Olla (Roman pot)

In ancient Roman culture, the olla (archaic Latin: aula or aulla; Greek: χύτρα, chytra) is a squat, rounded pot or jar. An olla would be used primarily to cook or store food, hence the word “olla" is still used in some Romance languages for either a cooking pot or a dish in the sense of cuisine. In the typology of ancient Roman pottery, the olla is a vessel distinguished by its rounded “belly,” typically with no or small handles or at times with volutes at the lip, and made within a Roman sphere of influence; the term olla may also be used for Etruscan and Gallic examples, or Greek pottery found in an Italian setting.

In ancient Roman religion, ollae (plural) have ritual use and significance, including as cinerary urns. In the study of Gallo-Roman art and culture, an olla is the small pot carried by Sucellus, by the mallet god often identified with him, or by other gods.

Olla is a generic word for a cooking pot, such as would be used for vegetables, porridge, pulse and such. The 1st-century BC scholar Varro gives an "absurd" etymology that derives the word for vegetables, olera or holera, from olla; although as a matter of scientific linguistics the derivation may be incorrect, it indicates that cookery was considered essential to the pot's function.Isidore of Seville said that the word olla derived from ebullit, "it boils up," and describes a patera as an olla with the sides flattened out more broadly. It was a word of ordinary usage, and does not appear in literary works by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.

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