Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Fibula

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

FIB'ULA (περόνη, πόρπη, ἐνετή). A brooch, employed in fastening various parts of the dress, both in male and female attire (Liv. xxvii. 19. Ov. Met. ii. 412. Id. viii. 318.); such as the chlamys, palla, pallium, sagum, and paludamentum, but not the toga, which was wrapped on the body by the amplitude of its own folds, and did not require anything to fix it. Brooches were made of various materials and patterns, in bone, ivory, bronze, the precious metals, and valuable stones set in gold; upon the same principle as is still adopted, with a sharp pin (acus, περόνη), which shifted into a catch on the rim of the ornament, and were commonly used to fasten loose draperies under the throat, or on the point of the shoulder, like the annexed example (Fibula/1.1), from a fictile vase.

2. A clasp; such as were used more particularly for fastening belts, girdles, and articles of a like nature (Virg. Aen. iv. 139.), made with a hook instead of a pin, which fastened into an eye on the opposite end of the belt from that to which the fibula is fixed, as in the annexed example (Fibula/2.1), representing an original military belt discovered at Paestum; which likewise illustrates such expressions as fibula adunco morsu (Calpurn. Ecl. vii. 81.) and fibula mordaci dente. Sidon. Carm. ii. 397.

3. A buckle; employed in fastening girdles, belts, straps, harness, and things of that description (Virg. Aen. v. 313. Id. xii. 274.): usually made in the same form as our own, as shown by the annexed examples (Fibula/3.1), all from ancient originals. But buckles were often made in a much more costly style, and of elaborate workmanship, as productions of art, intended to be bestowed as rewards of valour upon the military (Liv. xxxix. 31.), or worn by persons of wealth and rank (Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 12.); a specimen of which is afforded by the annexed engraving (Fibula/3.2), from an original of silver found at Herculaneum. The square part was rivetted on to a belt by studs passing through the four holes visible in the engraving; the other part, which is slightly mutilated at the end, formed the buckle, with an ornamental tongue, which worked upon a pin run through the centre of the ornament.

4. A buckle, was also employed for fastening the fillet or bandeau (taenia, vitta) which young women wore round the head, to keep their hair in set. Virgil describes Camilla with her hair confined in this way (Aen. vii. 815.); and the annexed bust (Fibula/4.1), from a bronze statue found at Herculaneum, shows the end of the bandeau passed under a guard beyond the buckle in the same manner as is customary at the present day.

5. In a more general sense, the word is also used to designate many things which fasten various objects together; as a trenail in carpentry (Caes. B. G. iv. 17.); an instrument employed in the olive press room (Cato, R. R. iii. 5.); a band which braces the withies in a basket together (Cato, R. R. xxxi. 1.); and a contrivance adopted by surgeons for closing wounds (Greek, ἀγκτήρ), which compressed the lips of the orifice, and held them together, when sewing (sutura) was either inexpedient or impossible. Celsus. v. 26. 23. Ib. 7. 4.

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  Fibula/1.1
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  Fibula/2.1
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  Fibula/3.1
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  Fibula/3.2
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  Fibula/4.1