. Ubiquitous terra cotta jugs were the primary means of storing transportable goods. The jugs held olive oil, wine, syrups, fish sauces and other things. Cookware consisted of plates, jugs and flatware made of ceramics, bronze, silver, gold and electrum.

For weighing things only the balance seems to have been known to the Greeks, but the Romans made use of the steelyard also. One example does not differ from those of modern times. The hooks and chains at the end of the rod were used for suspending the articles to be weighed. Three other hooks, of which two are preserved on movable rings, were for hanging the steelyard. Each is attached to a different side. When the steelyard was hung by the hook nearest to the graduated bar, articles up to twelve pounds could be weighed by sliding the weights along the bar. The second side of the bar weighs articles of from five pounds to twenty-two; the third, articles of from twenty to fifty-eight pounds. The large weight is made of lead covered with bronze, and weighs two pounds, while the small weight is entirely of bronze and weighs one ounce. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Umbrellas, Mirrors and Fans in Ancient Rome

Romans initially used parasols and umbrellas for protection against the sun. Later they oiled them to make them water proof. There are accounts of people opening umbrellas when it rained at outdoor theater performances. Men regarded umbrellas as effeminate and they were used primarily by women.

The parasol (umbraculum) was used at least as early as the close of the Republic, and was all the more necessary because they wore no hats or bonnets. The parasols were usually carried for them by attendants. From vase paintings we learn that they were much like our own in shape, and could be closed when not in use. The use of umbrellas by men was considered effeminate. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

The fan (flabellum) was used from the earliest times and was made in various ways, sometimes of wings of birds, sometimes of thin sheets of wood attached to a handle, sometimes of peacock’s feathers artistically arranged, and sometimes of linen stretched over a frame. These fans were not used by the woman herself; they were always handled by an attendant, who was charged with the task of keeping her cool and untroubled by flies. |+|

The Greeks had schools for mirror making, where students were taught the finer points of sand polishing. Romans preferred mirrors made from silver because they revealed the true colors of facial make up. Archaeology magazine reported: Five lead mirror frames dating to the turn of the third century A.D. have been found in a square building at a Roman villa outside the town of Pavlikeni in northern Bulgaria. Three of the frames are decorated with the image of a large wine vessel and bear an inscription that means a “good soul.” The villa belonged to a Roman military veteran and was built around the turn of the second century A.D. The building where the frames were found was thought to have housed villa workers. But, says excavation leader Karin Chakarov of the Pavlikeni Museum of History, the presence of the mirror frames suggests it may instead have been a temple. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2018]

Pocket Sundials and Waterclocks

Roman coat of arms featuring an umbraculum

Pocket sun-dials have been discovered at Forbach and Aquileia which scarcely exceed three centimeters in diameter. But at the same time the public buildings of the Urbs and even the private houses of the wealthy were tending to be equipped with more and more highly perfected water-clocks. From the time of Augustus, clepsydrarii and organarii rivalled each other in ingenuity of construction and elaboration of accessories. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Harold Whetstone Johnston wrote in “The Private Life of the Romans”: “The place of our clock was taken in the peristylium or garden by the sundial (solarium), such as is often seen nowadays in our parks and gardens; this measured the hours of the day by the shadow of a stick or pin. It was introduced into Rome from Greece in 268 B.C. About a century later the water-clock (clepsydra) was also borrowed from the Greeks. This was more useful because it marked the hours of the night as well as of the day and could be used in the house. It consisted essentially of a vessel filled at a regular time with water, which was allowed to escape from it at a fixed rate, the changing level marking the hours on a scale. As the length of the Roman hours varied with the season of the year and the flow of the water with the temperature, the apparatus was far from accurate. Shakespeare’s reference in Julius Caesar (II, i, 192) to the striking of the clock is an anachronism.” [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932)]

