Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Later

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. 

LATER (πλίνθος). A brick; composed of argillaceous earth, formed in a mould, and dried in the sun, or baked in a kiln. The bricks of the Greeks and Romans were much larger and also much thinner than those made by us; and each brick was stamped with the name of the maker, and the year in which it was made. Fancy bricks were made in moulds of all shapes and sizes, to imitate the same forms as were produced by the chisel in a stone or marble structure; but the ordinary building bricks were mostly square in form, oblong square, or triangular, and were made of the comparative sizes and shapes exhibited in the annexed woodcut (Later/1.1), from originals selected amongst the ruins of Rome. The largest, called pentadoron, is 22 inches square, and 21 lines thick; the next size, called tetradoron, about 16 inches square, and from 18 to 20 lines thick; the smaller one placed over it, 7½ inches square, and 1½ lines thick; the small oblong square, on the extreme right of the woodcut, called Lydius, is about 1½ feet long, and half a foot broad; the triangular ones are made of different sizes, and form either an acute or a right-angled triangle; the manner of using them may be seen at the top of p. 241. Vitruv. iii. 2. 3. Plin. H. N. xxxv. 49.

2. Later crudus (πλίνθος ὠμή). A brick dried in the sun without being baked. Varro, R. R. i. 14. 4. Plin. H. N. xxxv. 49.

3. Later coctus or coctilis (πλίνθος ὀπτή). A brick baked in the kiln. Varro, R. R. i. 14. 4.

4. Later aureus, argenteus. An ingot, of gold or silver, in the shape of a brick. Plin. H. N. xxxiii. 17. Polyb. x. 27.

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  Later/1.1