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BAKERS AND BAKING 200.00%
The original custom in Greece and Italy was to grind the corn and bake the necessary supplies at home; a usage which maintained itself in large houses even after grinding and baking (for the two went together) bad become a separate trade. Bakers first appear in Greece as a distinct class in the 6th century B.C.; in Rome there is no sign of them till about B.C. 171. The millers or "pounders" (pistores) at Rome were usually either freedmen or citizens of a low class; but the position of the trade was improved by the care taken by the State to provide good and cheap bread of full weight. As early as the time of Augustus the State was served by a collegium or guild of bakers, which was subsequently organized by Trajan. In his time it consisted of 100 members nominated by the emperor, with special privileges, and subordinate to the proefectus annonoe (seeANNONA). In the 3rd century A.D. the monthly distribution of bread was succeeded by a daily one. This naturally led to a considerable increase in the number of public bakeries. At the beginning of the 4th century A.D. there were 254, distributed through the fourteen regiones of Rome. Side by side with these there existed a number of private bakeries, which made it their business to provide the finer sorts of bread, so numerous in antiquity. Baking was carried on sometimes in furnaces (such as are found in Pompeii), sometimes in the klibanos or kribanos (Latin clibanus). This was a clay vessel with a lid on the top and small holes in the sides, wider at the bottom than at the top. To heat it they surrounded it with hot ashes. The ancients were unacquainted with rye, and made their bread mostly of wheat, with several varieties depending on the quality of the flour and the mode of preparation. The loaves were generally round, and divided into four parts, to facilitate breaking them.
 
PISTOR 143.66%

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The Roman baker. (See BAKERS AND BAKING.)
 
