Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Forma

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. 

FORMA (τύπος). A model, mould, or form, by which other things of a plastic, fusible, or ductile nature are made to assume any shape required; as —

1. A mould for taking terra-cotta casts. These were made of stone, with the design engraved upon them in intaglio, into which the wet clay was pressed, and then put into an oven to be baked in its mould. The illustration (Forma/1.1) shows an original mould on the right hand, found at Ardea, with the cast from it (ectypus) on the left.

2. (χόανος). A mould for fusible metals, casts in bronze (Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 49.), coins (Lamprid. Alex. Sev. 39.), and similar objects, also made of stone, sufficiently hard to resist the molten heat; or of baked earth; of which material the annexed example (Forma/2.1) is composed, representing an original mould for coins, with a specimen of the money upon a rather larger scale by the side. A number of models, with a reverse of the device engraved on both sides, are arranged in the case, at a distance from one another corresponding with the exact thickness of the intended coin; the liquid metal was poured into the groove at the side, from which it flowed through the holes there seen, and produced a perfect coin between each layer of the types.

3. A mould for making bricks. Pallad. vi. 12.

4. A mould in which cream cheeses were pressed, made of box-wood (Columell. vii. 8. 7.); also designated by the diminutive Formula. Pallad. vi. 9. 2.

5. (καλάπους). A. shoemaker's last; made of wood, like our own, and with a handle to it, as shown by the annexed example (Forma/5.1) from a painting of Herculaneum, representing two genii as shoemakers engaged at their trade. Hor. Sat. ii. 3. 106. Ulp. Dig. 9. 2. 5. § 3.

6. The water-way, or channel of an aqueduct, or that part of it which is conducted underground, instead of being raised upon arches (Frontin. Aq. 75. 126.) and which are consequently embedded in earth, like a cast in its mould.

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  Forma/1.1
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  Forma/2.1
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  Forma/5.1