Kitchen Implements and Stoves

Items found in ancient Greek and Roman kitchens included vessels for storing olive oil; bowls for mixing wine and water; bronze strainers for removing grape skins and seeds; and small bowls for salt and snacks. There were also ladles and large bowls for eating and serving food; mortars and pestles for grinding up food; and saucepans, baking pans and frying pans, all made out of bronze, for cooking food. Women and slaves both did the cooking. Women normally didn't fetch water, but when they did they sometimes carried the vessels sideways on their head to the well and upright on the way home. [Source: “Greek and Roman Life” by Ian Jenkins from the British Museum]

Household utensils, since they were made of metal or pottery, exist in considerable numbers. Cooking was usually done over an open fire, though stoves of a simple type came into use in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The bronze cauldrons used for boiling were valued highly. A metal hook was used for drawing pieces of meat from the cauldron. Pails, finely made and decorated, especially as to the handles and their attachments, probably served some purpose at table, as, for example, to hold cold water or snow in which a vessel of wine was placed to cool. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

In 2010, Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov announced that he had found an ancient Roman cooking stove in the ancient Thracian city of Perperikon in modern Greece. cut right into the stones of the rock city in the A.D. 3rd-4th century. According to novinite.com: “The stove consists of a lower part, a hearth, whose ceiling has two holes that let through some fire; the ceramic cooking vessels would be placed on top of the holes. The stove was found while archaeologists were excavating 100 meters of the fortress wall of Perperikon. The stronghold protected what is believed to have been a palace-sanctuary harboring the ancient temple of Dionysus. Other artifacts found at the site included a lamp with the image of a naked dancer, bronze and silver ornaments, lead seals used by of local rulers. [Source: novinite.com, May 2010]

Bowls, Glass Objects and Amphora in Ancient Rome

20120226-Food Crockery_display_Louvre_MNE1334.jpg
Food crockery display
Interesting objects include a mold-blown glass vessel with an image of racing Horse-drawn chariots; a blue bronze serving bowl in the shape of a seashell; a pink clay bowl is decorated with floral and beaded reliefs; and a thin-necked 10-centimeter-high bottle made of mold-blown glass with floral scrolls and floating handles. [Source National Geographic]

Glass vessels found in Pompeii included bowls, saucepan-like vessels perhaps used to serve dinner and bottles and small jar probably used as storage vessels. Dr Joanne Berry wrote for the BBC: “Glass vessels were relatively rare in antiquity, becoming more readily available with the development of glass blowing towards the end of the first century B.C. From that time, the increased speed of production greatly increased the number of glass vessels in circulation. A large number of glass vessels have been found at Pompeii, probably manufactured locally. Glass would have been popular because it was cheap, resistant to heat and did not contaminate its contents with bad tastes or smells. Its smooth, impermeable surface meant it could be cleaned easily, allowing it to be re-used (which was not always possible with unglazed ceramic vessels).” [Source: Dr Joanne Berry, Pompeii Images, BBC, March 29, 2011 |::|]

In the Cesnola Collection are some of the tall jars, called pithoi by the Greeks and dolia by the Romans, which were used for storing and exporting wine, grain, and many other articles, taking the place of the casks, barrels, and boxes, and the paper bags and cartons of modern times. The pointed ends were driven into earthen floors.

According to Archaeology magazine: Roman oil amphoras were frequently marked with information specifying their contents or manufacturer. Thus, an 1,800-year-old ceramic amphora fragment from Hornachuelos, Córdoba, etched with writing was originally considered nothing special. However, closer examination revealed it had been engraved with two verses of a poem written by Virgil, the first time any works of Rome’s most celebrated poet have been found on an amphora. Fittingly, the lines were taken from Virgil’s Georgics, a work dedicated to agriculture and rural life. [Source: Archaeology magazine, September 2023]

Dining Utensils in Ancient Rome

In Greco-Roman times the rich ate and drank from gold plates, silver cups and glass bottles while commoners ate and drank from clay plates, hollowed ram's horns and hardwood jugs. Upper class Greeks and Romans used spoons of bronze and silver while poorer people used ones carved from wood. To clean themselves at mealtime the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used towel-like napkins and finger bowls of water scented with thing like rose petals, herbs and rosemary. Food was often cut into convenient pieces in the kitchen and eaten with the fingers, but spoons were used to a considerable extent by the Romans. Several bronze spoons and some silver spoons of various shapes have been found.