POTTERY 16.91%

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The simplest, and at the same time one of the oldest, branches of the primeval art of working in clay is the manufacture of bricks and tiles, the invention of which (at Athens) was ascribed by the Greeks to the mythical personages Euryalus and Hyperbius [Pliny, H. N. vii 194]. So far as bricks were used at all, their use was generally confined to private buildings; and Greeks and Romans for ages employed only unbaked or sun-dried bricks. Bricks baked in the kiln came into use at a later date. The first to employ them extensively were the Romans, probably at the period when the population of the city rendered it necessary to build houses of several stories, which demanded a more solid material. In imperial times such bricks were the common material for private and public buildings. The walls were built of them, and then overlaid with stucco or marble. Building with baked bricks extended from Rome into Greece, and, generally speaking, wherever the Romans carried their arms, they introduced their exceptional aptitude for making excellent bricks. Bricks which presented flat surfaces, to be used for walls or pavements, were made of the most various dimensions, but were for the mostpart thinner than ours. Besides these, there were also rounded bricks for bujlding dwarf column, and for the construction of circular walls. For roofs flat tiles were chiefly used (Lat. tegula), which were provided with a raised rim on both of their longer sides, and were so formed that the upper fitted into the lower. Concave tiles also were used (Lat. imbrex) of the form of a half cylinder, which covered the adjoining edges of the flat tiles. The lowest row was commonly finished off with ornamental moulding. From the same material as bricks were also made pipes for conveying water, for sewers, and for warm air; the section in the first two cases was round, in the last, square. Pottery in its proper sense, the manufacture of utensils, is very old. The potter's wheel was known even before Homer's time [IL. xviii 600]. Its invention was variously ascribed to the Corinthian Hyperbius [Pliny vii 198] and to the Athenian Talus, nephew of Daedalus. Corinth and Athens, where the neighbouring promontory of Colias furnished an inexhaustible supply of fine potter's clay, were, in fact, the headquarters of the manufacture of Greek pottery. Next came Aegina, Samos, Lacedaemon, and other places in Greece itself, which always remained the principal seat of this manufacture, especially in the form of vases of painted clay. These were exported in large numbers to the countries on the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The high estimation in which Greek, and especially Attic, pottery was held is proved by the numerous vases which have been discovered in tombs, chiefly in Italy. More-over they represent almost every period. The excellence of the workmanship lies in the material, which is very fine, and prepared with the utmost care; also in the execution and in the baking. Its thinness, as well as the hardness of its sides, even in vessels of large dimensions, astonishes experts in such matters. The shapes are mostly produced by the potter's wheel, but also by hand in the case of vessels too large to be conveniently placed on the wheel; for example, the largest wine-jars. [The prehistoric pottery from Mycenaene, the Troad, and other Hellenic sites, was-also made by hand.] Whereas small vessels were made of a single piece, in the case of large ones the body, handles, feet, and neck, were fashioned separately, and then united. They were first dried in the sun, then twice baked, before and after the painting. The colours are No less admirable than the workmanship. The clay shows a beautiful bright reddish yellow, which is produced by the addition of colouring matter, and is also further intensified by a thin coating of glaze. The black colour, which often verges upon green, and is of a brilliant lustre, is then applied. Either (1) the design stands out black against the bright background or (2) the figures appear in red on a black ground, the former being the earlier method. Other colours, especially white or dark-red, were applied after the black glaze had been burnt into the clay by the second baking, and served as a less lasting adornment. In later times yellow, green, blue, brown, and gold were also used. [In the case of vases with black figures, the vase was first turned on the wheel, and in order to give it a surface of deeper red: clay finely ground and mixed with water to the consistency of cream, technically known as "slip," was applied by a brush or other wise while it was still revolving. The outline of the design was next roughly sketched, either witho . nt or in light-red ochre with a brush. The vase was then dried in the sun, and again put on the wheel, and the glaze, finely powdered and mixed with water was applied to it with a brush as it revolved. The vase was then in some cases fired for the first time in the kiln in order to provide a smooth, almost non-absorbent surface for the use of the painter. The painter then put on the black enamel figures and ornaments with a brush. After the firing of the enamel, the details were drawn in by incised lines, cutting through the