NADNICE ZA ČIŠĆENjE ODEĆE U ANTIČKOM RIMU

Abstract

Almost all the services which are available today in a modern society were also known to the ancient Romans. Among others are the laundary and dry cleaning services. We are not claiming here that dry cleaning existed then in the same form that has been adopted in modern times, but certainly there were laundery workers called fullo, nis who worked in laundary shops called Fullonica (Fullonicum) in which specific forms of clothes cleaning and whitening were performed, as well as the services of finishing fabric by rolling and scrubbing it to remove imperfections from spinning and weaving. We learn about fullo's activities from the scripts of ancient historians, but also a significant part of the Code of Justinian, the Digest, was dedicated to the rules governing thier activity. There we can find that this kind of services was always charged and that fullo even had their association called collegium. The information related to the fees charged for this activity can be found in Diocletian's Price Edict defining the maximum prices of services (Edictum de pretiis rerum venalium). Thus, for example, the Section 7 of the Edict includes the rates of 76 different types of services of various workers and craftsmen, but not the rate for laundary services. However, the Section 22 of the Edict is entirely dedicated to these services which emphasized the importance of this profession in ancient Rome. The most famous laundary shop was in in Pompeii, called Fullery of Stephanus.