Olla (Roman pot)
In
In
, by the mallet god often identified with him, or by other gods.Cookery
Olla is a generic word for a cooking pot, such as would be used for vegetables, porridge, pulse and such..
Unlike the aenum or cauldron, which hung over the fire from chains, the olla had a flat bottom for resting on a hot surface, though it might also be placed directly on logs or coals in rustic cookery.[10] The kitchen reconstructed at the House of the Vettii from Pompeii shows a large olla set on a tripod on the stove.[11]
Funerary use
Ollae were used for funerary purposes from earliest times. In
Sacrificial use
After the performance of an animal sacrifice, a designated portion of the entrails (exta) was placed either in an olla and boiled, or in oldest times on a spit and roasted,[16] as part of the "cuisine" of sacrifice. The exta were the victim's liver, gall, lungs, and the membrane covering the intestines, with the heart added after 275 BC.[17] The olla was one of the characteristic implements of sacrifice, and appears in reliefs as such, particularly in the Gallic provinces.[18] The vessel is mentioned, for instance, in Livy's account of a sign (prodigium) that manifested divine displeasure: the official presiding over the sacrifice himself poured the cooking liquid out of the olla in order to inspect the remaining entrails, which were intact except for the mysteriously liquified liver.[19]
Arval Brethren
Ollae figured in the rituals of the
Silvanus and the Mallet God
The name of the woodland god Silvanus appears in inscriptions within the province of Gallia Narbonensis with representations of a mallet, an olla, or both. The mallet is not a regular attribute of Silvanus, and may be borrowed from the Celtic mallet god sometimes identified with Sucellus.[23]
See also
References
- ^ K.D. White, Farm Equipment of the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 176.
- Perseus Project.
- Perseus Project.
- ^ W.J. Gill and Rosalyn Gee, "Museum Supplement: Classical Antiquities in Swansea", Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996), p. 258 and plate III.
- ^ Entry on "olla", Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982, 1985 printing), p. 1246; David Noy, "'Half-Burnt on an Emergency Pyre': Roman Cremations Which Went Wrong", Greece & Rome 47 (2000), p. 186.
- ^ White, Farm Equipment, p. 176.
- ^ White, Farm Equipment, p. 178.
- ^ Varro, De lingua latina 5.108.
- ^ Isidore, Etymologiae 20.8.1.
- ^ White, Farm Equipment, p. 178, citing Martial.
- ^ White, Farm Equipment, p. 179.
- ^ Helle W. Horsnaes, The Cultural Development in Northwestern Lucania c. 600–274 BC («L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 2002), pp. 67–68, 89, 95, 148, 173.
- ^ Gabriel C.L.M. Bakkum, The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 414.
- ^ Giovannangelo Camporeale, The Etruscans Outside Etruria (Arsenale-EBS, 2001), pp. 162–163, 197.
- ^ White, Farm Equipment, p. 179.
- ^ Robert Schilling, "Roman Sacrifice," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 79.
- ^ Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001, originally published in French 1998), p. 9.
- ^ Duncan Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Brill, 1990), vol. II.1, p. 527.
- ^ Livy, 41.15.
- ^ Schilling, "Roman Sacrifice," p. 79.
- ^ Schilling, "The Arval Brethren," p. 113.
- ^ William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, (London, 1922), p. 489.
- ^ Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), pp. 57–59.