enamel down to the clay body of the vase. In vases with red figures instead of the figures being painted in black, the ground is covered with black enamel and the figures left, showing the glazed red "slip" which covers the whole vase. This method produced a great artistic advance in the beauty of the figures, the details and inner lines of which could be executed with freedom and ease by brush-marked lines, instead of by the laborious process of cutting incised lines through the very hard black enamel (Prof. Middleton on "Pottery" in Encyc. Brit. xix 608, 609).] Lastly, the form deserves all praise. The vases of the best period present the most tasteful elegance of form, that is at once fine and strong, and the most delicate proportion of the various parts to each other and to the whole, without interfering with their practical utility (see cuts under VASES and VESSELS). It was not until the times when taste had begun to degenerate that the fashion was introduced of giving to clay ware, by means of moulds, all kinds of grotesque forms of men and beasts, and of furnishing them with plastic (as well as painted) ornamentation. [The technique of ancient pottery is illustrated by figs. 1 and 2. The first represents a youth seated in front of an oven, from the top of which he takes with two sticks a small, two-handled vase which has been newly glazed. The second shows the potter giving the last polish to a finished vase, while two other vessels are standing to dry on an oven, the door of which is closed (Guhl and Koner's Life of the Greeks and Romans, p. 141, Eng. ed.). Among the votive tablets in the Louvre there are two from Corinth, The first of these represents an early Greek type of kiln, which is domed over, and has a space for the fuel on one side, and a door in the side of the upper chamber, through which the pottery could be put in and withdrawn. The second shows a potter applying painted bands while the vessel revolves on the wheel (Prof. Middleton, l.c., figs. 3 and 20). See also VASES.] The ROMANS, with whom, as early as the time of the second king, Numa, a guild (collegium) of potters existed, neither had vessels of painted clay amongst their household goods, nor did they employ it for the ornamentation of their graves. In earlier times at least, they used only coarse and entirely unornamented ware. They imported artistically executed vases from their neighbours, the Etruscans. In the last hundred years of the Republic, as well as in the first hundred years after Christ, the chief place for the manufacture of the red crockery generally used in households was Arretium (Arezzo) [Pliny, xxxv 160; Martial, i 54, 6, xiv 98; Dennis, Etruria, ii 335]. The ware of this place was distinguished by a coral-red colour, and was generally furnished with glaze and delicate reliefs; in fact, ornamentation in relief was widely employed in later Roman pottery. Very much valued was the domestic ware, called vasa Samia, which was an imitation of the earlier pottery brought from the island of Samos. It was formed of fine, red-coloured clay, baked very hard, of thin make, and very delicate workmanship. It was glazed and generally adorned with reliefs, and served especially for the table use of respectable people who could not afford silver. While this fine ware was made by hand, the manufacture of ordinary pottery as well as of bricks and pipes, especially under the Empire, formed an important industry among capitalists, who, on finding good clay on their estates, built potteries and tileworks, and either worked them on their own account through slaves or had them carried on by lessees. The emperor himself, after the time of Tiberius, and the members of the imperial family, especially the females, pursued a similar trade, as is shown by the trade-mark which, according to Roman custom, was borne by clay manufactures. The production of large statues of clay, apart from the purpose of modelling, belongs amongst the Greeks to the early times. It continued much longer amongst the Italians, especially amongst the Etruscans, who furnished the temple at Rome with clay images of the gods before the victorious campaigns in the East brought marble and bronze productions of Greek art to Rome. On the other hand, throughout the whole of antiquity, the manufacture of small clay figures of very various kinds, for the decoration of dwellings and graves, and for playthings for children, etc., was most extensively practised. They were generally made in moulds, and after baking were decorated with a coating of colour. The excellence which Greek art attained in this department, as in others, is shown by the "figurines" discovered at Tanagra in and after 1874, specimens of which are given in figs. 3, 4. Very important too was the manufacture of clay reliefs, partly with figured representation and partly with arabesque patterns, for the embellishment of columns, windows, cornices, and also of tombstones and sarcophagi. (See Dumont and Chaplain, Ceramiques, 1888: Kekule, Thonfiguren aus Tanagra, 1878, Die antiken Terracotten, 1880, and Die Terracotten von Sicilien, 1884; Henzey, Catalogue des figurines antiques de terre cuite du Musee du Louvre, 1882, id. 60 plates, 1883; and the popular work by Pottier, Les Statuettes de Terre Cuite dans L'Antiquite, 1880.)
 
