Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Ostium

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. 

OS'TIUM (θὔρα). In strictness, designates a door within the house, as the door of a room contradistinguished from the street door (janua). (Isidor. Orig. xv. 7. 4. Vitruv. vi. 3. 6.) This distinction is clearly drawn in a passage of Plautus (Pers. v. 1. 6.), ante ostium et januam; and is aptly illustrated by the annexed engraving (Ostium/1.1), representing the door-way of a house at Pompeii, to which the ceiling and doors are restored, for the purpose of making the subject more clear and comprehensible. The janua is the door flush with the external wall of the house, which gives admission to an entrance hall or passage (prothyrum), at the further end of which is another door, the ostium, half closed in the engraving, which shuts off the atrium, or the aula of a Greek house, from the entrance passage. Vitruvius styles both these duas januas (vi. 7. 1.); because the distinction above mentioned, though doubtless an accurate one, was seldom observed, the word ostium being commonly used as synonymous with janua, for any front or entrance door, and especially for the entrance to a temple (Vitruv. vi. 3. 6.), an example of which is introduced p. 342.

2. The door which closed the front of the stalls in which the chariots and horses were stationed at the Circus (Auson. Ep. xviii. 11.); as shown by the annexed example (Ostium/2.1), from a bas-relief in the British Museum.

3. The mouth or entrance to a port. (Virg. Aen. i. 400.) See the illustration s. PORTUS.

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  Ostium/1.1
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  Ostium/2.1