[Illustration:  FIG. 56.—­CUP FROM HERCULANEUM.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 57.—­KITCHEN UTENSILS.]

If now we stepped into the kitchen we should find there practically every kind of utensil likely to be of use even for the modern cuisine.  There is no need here to catalogue the kettles and pots and pans, the strainers and shapes and moulds, employed by Roman cooks.  Perhaps it will suffice to present a number of them to the eye.  In general, however, it deserves to be remarked that such a thing as a pail, a pitcher, a pair of scales, or a steelyard was not regarded in the Roman household as necessarily to be left a bare and unsightly thing because it was useful.  The triumph of tin and ugliness was not yet.  Such vessels as waterpots are still to be seen made of copper in graceful shapes, if one will notice the women fetching water on the Alban Hills.  How far the domestic utensils resembled or differed from those still in use may be judged from the specimens illustrated.

[Illustration:  FIG. 58.—­PAIL FROM HERCULANEUM.]

There existed no clocks of the modern kind, but the Romans do not appear to have suffered much practical inconvenience in respect of telling the time and meeting engagements.  Sundials, both public and private, were numerous, but these were obviously of no use on gloomy days or at night.  The instrument on which the Romans mainly relied was therefore the “water-clock,” which, though by no means capable of our modern precision of minutes and even seconds could record time down to small fractions of the hour.  The principle was that of the hour-glass, water taking the place of sand.  From an upper vessel water slowly trickled through an orifice into a lower receptacle, which at this date was transparent and was marked with sections for the hour and its convenient fractions.  In this way the time would be told by the mark to which the water had risen in the lower portion.  The Romans were not unaware of the difference between the conditions of summer and winter flow of water, but it would appear that they had attained to proper methods of “regulating” their rather awkward time-pieces.  It is as well to add that in the wealthier houses a slave was told off to watch the clock and to report the passing of the hours, as well as to summon any member of the family at the time arranged for an appointment.

CHAPTER XII

SOCIAL DAY OF A ROMAN ARISTOCRAT—­MORNING

We have seen in what sort of a home a Roman dwelt in town or country.  Meanwhile it goes without saying that the non-Roman or non-Romanized populations of the empire were living in houses and amid furniture of their own special type—­Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, or as the case might be.  They were also living their lives after their own fashion in respect of dress, meals, occupations, and amusements.