FORNACALIA 15.41%
A Roman festival held in February in honour of Fornax, the goddess of ovens. It was said to have been founded by Numa, and may be described as a thanksgiving for the earliest enjoyment of the newly gathered corn. It was held in the Forum by the Curiae, or ancient unions of kinsmen, under the superintendence of the Curio Maximus, or president of the masters of the curioe. Corn was baked in ovens in the ancient fashion. All who missed the festival were called fools (stulti), as being supposed not to know which was their curia, and had to make an offering at the so-called Feast of Fools (stultorum ferioe). on the 17th February, the day of the. Quirinalia.
 
VESTA 12.77%

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The Italian, particularly the Latin, goddess of the hearth and of its fire, corresponding in her name, as well as in her nature, to the Greek HESTIA(q.v.) Like Vesta, besides her special cult on the hearth of every home, she was also worshipped by the State. This worship was introduced by Numa from Lavinium, whither Aeneas had brought the Penates and the sacred fire from Troy. Hence it was that Roman consuls and dictators, on taking up and laying down their office sacrificed in the temple of Vesta at Lavinium. It was customary in Italy as in Greece for the colonies to kindle the fire of their own Vesta at the hearth of the mother city. The ancient round temple of Vesta, which served as the central point of the city, was built by Numa. In its neighbourhood was the so called atrium of Vesta, the abode of the virgin priestesses of the goddess, the Vestals (excavated in 1883-4; Middleton's Remains of Ancient Rome, i 307-329]. Here the goddess was worshipped not in the form of a statue, but under the symbol of the eternal fire, which it was the chief duty of the Vestals to keep alight. On every 1st March it was renewed. If it went out of itself, a great national disaster was held to have occurred, and the guilty Vestal was scourged by the pontifex. The fire could only be rekindled by a burning glass, or by the primitive method of friction by boring a piece of wood from a fruit tree. Corresponding to the lares and penates of the domestic hearth, there were, according to later usage, the penates of the State in the temple of Vesta; and similarly, on the temple-hearth, a sacrifice was offered daily, consisting of the plainest form of food in a simple vessel of clay. The daily purifications could only be made with flowing water, which the Vestals carried in pitchers upon their heads from the fountain of Egeria, or of the Muses. By day every one had the right of admission to all the temple, save only that part in which the palladium and other mystic relics were kept, where the Vestals alone had the right to enter. It was only by night that men were excluded. As goddess of the sacred fire of the hearth in every house, and for the city in general, Vesta was also the goddess of every sacrificial fire. Hence she was worshipped with Janus at every religion service, Janus being invoked at the opening, Vesta at the close. Her own festival, the Vestalia, was kept on July 9th. The matrons of the town walked barefooted in procession to her temple, to implore tba blessing of the goddess for their households, and to offer sacrifice to her in rude dishes, in remembrance of the time when the hearth served generally for the baking of bread. The millers and bakers also kept holiday. The mills were crowned, and the asses employed in them had garlands and loaves suspended about their necks. The worship of Vesta survived to the last days of paganism, and was abolished by Gratian in 382 A.D. Although there was no image of the goddess in the actual temples, her statues were not uncommon at Rome in later times. Like the Greek Hestia, she was represented sometimes as standing, sometimes as sitting, completely clothed and veiled, with chalice torch, sceptre, and palladium. For cut, see HESTIA.
 
PICUMNUS 12.75%
An old Italian god of agriculture, credited with the invention of the use of manure. He was said to be the husband of Pomona. His brother Pilumnus was honoured by bakers as the inventor of the pestle (pilum) for crushing corn; and the two together were protecting deities to women in child-bed and to new-born infants. Hence, in the country, festal couches were set for them in the atrium when children were safely brought to birth. According to another ancient view, there were three divinities protecting mother and child, who prevented the mischievous intrusion of Silvanus into the house. These powers (representing the triumph of civilization over the wild forest life) were impersonated by three men, who went round the house in the night, and knocked on the threshold of the front and back doors, first with a hatchet and then with a pestle, and lastly swept them with a broom. The names of these deities were Intercidona, god of the hewing of timbers, Pilumnus, of the crushing of corn into meal by the pestle, and Deverra, of the sweeping together of grain [Varro, quoted by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, vi 9]. Picumnus, as appears in the name, is identical with Picus (q.v.).
 
SLING 8.71%
A weapon for hurling missiles, consisting of a thong, broad in the middle and growing narrower towards the ends. The missile was either a round stone of the size of a hen's egg, a ball of baked clay, or a leaden bolt cast in the shape of an acorn. It was placed in the broad part of the thong, and the slinger (Gr. sphendonetes; Lat. funditor), holding the thong by both ends in in one hand, swung it several times round his head, and discharged the ball at the mark by means of letting go one end of the thong. The most famous slingers of antiquity were the inhabitants of the Balearic Isles; they carried three slings, made of plaited rushes, hair, and the sinews of wild beasts, for long, short, and intermediate shots respectively. Various leaden slingbolts, bearing marks or characteristic inscriptions, have been preserved. Under the Empire there came into use the sling-staff (Lat. justibalus), a staff four feet in length, to the end of which a leathern sling was fastened. One thong of this reached to the other end of the staff, and was together with this held fast by the fustibalator, who swung the staff several times round his head, and suddenly let go the longer thong, thus throwing a larger missile with much greater force than was possible with a simple sling.
 
