Winter triclinium with wall painting, Pompeiianum, Aschaffenburg, Germany
© Carole Raddato
In the Home
Roman denarius of Hadrian showing Africa personified as a woman reclining holding a scorpion in her hand. Courtesy of Malton Museum Trust.
The Roman householder used a wide variety of natural products. Luxury pillows were sometimes stuffed with eider duck feathers. Pliny tells us Roman soldiers were diverted from their duties by their officers to catch the birds in Germany. Valuable wood, bone and tortoiseshell were used as decorative veneers on furniture. Asbestos napkins were thrown into the fire to clean them after a meal in rich households.
Romans kept pigeons, built dovecotes for them on their roofs, and paid large sums of money for birds with a good pedigree. Some people kept bees and Pliny describes a structure made of transparent horn, which was probably an educational beehive. Window boxes were popular and Roman gardens had topiary made by clipping box and cypress into shape.
Plants and animals were common in Roman household remedies and beliefs and were used in magic spells.
The tripod table leg
Tripod tables are discussed in Joan Livesey's 'Britain in the Roman Empire' (Book Club Associates, 1968). She writes that small three legged tables were popular throughout the Roman Empire. One is shown with fairly straight legs on the tombstone of Julia Velva at York set with a funeral meal but the more common 'bandy-legged' variety appears on Aelia Aeliana's tombstone. They were made from wood, bronze, or marble on the continent and probably in Roman Britain but the Romano-Britons also had the original idea of making them out of Kimmeridge shale - a black substance intermediate between coal and slate found on the Dorset coast and often used for jewellery. The archaeology collection has some blanks, the waste left behind by turning shale bracelets or bangles. Pliny talks about shale in Book 36 Chapt.34: 'Gagates is a stone, so called from Gages, the name of a town and river in Lycia (Turkey)'. There's a fascinating reference to 'The fumes of it, burnt, keep serpents at a distance', which reminds me of the legend of St Hilda, Abbess of the monastery at Whitby banishing serpents from the area, a story linked with ammonite fossils on the sea shore but could it have originated in the jet, which is found at Whitby? There is an ammonite on display in the Ancient Worlds Gallery. Whatever the case, a table leg made from shale would have looked very fine when waxed and polished. Fragments of shale table legs have been found in Dorset. Livesey refers to one with animal's head with pointed ears and open mouth appearing on the upper half of the leg, while the foot is carved in the shape of a lion's claw, a design still used for the furniture decoration today. This description would also fit the bronze furniture leg on loan to the Museum from Wigan Museum. Three-legged tables were used in the dining room, the sitting room or bedroom but larger more practical tables were used in the kitchen, for example.
Antonius Castor's Garden
Fishbourne Roman Palace Garden. Half of the formal garden of a late 1st century palace replanted to original plan as recovered by excavation in the 1960s.
image courtesy of Rob Symmons
'Hence it is that other writers have confined themselves to a verbal description of the plants, indeed some of them have not so much as described them even, but have contented themselves for the most part with a bare recital of their names, considering it sufficient if they pointed out their virtues and properties to such as might feel inclined to make further enquiries into the subject. Nor is this a kind of knowledge by any means difficult to obtain; at all events, so far as regards myself, with the exception of a very few, it has been my good fortune to examine them all, aided by the scientific research of Antonius Castor, who in our time enjoyed the highest reputation for an intimate acquaintance with this branch of knowledge. I had the opportunity of visiting his garden, in which, though he had passed his hundredth year, he cultivated vast numbers of plants with the greatest care. Though he had reached this great age, he had never experienced any bodily ailment, and neither his memory nor his natural vigour had been the least impaired by the lapse of time.'
Natural History, Book 25 chapter 5
In the Home Objects
1. Pliny criticises people who decorate their homes with colourful stone in the Natural History. These pieces of white and red marble, patterned tufa, purple porphyry and green serpentine were used in buildings in Lanuvium, in Italy.
Loan from Leeds Museums.
2. An African species of scorpion and painted sandals from a mummy case, the soles decorated with pictures of scorpions. Pliny provides many remedies for stings, bites, and venom. Painful encounters with the natural world were commonplace in Roman times. Pliny claims that a radish will kill a scorpion.
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3. Silver coins called denarii from the reign of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138) showing Africa represented as a woman holding a scorpion. One of the coins is from a hoard found at Norton in North Yorkshire. Loan from Malton Museum.
4. Roman bronze mouse figurine and mouse lamps. Singing mice distracted Roman priests during ceremonies. Mice also drank the oil used in lamps. Figurine on loan from National Museums Liverpool.
5. Roman jet amulet in the shape of a bear. It was found in a child’s grave at Malton Roman fort, North Yorkshire. Loan from Malton Museum.
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6. Set of four bronze cloven hooves from a piece of Roman wooden furniture, possibly from a folding stool.