Gallus; or, Roman scenes of the time of Augustus. With notes and excursuses illustrative of the manners and customs of the Romans / Translated from the German by the Rev. Frederick Metcalfe.
- Wilhelm Adolf Becker
- Date:
- 1844
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Gallus; or, Roman scenes of the time of Augustus. With notes and excursuses illustrative of the manners and customs of the Romans / Translated from the German by the Rev. Frederick Metcalfe. Source: Wellcome Collection.
424/458 page 398
![and gates. Pliny, xvi. 40, 77. In the inner chambers also the cardines, the pegs, were attached to the folding-doors, and the hollows or rings were placed in the threshold, or on tne door- post, as we see from Appul. Met. i. p. 49. Folding-doors were (at least in private houses) the most common. When they opened inwards the most simple method of fastening them was by drawing across a bar or wooden bolt sera. See Nonius, i. p. 41. Ovid, Fast. i. 265 ; and v. 280. Petron. 16. The usual expression for such bolting is opponere^ or apponere seram, i. e. ohserare. The sera rested on the door- post, as we learn from Ovid. Amor. i. 6, where, by postis, in connexion with excutere, we cannot understand the door. We cannot distinguish between the sera and the obex., further than that the latter word is a more general expression for everything placed before the door, but must not refer it to any particular con- trivance. Hence we have in Festus, Ohices pessidi, seroe. But the repagula were something of another sort; see Festus, 231, from whom we may conclude, by the words patefaciundi gratia., that it was a contrivance which allowed of the door being opened with less trouble than by the sera., and that, as the name occurs only in the plural, a cross-beam is not denoted by it, as by the sera^ but two bolts meeting from opposite sides, whence Festus says, e contrario oppanguntiir. In that case some means of joining the two together would be required, and perhaps this was effected, as among the Greeks, with a /3aXai/o? (a pin), which being sunk into a hollow {fSaXavoboKt]), con- nected the bolt with the door, and being itself hollow, was drawn out again when the door was to be opened, by means of an instrument (^f3a\avdypia)f that fitted into it. A similar con- trivance was requisite also when the door opened outwards, where a bolt within would have been of no use, unless it were connected with the door. This pin (/SaAai/o?) is commonly supposed to be the same as that which the Romans called pessuliis, but with the excep- tion of the words of Marcellus Empiricus, cited by Sagittarius, we know of no other passage that would not militate against, rather than favour, this assumption. See Plant. Aul. i. 2, 25 ; Ter. Heaut. ii. 3, 37 ; Etm. iii. 5, 55. Appul. Met. i. 44 Oud.; 49, 52 ; iii. p. 199 ; ix. p. 631. It is evident that something dif-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29319560_0424.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