In the Roman Empire, bronze and silver forks were used. There are many surviving examples in museums around Europe. Use varied based on local customs, social class, and the type of food, but in earlier periods forks were mostly used as cooking and serving utensils. Although its origin may go back to Ancient Greece, the personal table fork was most likely invented in the Byzantine Empire, where they were commonly used by the 4th century. [Source Wikipedia]

20120226-Pompeii spoons chiai_Pompei.jpg
Pompeii spoons
Pottery shows the kinds of dishes in use in Greek and Italian houses. There are cups of different shapes, pitchers and jugs for water, wine, and other liquids, kraters (large bowls for mixing water and wine), plates for food, and lekythoi (oil-cruets). The modern china, that is, high-fired pottery covered with a vitreous glaze, was not known, and glass did not become common until the Imperial period. There are many examples of the glass vessels of that time, some plain, others with ornaments in relief, and still others of colored glass in patterns of remarkable beauty. Much of the plain glass has become iridescent owing to exposure to damp in graves. The pottery in museum collections is naturally the finer product of the workshop; receptacles for storing and for kitchen use were of undecorated clay and more carelessly made. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

Another piece of table-ware which should be mentioned is a special plate for fish, made in Italy, which had a depression in the center for holding the sauce. These plates are decorated with interesting and surprisingly accurate drawings of fish. There is a bronze table service of Greek work from an Etruscan tomb, and bronze jars and jugs of various fine shapes, and ladles for dipping wine. The remarkably beautiful handles from vessels in these cases are a further proof of the taste and care expended upon household utensils. Silver table services were not common among the Greeks, but silver and even gold dishes were used by wealthy Romans. Four Roman-era cups with a ladle and a little jug or cup with a spout.

Romans Used Non-stick Cookware 2,000 Years Ago

in 2016, archaeologist said that had found evidence that the Romans used non-stick pans — fragments of pots with a thick, red, slippery coating — to cook meaty stews some 2,000 years ago at a Roman pottery dump near Naples. It was first the first hard evidence of non-stick suggested in a first-century cookbook entitled De Re Coquinaria. Discovery News reported that the fragments of cookware, known as Cumanae testae or Cumanae patellae – meaning pans from the city of Cumae – were found 19 kilometers west of Naples and were dated between 27 B.C. and A.D. 37. [Source: Sarah Griffiths, dailymail.co.uk, May 18, 2016 +++]

De Re Coquinaria said the easy-care cookware was particularly good for making chicken stews and was likely exported across the Mediterranean to North Africa, France and Britain. Professor of Greek and Roman art, Giuseppe Pucci hypothesized that Cumanae testae evolved into what’s known as Pompeian Red Ware – pottery with a thick red-slip coating on the inside. Analysis has shown the composition of the pottery is different to ‘Red Ware’ found in Pompeii, which had a lesser quality shiny, or non-stick coating. Modern-day, non-stick pots and pans use substanced called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), of which Teflon is one kind. Generally the more layers of PTFE sprayed or rolled on, the higher the quality of non-stick coating. +++

Cumae was one of the first Greek colonies in Italy, founded in the eight century B.C., with Roman soldiers conquering the city in 228 B.C. In Roman mythology, there is an entrance to the underworld located at Avernus, a crater lake near Cumae, and was the route Aeneas used to descend to the Underworld. The Romans were not the first to use non-stick technology. Researchers from Dartmouth college found that Mycenaean Greeks used non-stick pans to make bread more than 3,000 years ago. Mycenaean ceramic griddles had one smooth side and one side covered with tiny holes. The bread was likely placed on the side with the holes, since the dough tended to stick when cooked on the smooth side of the pan. These holes seemed to be an ancient non-sticking technology, ensuring that oil spread evenly over the griddle. +++

Bullae (Seals)

Bullae were inscribed seals or tokens made of clay, soft metal (lead or tin), bitumen, or wax. They were used in commercial and legal documentation as a form of authentication and for tamper-proofing whatever is attached to it.

