Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Gradus

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. 

GRADUS. A set of bed-steps, consisting of several stairs (Varro, L. L. v. 168.), which were requisite when the bedstead was of such a height from the ground that it could not be reached by a simple scamnum. The illustration (Gradus/1.1) represents Dido's marriage bed in the Vatican Virgil, with a set of these steps at its foot.

2. A flight of steps leading up to the porch (pronaos) of a temple. (Cic. Att. iv. 1. Virg. Aen. i. 448.) In Greek temples it usually consisted of only three steps; but the Roman architects added a dozen or more, and sometimes divided them into two flights, as in the annexed example (Gradus/2.1) from the ruins of a small temple in the Forum at Pompeii. In all cases, however, the steps were of an uneven number, in order that the person ascending, who naturally commenced with his right foot, might place the same one on the topmost step by which he entered the porch (Vitruv. iii. 4. 4.); the superstition of the people leading them to think a contrary course ill-omened.

3. The seats upon which the spectators sat in a theatre, amphitheatre, or circus. (Inscript. ap. Marini. Frat. Arv. pp. 130. 23. Compare TESSERA THEATRALIS.) These were deep steps rising over one another in tiers, as shown by the annexed view (Gradus/3.1) from the larger theatre at Pompeii, in which the seats (gradus) are the larger steps; the smaller ones, running directly from the doors of entrance, being only staircases (scalae), by which the spectator descended until he arrived at the particular gradus, on which the place belonging to him was situated.

4. The parallel ridges, like steps, on the inside of a dice-box (fritillus), for the purpose of mixing the dice when shaken, and giving them a disposition to rotate when cast from it (Auson. Profess. i. 28.); as shown by the section in the annexed engraving (Gradus/4.1), from an original discovered at Rome.

5. The lines or wrinkles on the roof of a horse's mouth, which resemble those in a dice-box. Veg. Vet. i. 22. 11. Ib. 2. 4.

6. A studied and feminine arrangement of the hair, when artificially disposed in parallel waves or gradations rising one over the other, like steps (Quint. xii. 10. 47.), the same as now termed "crimping." Nero is said to have had his head always dressed in this manner (Suet. Nero, 51); and a statue representing that emperor in the character of Apollo Citharoedus (Mus. Pio-Clem. iii. 4.) has the hair parted in the centre, and regularly crimped on both sides, like a girl's.

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  Gradus/1.1
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  Gradus/2.1
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  Gradus/3.1
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  Gradus/4.1