MEALS 3.02%
 
SACRIFICES 3.01%

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among the ancients, formed the chief part of every religious act. According to the kind of sacrifice offered, they were divided into (a) bloodless offerings and (b) blood offerings. (a) The former consisted in firstfruits, viands, and cakes of various shape and make, which were some of them burned and some of them laid on the altars and sacrificial tables (See figs. 1 and 2) and removed after a time, libations of wine, milk, water with honey or milk, and frankincense, for which in early times native products (wood and the berries of cedars, junipers, and bay trees, etc.) were used. Asiatic spices, such as incense and myrrh, scarcely came into use before the seventh century in Greece or until towards the end of the Republic at Rome. (b) For blood-offerings cattle, goats, sheep, and swine were used by preference. Other animals were only employed in special cults. Thus horses were offered in certain Greek regions to Poseidon and Helios, and at Rome on the occasion of the October feast to Mars; dogs to Hecate and Robigus, asses to Priapus, cocks to Asclepius, and geese to Isis. Sheep and cattle, it appears, could be offered to any gods among the Greeks. As regards swine and goats, the regulations varied according to the different regions. Swine were sacrificed especially to Demeter and Dionysus, goats to the last named divinity and to Apollo and Aromis as well as Aphrodite, while they were excluded from the service of Athene, and it was only at Sparta that they were presented to Hera. At Epidaurus they might not be sacrificed to Asclepius, though elsewhere this was done without scruple. [Part of the spoils of the chase-such as the antlers or fell of the stag, or the head and feet of the boar or the bear--was offered to Artemis Agrotera (See fig. 3).] As regards the sex and colour of the victims, the Romans agreed in general with the Greeks in following the rule of sacrificing male creatures to gods, female to goddesses, and those of dark hue to the infernal powers. At Rome, however, there were special regulations respecting the victims appropriate to the different divinities. Thus the appropriate offering for Jupiter was a young steer of a white colour, or at least with a white spot on its forehead; for Mars, in the case of expiatory sacrifices, two bucks or a steer; the latter also for Neptune and Apollo; for Vulcan, a red calf and a boar; for Liber and Mercury, a he-goat; for Juno, Minerva, and Diana, a heifer; for Juno, as Lucina, an ewe lamb or (as also for Ceres and the Bona Dea) a sow; for Tellus, a pregnant, and for Proserpine a barren, heifer; and so on. The regulations as regards the condition of the victims were not the same everywhere in Greece. Still in general with them, as invariably with the Romans, the rule held good, that only beasts which were without blemish, and had not yet been used for labour, should be employed. Similarly, there were definite rules, which were, however, not the same everywhere, concerning the age of the victims. Thus, by Athenian law, lambs could not be offered at all before their first shearing, and sheep only when they had borne lambs. The Romans distinguished victims by their ages as lactantes, sucklings, and maiores, full grown. The sacrifice of sucklings was subject to certain limitations: young pigs had to be five days old, lambs seven, and calves thirty. Animals were reckoned maiores if they were bidentes; i.e. if their upper and lower rows of teeth were complete. There were exact requirements for all cases as regards their sex and condition, and to transgress these was an offence that demanded expiation. If the victims could not be obtained as the regulations required, the pontifical law allowed their place to be taken by a representation in wax or dough, or by a different animal in substitution for the sort required. In many cults different creatures were combined for sacrifice: e.g. a bull, a sheep, and a pig (Cp. SUOVETAURILIA), or a pig, a buck, and a ram, and the like. In State sacrifices, victims were sometimes sacrificed in great numbers; e.g. at the Athenian festival in commemoration of the victory at Marathon, 500 goats were slain. (Cp. HECATOMBE.) Human sacrifices as a means of expiation were not unknown to the earliest Greek and Roman worship, and continued in certain cases (e.g. at the feast of the Lyman Zeus and of Jupiter Latiaris) until the imperial period; however, where they continued to exist, criminals who were in any case doomed to death were selected, and in many places opportunity was further given them for escape. In general, it was considered that purity in soul and body was an indispensable requirement for a sacrifice that was to be acceptable to a divinity. Accordingly the offerer washed at least his hands and feet, and appeared in clean (for the most part, white) robes. One who had incurred blood-guiltiness could not offer sacrifice at all; he who had polluted himself by touching anything unclean, particularly a corpse, needed special purification by fumigation. Precautions were also taken to insure the withdrawal of all persons who might be