TORCULARIUM
TORCULARIUM a shed or out-house where the presses for oil or
wine were worked (Cat. 12;--Col. 12.52, § § 3-10). The
descriptions left by Latin writers on agriculture are confirmed and
illustrated by the remains of an actual torcularium, discovered at Stabiae.
The central part (probably the
forum) has a
wide open gangway for men or mules carrying in the fruit: in it stands the
TRAPETUM for separating
the pulp and the stone of the olive: on either side of the central
compartment we find a paved chamber separated off by a low stone rim or
coping, so that they form two shallow basins: it seems probable to us that
these chambers were the
lacus of Tib. 1.1, 10,
Ov. Fast. 4.888, Col. 12.18,
Plin. Ep. 9.20, though Rich and
Blümner think differently: the pavement of each chamber slopes in
one direction to a point where leaden troughs conduct the liquid into
earthenware jars (
labra) sunk in the floor: in
each chamber (or
lacus) was placed a press
[
TORCULAR] for oil or
wine; the sockets for receiving the various parts (
arbores, stipites) described in the preceding article are
seen in the floor, and there is an under-chamber where bolts (
pedicini) held fast the
arbores, &c. in their sockets. The juice flowed from the
presses along the troughs of the
lacus into the
sunken jars above described, from which the
capulator ladled out the wine or oil into smaller jars to be placed in
the store-room (
cella vinaria, cella olearia).
It need not be supposed that there were always two chambers and two presses;
but it was a natural arrangement, because the trapetum worked faster than
the torcular; so much so that we are told also of an annexe, called
tabulatum (Col. 12.52), a sort of small store-room
with a number of small tanks (
lacusculi) lined
with stone, in which the
sampsa or olive pulp
was stored, if it could not go directly into the press: the yield (
coactura) of each day was placed on a sort of wooden
rack in a separate
lacusculus, so that the
watery liquid (
amurca) might flow away through
a pipe in the bottom of the tank.
When the torcularium was intended for wine, the basin or
lacus was as above described, but in the centre compartment
the vat for treading the grapes [see
VINUM] took the place of the
[p. 2.851]trapetum:
the juice trodden out flowed either into jars or, like that afterwards
pressed in the torcular, by an arrangement of troughs into the
lacus, and thence into the
labra. The words of Isid.
Orig. 15.6, “forum
est locus ubi uva calcatur,” will best agree with the view which
we take here, that the centre compartment was called
forum: not only is the name itself hard to understand if we
assign it to the side chambers or basins, as Rich and Blümner have
done, but these side chambers, which we take to be the
lacus, were already occupied by the torcular.
(Blümner,
Technol. 1.343 ff.; Rich, s.v. Schneider,
ad Script. B. R., tab. v. and vi.)
[
G.E.M]
