Olla (Roman pot)
{{Short description|Squat, rounded pot or jar}}
Image:Musée Picardie Archéo 06.jpg mallet god Sucellus; the shape of the fragment suggests that the pot itself might have been an olla]]
In ancient Roman culture, the olla (archaic Latin: aula or aulla; Greek: {{lang|grc|χύτρα}}, chytra)K.D. White, Farm Equipment of the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 176.{{L&S|olla|ref}}{{LSJ|xu/tra|χύτρα|ref}}. is a squat, rounded pot or jar. An olla would be used primarily to cook or store food, hence the word "olla" is still used in some Romance languages for either a cooking pot or a dish in the sense of cuisine. In the typology of ancient Roman pottery, the olla is a vessel distinguished by its rounded "belly", typically with no or small handles or at times with volutes at the lip, and made within a Roman sphere of influence; the term olla may also be used for EtruscanW.J. Gill and Rosalyn Gee, "Museum Supplement: Classical Antiquities in Swansea", Journal of Hellenic Studies 116 (1996), p. 258 and plate III. and Gallic examples, or Greek pottery found in an Italian setting.
In ancient Roman religion, ollae (plural) have ritual use and significance, including as cinerary urns.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. In the study of Gallo-Roman art and culture, an olla is the small pot carried by Sucellus, 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.White, Farm Equipment, p. 176. The 1st-century BC scholar Varro gives an "absurd" etymologyWhite, Farm Equipment, p. 178. that derives the word for vegetables, olera or holera, from olla; although as a matter of scientific linguistics the derivation may be incorrect, it indicates that cookery was considered essential to the pot's function.Varro, De lingua latina 5.108. Isidore of Seville said that the word olla derived from ebullit, "it boils up," and describes a patera as an olla with the sides flattened out more broadly.Isidore, Etymologiae 20.8.1. It was a word of ordinary usage, and does not appear in literary works by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.
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.White, Farm Equipment, p. 178, citing Martial. The kitchen reconstructed at the House of the Vettii from Pompeii shows a large olla set on a tripod on the stove.White, Farm Equipment, p. 179.
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Funerary use
{{See also|Roman funerals and burial}}
Ollae were used for funerary purposes from earliest times. In Italic inhumations, ollae might be placed with the body in the tomb as grave goods, sometimes with a ladle or dipper.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. A tomb from a 7th-century BC necropolis at Civita Castellana yielded an olla decorated with a pair of horses and a Faliscan inscription.Gabriel C.L.M. Bakkum, The Latin Dialect of the Ager Faliscus (Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 414. From the 3rd century BC (Mid-Republic) into the 2nd century AD of the Imperial era, cremation was the most characteristic means of disposing of a body among the Romans. Ollae shifted function to hold cremated remains for entombment, a practice of Etruscan as well as Italic burials.Giovannangelo Camporeale, The Etruscans Outside Etruria (Arsenale-EBS, 2001), pp. 162–163, 197. The remains of those of modest means might be contained in earthenware ollae placed on the shelves of an ollarium or columbarium.White, Farm Equipment, p. 179.
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,Robert Schilling, "Roman Sacrifice," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 79. 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.Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Routledge, 2001, originally published in French 1998), p. 9. The olla was one of the characteristic implements of sacrifice, and appears in reliefs as such, particularly in the Gallic provinces.Duncan Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Brill, 1990), vol. II.1, p. 527. 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.Livy, 41.15.
=Arval Brethren=
Ollae figured in the rituals of the Arval Brethren, the "Brothers of the Fields" who constituted a college of priests dating from Rome's archaic period. The exta of the victims used in their sacrifices were placed in an olla and cooked.Schilling, "Roman Sacrifice," p. 79. Examples of these earthenware pots have been uncovered by archaeologists in the sacred groves of the Arvals. Their rudimentary technique suggests the great antiquity of the religious traditions associated with them.Schilling, "The Arval Brethren," p. 113. After conducting their rites, the Arval priests opened the door to the temple, and cast the ollae down the slope leading up to it.William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, (London, 1922), p. 489.
File:Sucellus MAN St Germain.jpg mallet god with olla, perhaps Sucellus]]
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.Peter F. Dorcey, The Cult of Silvanus: A Study in Roman Folk Religion (Brill, 1992), pp. 57–59.