Fullo

A fullo was a Roman fuller or laundry worker (plural: fullones), known from many inscriptions from Italy and the western half of the Roman Empire and references in Latin literature, e.g. by Plautus, Martialis and Pliny the Elder. A fullo worked in a fullery or fullonica. There is also evidence that fullones dealt with cloth straight from the loom, though this has been doubted by some modern scholars. In some large farms, fulleries were built where slaves were used to clean the cloth. In several Roman cities, the workshops of fullones have been found. The most important examples are in Ostia and Pompeii, but fullonicae also have been found in Delos, Florence, Fréjus and near Forlì: in the Archaeological Museum of Forlì, there is an ancient relief with a fullery view. While the small workshops at Delos go back to the 1st century BC, those in Pompeii date from the 1st century AD and the establishments in Ostia and Florence were built during the reign of the Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.