Marley Brown wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Archaeologists working in the ancient city of Doliche, now Dülük in modern-day Turkey, have uncovered a large collection of 1,800-year-old clay seals called bullae, which date to the period when the city was part of the Roman province of Syria. Many of the bullae appear to have been used for official government business and show various deities, including depictions of Roman emperors shaking hands with Jupiter Dolichenus, a thunder and war god indigenous to the area, whose cult spread across the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries A.D. [Source: Marley Brown, Archaeology magazine, March-April 2018]

“It is one of the great enigmas in the history of Roman religion that the main local god from a second-tier city of the north Syrian hinterland developed into one of the best attended cults of the empire,” says Michael Blömer, codirector of the University of Münster excavations. According to Blömer, “In one seal, the emperor is actually shown worshipping Jupiter Dolichenus. This close bond between a local deity and the emperor is a very peculiar motif and points to a special connection between Doliche and the imperial center.” This connection may partly explain how the god became so popular.

Writing Materials in Ancient Rome

For writing the Romans used different materials: first, the tablet (tabula), or a thin piece of board covered with wax, which was written upon with a sharp iron pencil (stylus); next, a kind of paper (charta) made from the plant called papyrus; and, finally, parchment (membrana) made from the skins of animals. The paper and parchment were written upon with a pen made of reed sharpened with a penknife, and ink made of a mixture of lampblack. When a book (liber) was written, the different pieces of paper or parchment were pasted together in a long sheet and rolled upon a round stick. When collected in a library (bibliotheca), the rolls were arranged upon shelves or in boxes. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901)]

An iron stylus — a writing implement used to press letters into wax or clay tablets — dating to about A.D. 70 was unearthed from a trash dump of Londinium (Roman London) along a lost tributary of the Thames. It bears a personal message in Latin etched along its sides: “I have come from the City. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me. I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able (to give) as generously as the way is long (and) as my purse is empty.” The stylus is thought to have been a gift from a friend. [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2019]

Usually only the upper surface of the sheet—formed by the horizontal layer of strips—was used for writing. These strips, which showed even after the process of manufacture, served to guide the pen of the writer. In the case of books where it was important to keep the number of lines constant to the page, lines were ruled with a circular piece of lead. The pen (calamus) was made of a reed brought to a point and cleft in the manner of a quill pen. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

For the black ink (atramentum) was occasionally substituted the liquid of the cuttlefish. Red ink was much used for headings, ornaments, and the like, and in pictures the inkstand is generally represented with two compartments, presumably one for black ink, one for red ink. The ink was more like paint than modern ink, and, when fresh, could be wiped off with a damp sponge. It could be washed off even when it had become dry and hard. To wash sheets in order to use them a second time was a mark of poverty or niggardliness, but the reverse side of schedae that had served their purpose was often used for scratch paper, especially in the schools.” |+|

Roman Dodecahedrons

A dodecahedron is a 12-sided metal shell about the size of a grapefruit. More than 100 dodecahedrons have been found over the past 200 years, mainly in France, Britain and the Benelux countries. They can be as small as a golf ball or as large as a grapefruit. Most are broken. A complete one was found at Norton Disney near Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of England, around 240 kilometers (150 miles) from London in 2023. [Source: Tom Metcalfe, Live Science, January 19, 2024]

Roman bronze dodecahedron found in Tongeren, Belgium

According to Live Science: These objects date from between the first and the third centuries A.D. and they have only been found in former northern territories of the Roman Empire. They're sometimes called "Gallo-Roman" dodecahedrons, after the Gauls (or Celts) who lived in these areas. Each dodecahedron is a 12-sided hollow shell of metal, usually bronze, with differently-sized holes in each face; these holes are often surrounded by concentric rings imprinted in the metal, and there is a stud at each corner where the 12 faces meet.

