CARTIB´ULUM
CARTIB´ULUM a particular kind of table described by
Varro (
L. L. 5.125) as frequently seen in the atrium of Roman
houses during his boyhood (about B.C. 100). Both the name and the thing were
apparently becoming obsolete in his time. It was an oblong slab of marble
supported on a single bracket or console (
una
columella); it stood near the impluvium, and bronze vessels were
placed upon it. Such a
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Cartibulum. (From Pompeii.)
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table has been discovered in more than one house at Pompeii, with
a fountain behind it shaped like a cippus or square pillar, and flowing into
the impluvium. It has been ingeniously conjectured that this was a survival,
in the more
[p. 1.368]elaborate Roman house of later times,
of the primitive arrangement of the atrium, as at once kitchen and
living-room; the cippus, now turned into a fountain, being the ancient
focus or domestic altar (Saglio, s. v.).
The
aenea vasa on the cartibulum will then be,
not ornamental bronzes as some have thought, but ordinary cooking vessels
[AENUM, CACCABUS]. The engraving represents a
marble table of the kind, from the house of the Nereids at Pompeii (Rich);
beneath it is a drain or sink, no doubt communicating with the impluvium.
Another, figured by Saglio, corresponds less closely to Varro's description,
having two brackets.
[W.W]
