Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Lituus

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. 

LIT'UUS. A brass trumpet, with a long straight stock, like the tuba, but furnished at its furthest extremity, with a curved joint like the buccina or cornu. (Festus, s. v. Gell. v. 8. Sen. Oed. 734. adunco aere. Hor. Ovid. Cic. Virg.) The engraving (Lituus/1.1) represents an original discovered in clearing the bed of the river Witham, near Tattershall, in Lincolnshire, which it will be perceived resembles precisely the instrument held by the liticen in the preceding illustration. It is rather more than four feet long, made of brass, in three joints, like a modern flute, and has been gilt.

2. An augur's wand (Virg. Aen. vii. 187.); which was a short stick (brevis, Gell. v. 8.), bent into a twist at the end, like one side of a bishop's crosier, of which it is supposed to have formed the model. Liv. i. 18. Cic. Div. i. 17. It was used for describing or marking out imaginary divisions in the heavens, for the purposes of divination; and received its name from a certain resemblance which it bore to the military instrument last described (Porphyr. ad Hor. Od. i. 1. 23. Gell. l. c. Orelli ad Cic. l. c.); but in works of art, the end of it is not formed with a gentle curve, like the trumpet and the shepherd's crook (pedum), but is always twisted into a spiral shape, like the annexed examples (Lituus/2.1); one of which represents the instrument itself, from the frieze on an ancient temple under the Capitol at Rome (supposed temple of Saturn), and the other, an augur with the wand in his hand, from a medal of M. Antoninus.

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  Lituus/1.1
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  Lituus/2.1