Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Olla

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

OLLA. A large jar or pot of very common use and manufacture, being formed of baked earth (Columell. viii. 8. 7. Id. xii. 43. 12.), though sometimes metal was employed for the same object. (Avian. Fab. xi. Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 20.) It had a flat bottom, swelling sides, very wide mouth, and lid to cover it; and was employed for many purposes, especially for cooking, like the French, pot-à-feu, and for preserving fruits; whence grapes kept in jars are called ollares uvae. (Columell. l. c. Mart. vii. 20.) The illustration (Olla/1.1), from a painting at Pompeii, shows all these particulars.

2. Olla ossuaria, or cineraria. An earthenware jar of the same description, in which the bones and ashes of the dead were enclosed after burning, and deposited in the sepulchral chamber. (Inscript. ap. Murat. 917. 1. ap. Grut. 626. 6.) Ollae of this kind were mostly employed for persons of the humbler classes, many of them being deposited in one vault (wood-cut s. SEPULCRUM COMMUNE); sometimes standing under niches round the walls of the chamber, but more commonly buried up to the neck in them, as shown by the following wood-cut. The example annexed (Olla/2.1) represents an original found in one of the sepulchres excavated in the Villa Corsini at Rome; the mouth is covered with a tile or lid (operculum), on which the name of the person whose ashes were contained inside is inscribed; which explains an inscription in Muratori (1756. 7.), Ollae quae sunt operculis et titulis marmoreis.

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  Olla/1.1
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  Olla/2.1