Food and dining in the Roman Empire and a pesto-like preparation, somewhat similar to pizza or focaccia. Maintaining a bread oven is labor-intensive and requires space, so apartment dwellers probably prepared their dough at home, then had it baked in a communal oven. Mills and commercial ovens, usually combined in a bakery complex, were considered so vital to the wellbeing of Rome that several religious festivals honored the deities who furthered these processes—and even the donkeys who toiled in the mills. Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, was seen as complementary to Ceres, the goddess of grain, and donkeys were garlanded and given a rest on the
The Cricket on the Hearth and of Dickens himself." Vladimir Lenin left during a performance of the "Cricket" play in Russia, as he found it dull and the saccharine sentimentality got on his nerves. This incident might now be little remembered if George Orwell had not mentioned it in his essay on Dickens. Stage adaptations include the successful "The Cricket on the Hearth" by Albert Richard Smith produced at the Surrey Theatre in 1845, and Dion Boucicault's "Dot, A Drama in Three Acts" (or simply "Dot"), first performed at New York's Winter Garden in 1859. It was staged repeatedly in Britain and America for the