Catīnus
or
Catīnum, dim.
Catillus or Catillum. A dish or platter on which viands were
served up. Other names for similar table utensils will here be noticed; but it must be
admitted that the differences of shape, materials, or use are not always clearly indicated.
Even the distinction, so essential to our notions, between dishes and plates does not seem to
have been observed (
Hor. Sat. i. 3, 92); there
is, in fact, no Greek or Latin word for “a plate” in the modern sense.
Varro describes the catinus as deep enough to hold the gravy of meat or vegetables (
L.
L. v. 120). They were mostly of earthenware, and were kept in varions sizes; to have
the catinus too small for its contents showed a want of style (
Plin.
Ep. ii. 4, 77). The historic
turbot of Domitian required a dish made on purpose (
Juv.iv. 131
foll.); Vitellius had gone a step beyond this, and built a special furnace in which to bake a
gigantic
patina (
Plin. H. N.
xxxv. 163). The
patina (dim.
patella) was also commonly of earthenware; it was bowl-shaped, and occurs frequently
in Horace in the sense of a dish; but it was likewise used for cooking, and then had a cover
(
Plaut. Pseud. iii. 2, 51). The actor Aesopus
had a patina worth 100,000 sesterces; the material is not described.
Paropsis (
παροψίς) was in Greek applied
either to the dish or its contents, as is proved by Athenaeus, with abundant quotations from
the comic poets—though Atticists tried to restrict the word to the latter sense; in
Roman writers it is always the former: originally a square or oblong side-dish for delicacies,
it came to mean any dish. There was also an
apsis or
absis (q. v.), either round or semicircular, like modern salad-plates;
and gabatae, said to have been of a deep shape. The
lanx varied in form, but seems to have been always of
metal; huge silver lances were among the most costly objects of Roman extravagance. We also
find a paropsis in silver (
Dig. xxxiv. 2, 1.19.9). The Greek
πίναξ, a board and so a wooden trencher, might be of other
materials—e. g. silver; but silver dishes were thought vulgar by the Greeks, at
least in early times (Athen. vi. 430 a).
The
catillus was a saucer for pickles or other condiments (
Hor. Sat. ii. 4, 75).
