Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Astragalus

Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary, and Greek Lexicon (Rich, 1849)

ASTRAG'ALUS (ἀστράγαλος). The Greek name for one of the vertebral bones, the ball of the ankle-joint and the knuckle-bone of animals, which was used instead of dice for games of chance and skill, but is not employed in any of these senses by the Latin writers.

2. By the Roman architects, an astragal; a small moulding of semicircular profile, so termed by the ancients from a certain resemblance which it bears, in its alternation of round and angular forms, to a row of knuckle-bones (ἀστράγαλος, and last cut but one), placed side by side; and called a bead or baguette by the moderns, because it closely resembles a string of beads or berries. It is more especially characteristic of the Ionic order, in which it is employed to form the lowermost member of the capital immediately under the echinus, to divide the faces of an architrave, or in the base, where it is a plain moulding, similar to the torus, but of smaller dimensions. (Vitruv. iv. 1. 11. Id. iii. 4. 7. Id. iii. 5. 3.) The first of the two specimens (Astragalus/2.1) here given is from a capital of the temple of Apollo, near Miletus; the lower one from the temple of Minerva at Priene.

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  Astragalus/2.1