A grist mill: turned by horse and filled and emptied
by a slave (from A Day in Old Rome, William Stearns Davis, Biblo-Muser, no copyright)
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Milling the flour
Once separated, the grain was then ground into flour. The first flour was probably made of grains ground by placing the grain on a flat stone and crushing it by rubbing a second stone back
and forth. In the 2nd century B.C., rotary mills were designed. The first were had devices which
had one concave and one convex stone. Grain was fed through an opening in the upper stone while it was rotated. Eventually, the grinding devices found in Pompeii were designed. There is much archaeological evidence of these bell shaped lower stone devices with the hourglass shaped upper stone. A rod placed through the upper stone was pulled by either slaves or donkeys in order to turn this large structure. Evidence of the use of a donkey was found by the bones of one such animal in Herculaneum.
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