Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Cella

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

CELLA. A cellar; employed as a general term, denoting a magazine or store-room upon the ground-floor, in which produce of any description was kept; the different kinds of cellars being distinguished by an epithet indicating the nature of the articles contained therein; for example, —

1. Cella vinaria (οἰνεών). A wine cellar, forming one of the principal appurtenances to a vineyard. It was a magazine where the produce of the year's vintage was deposited in large earthenware vessels (dolia, seriae, &c.), or in wooden barrels (cupae), after it had been removed from the vats of the press room (torcularium), where it was made and kept in bulk until sold or bottled; i. e. put into amphorae, for the purpose of being removed into the apotheca at the top of the house, where it was kept to ripen. (Varro, R. R. i. 13. 1. Colum. xii. 18. 3. and 4. Pallad. i. 18. Cic. Senect. 16.) The illustration (Cella/1.1), which is copied from a bas-relief discovered at Augsburgh in the year 1601, shows one of these magazines for wine in the wood, the usual manner of keeping it in the less genial climates (Plin. H. N. xiv. 27.); and the next example, though not properly a wine grower's cellar, will serve to convey an idea of the plan on which the stores were arranged and disposed when the wine was kept in vessels of earthenware, which was the more usual practice.

2. A wine-merchant's or tavern-keeper's cellar, upon the ground-floor, in which they also kept their wine in bulk, to be drawn off for private sale, or to be supplied in draught to the poorer customers who frequented their houses, and which was thence termed draught wine (vinum doliare), or, out of the wood (de cupa). (Cic. Pis. 27.) The illustrations (Cella/2.1) represent a section and ground-plan of a portion of one of these wine-stores, which was discovered in the year 1789, under the walls of Rome. It is divided into three compartments: the first, which is approached by a few steps, consists of a small chamber, ornamented with arabesques and a mosaic pavement, but contained nothing when excavated; the second one, which leads out of it, is of the same size, but entirely devoid of ornament, and without any pavement, the floor consisting of a bed of sand, in the centre of which a single row of the largest description of dolia was found imbedded (defossa) two-thirds of their height in the soil; the last of the three is a narrow gallery, six feet high, and eighteen long (of which a portion only is represented in the engraving, but it extends about four times the length of the part here drawn), and like the preceding one is covered at bottom with a deep bed of sand, in which a great number of earthenware vessels, of different forms and sizes, were partially imbedded, like the preceding ones, but ranged in a double row along the walls on both sides, so as to leave a free passage down the middle, as shown by the lowest of the two engravings, which represents the ground-plan of the cellars.

3. Cella olearia. A magazine or cellar attached to an olive ground, in which the oil when made was kept in large earthenware vessels, until disposed of to the oil merchants. Cato, R. R. iii. 2. Varro, R. R. i. 11. 2. Columell. i. 6. 9.

4. Any one of a number of small rooms clustered together, such as were constructed for the dormitories of household slaves (Cic. Phil. ii. 27.); for travellers' sleeping rooms at inns and public houses (Pet. Sat. 9. 3. and 7.); or the vaults occupied by public prostitutes. (Juv. Sat. vi. 128. Pet. Sat. viii. 4.) The illustration (Cella/4.1) represents part of a long line of cellae now remaining amidst the ruins of a Roman villa at Mola di Gaeta; the fronts were originally bricked in, with only an entrance-door in the centre to admit the occupant, and so much of light and air as could be supplied through such an aperture.

5. In like manner, the different chambers which contained the necessary conveniences for hot and cold bathing in a set of baths, were called cellae; because, in fact, they consisted of a number of rooms leading one into another, like the cells of a honey-comb, as is very clearly shown by the annexed illustration (Cella/5.1), from a fresco painting which decorated an apartment in the Thermae of Titus at Rome; thus the room containing the warm baths was the cella caldaria, or caldarium; the tepid chamber, cella tepidaria, or tepidarium; the one which held the cold bath, cella frigidaria, or frigidarium. Plin. Ep. v. 6. 25. and 26. Pallad. i. 40.

6. The niches or cells in a dovecote and poultry-house, which are clustered in a similar manner. Columell. viii. 8. 3. Id. viii. 14. 9.

7. (σηκός) The interior of a temple; i. e. the part enclosed within the four side-walls, but not including the portico and peristyle, if there is any. (Cic. Phil. iii. 12.) The illustration (Cella/7.1) represents a ground-plan of the temple of Fortuna Virilis, now remaining at Rome, on which the part within the dark lines is the cella.

• 
  Cella/1.1
• 
  Cella/2.1
• 
  Cella/4.1
• 
  Cella/5.1
• 
  Cella/7.1