But they bear no writing of any kind, and no description of the dodecahedrons has ever been found in Roman writings. As a result, modern archaeologists are at a loss to explain what they might have been used for. Some have proposed that the dodecahedrons were toys, dice, the heads of maces, sling stones, or range-finding devices for Roman artillery. Additional theories on the internet range from their being devices for calculating dates from stars to serving as knitting patterns for Roman gloves.

But the objects are much too intricate to have been weapons, and none of the other explanations have been satisfactory. Many archaeologists now think the dodecahedrons had a religious or cultic use in the Gallo-Roman regions where they are found — they may have been used for fortune-telling, for example, or for sorcery. A few have been found in graves, which strengthens the idea that they were supposed to be magical; and Roman law prohibited most magic, which may be why nothing was written about them.

Keys in Ancient Rome

Keys were of at least three types. An early one is shown with the bolt to which it belongs. The key when inserted into the bolt pushed upward with its teeth a series of pegs which fitted into holes in the bolt and took their place. It could then be used as a handle to pull the bolt backward. The second consists of a plate provided with notches which lifted a series of tumblers and allowed the bolt to be shot. The third key belongs to the type in use today, and as such keys have been found in Pompeii, they must have been known before 79 A.D. The lock-plate is perhaps from a strong-box. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

The key hand described to the right, from Archaeology magazine

Candida Moss wrote in the Daily Beast: While keys today are small objects that help us conceal secret spaces and objects and work largely for self-protection, ancient keys were large items that operated as displays of power and wealth. In addition to being used to secure the entryway to a home, keys were often used to constrain enslaved workers. As ancient historian Sandra Joshel has written, the Romans used “geographies of containment” to control and subjugate their enslaved workers, “the greatest assurance of the control of slave movement, especially at night,” she writes, “was the locked door.” Keys weren’t just for keeping people out they were also for keeping the enslaved “barbarian” population in their quarters. [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, August 29, 2021]

A 12-centimeter (4.75-inch -long, 2.5-centimeter (one inch) -wide key handle, made of copper alloy and iron and dated to the A.D. 2nd or 3rd century was in found in Leicester, England. Jarrett A. Lobell wrote in Archaeology Magazine: While there are numerous extant large Roman keys — and legend holds that the original key to the Pantheon’s massive second-century A.D. bronze doors survives — few can match this example excavated in a large Roman townhouse in the city of Leicester by archaeologists Nick Cooper and Gavin Speed of University of Leicester Archaeological Services. At the top of the key’s handle, an unarmed man is locked in a violent struggle with a lion. The man is easily identified as a non-Roman barbarian by his trousers — Romans wore tunics, not pants — distinctive sweptback hair, and shaggy beard. The base of the handle depicts four naked, curly-haired youths clutching each other in terror. “Large Roman bronze key handles do exist, and they commonly have animals, and especially lions, with animals in their jaws,” says archaeologist John Pearce of King’s College London, “but this vivid scene has no direct analogies in any medium.” [Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology Magazine, January/February 2022

Having no exact parallel with which to compare the handle, Pearce looked to scenes of animal fights shown in contemporaneous North African mosaics to decipher its meaning. He suggests that it depicts a form of execution — and popular entertainment — known as damnatio ad bestias during which bound captives were thrown to exotic beasts in the arena. “The violent imagery may have commemorated a local spectacle sponsored by a Roman magistrate, perhaps the house’s owner,” says Pearce, “or it may have been meant to ward off evil, as doors in the Roman world are symbols of both literal and symbolic vulnerability.” In any case, he says, the key, like the doors it opened, was intended to impress. “The house’s owner is presumably not carrying this huge key in the folds of his toga or cloak,” Pearce adds. “More likely, a doorkeeper stationed at the house’s entrance used it as a kind of badge of office and a form of ostentation.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024