otherwise unpleasing to the divinity; from many sacrifices women were excluded, from others men, from many slaves and freedmen. At Rome, in early times, all plebeians were excluded by the patricians. The victims were generally decked out with ribbons and wreaths, and sometimes the cattle had their horns gilded. If the creature voluntarily followed to the altar or even bowed its head, this was considered as a favourable sign; it was an unfavourable sign if it offered resistance or tried to escape. In that case, with the Romans, the object of the sacrifice was deemed to be frustrated. Among the Greeks those who took part in the sacrifice wore wreaths; a firebrand from the altar was dipped in water, and with the water thus consecrated they sprinkled themselves and the altar. They then strewed the head of the victim with baked barley-grains, and cast some hairs cut from its head into the sacrificial fire. After those present had been called upon to observe a devout silence, and avoid everything that might mar the solemnity of the occasion, the gods were invited, amidst the sound of flutes or hymns sung to the lyre and dancing, to accept the sacrifice propitiously. The hands of the worshippers were raised, or extended, or pointed downwards, according as the prayer was made to a god of heaven, of the sea, or of the lower world respectively. The victim was then felled to the ground with a mace or a hatchet, and its throat cut with the sacrificial knife. During this operation the animal's head was held up, if the sacrifice belonged to the upper gods, and bowed down if it belonged to those of the lower world or the dead. The blood caught from it was, in the former case, poured round the altar, in the latter, into a ditch. In the case just mentioned the sacrifice was entirely burned (and this was also the rule with animals which were not edible), and the ashes were poured into the ditch. In sacrifices to the gods of the upper world, only certain portions were burned to the gods, such as thigh-bones or chine-bones out off the victim, some of the entrails, or some pieces of flesh with a layer of fat, rolled round the whole, together with libations of wine and oil, frankincense, and sacrificial cakes. The remainder, after removing the god's portion, as it was called, for the priests engaged in the sacrifice, was either roasted at once for the sacrificial banquet and so consumed, or taken home. Festal sacrifices at the public expense were often combined with a public meal. Sacrifice was made to the gods of the upper air in the morning; to those of the lower world in the evening. Among the Romans, as among the Greeks, reverent silence prevailed during the sacrificial operations; in case a careless word should become an evil omen, and to prevent any disturbance by external surroundings, a flute-player played and the offerer of the sacrifice himself veiled his head during the rite. The prayer, formulated by the pontifices, and unintelligible to the priests themselves from its archaic language, was repeated by the votary after the priest, who read it from a written form, as any deviation from the exact words made the whole sacrifice of no avail. As a rule, the worshipper turned his face to the east, or, if the ceremony took place before the temple, to the image of the divinity, grasping the altar with his hands; and, when the prayer was ended, laid his hands on his lips, and turned himself from left to right (in many cults from right to left), or, again, walked round the altar and then seated himself. Then the victim, selected as being without blemish, was consecrated, the priest sprinkling salted grains of dried and pounded spelt (mola salsa) and pouring wine from a cup upon its head, and also in certain sacrifices cutting some of the hairs off its head, and finally making a stroke with his knife along the back of the creature, from its head to its tail. Cattle were killed with the mace, calves with the hammer, small animals with the knife, by the priest's attendants appointed for the purpose, to whom also the dissection of the victims was assigned. If the inspectors of sacrifice (see HARUSPEX) declared that the entrails (exta), cut out with the knife, were not normal, this was a sign that the offering was not pleasing to the divinity; and if it was a male animal which had been previously slaughtered, a female was now killed. If the entrails again proved unfavourable, the sacrifice was regarded as of no avail. On the other hand, in the case of prodigies, sacrifices were offered until favourable signs appeared. In other sin-offerings there was no inspection of entrails. Sin-offerings were either entirely burned or given to the priests. Otherwise the flesh was eaten by the offerers, and only the entrails, which were roasted on spits, or boiled, were offered up, together with particular portions of the meat, in the proper way, and placed in a dish upon the altar, after being sprinkled with mola salsa and wine. The slaughter of the victim took place in the morning, whilst the extawere offered at evening, the intervening time being taken up by the process of preparation.
 
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