Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pavimentum

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. 

PAVIMEN'TUM (ἔδαφος, δάπεδον). Strictly, a flooring composed of small pieces of brick, tile, stone, and shells set in a bed of cement, and consolidated by beating down with a rammer (pavicula), which gave rise to the name (Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 61. Cato, R. R. xviii. 7.); though it was thence transferred, in a more general sense, to any kind of artificial flooring, even of the most choice and elaborate workmanship, like those described in the succeeding paragraphs (Hor. Od. ii. 14. Suet. Aug. 72.), or of wood (Vitruv. vii. 1. 2.).

2. Pavimentum sectile. A flooring composed of pieces of different coloured marbles, cut (secta) into sets of regular form and size, so that, when joined together, the whole constituted an ornamental design or pattern, as exhibited by the annexed specimen (Pavimentum/2.1), representing a portion of the ancient pavement still remaining in the church of S. Croce in Gerusalemme at Rome; the objects at the top show the different forms of the pieces with which it is composed; the triangular ones, A and B, consist of serpentine and palombino respectively; the hexagonal, C, of pavonazzetto; and the square, D, of red porphyry. Vitruv. vii. 1. 4. Suet. Jul. 46.

3. Pavimentum tessellatum, or tesseris structum. A flooring belonging to the class of sectilia, and also of an ornamental character, composed of coloured marbles, but of which the component parts were cut into regular dies, without the admixture of other forms, as in the annexed example (Pavimentum/3.1), showing part of a pavement in the Thermae of Caracalla at Rome. (Vitruv. l. c. Suet. l. c.) Square dies (tessellae, tesserae) were likewise employed in making other kinds of mosaic pavements, as in the following specimen; but in that case they were of smaller dimensions, and less precise in their angles.

4. Pavimentum vermiculatum. A mosaic flooring or pavement, representing natural objects, both animate and inanimate, in their real forms and colours, as in a picture. It was composed with small pieces of different coloured marbles, inlaid in a bed of very strong cement, the colours and arrangement of the pieces being selected and disposed in such a manner as to imitate the object designed with a considerable degree of pictorial effect. The dies, however, were not laid in a regular succession of parallel lines, nor all exactly square, as in the last example (the tessellatum), but they followed the sweep and undulation in the contours and colours of the object represented, which, when viewed at a little distance, produces a close resemblance to the wreathing and twisting of a cluster of worms (vermes), and thus suggested the name. The illustration (Pavimentum/4.1), which is copied from the fragment of an ancient vermiculated pavement, will afford a tolerable notion of this appearance, though it is not so forcibly expressed as in the original, in consequence of the absence of colour, and the diminutive scale of the drawing. Plin. H. N. xxxv. 1. Lucil. ap. Cic. Or. iii. 43.

5. Pavimentum scalpturatum. An ornamental flooring or pavement on which the design is produced by engraving (scalptura), and, perhaps, inlaying; but, as the name implies, by a different process, or in a different manner, from either of the kinds already described. (Plin. H. N. xxxvi. 61.) The fragment of the marble floor, now preserved in the Capitol at Rome, which originally formed the pavement to the temple of Romulus and Remus, and had a complete map of the city engraved upon it (a specimen of which is introduced at p. 344. s. ICHNOGRAPHIA), affords an undoubted instance of the pavimentum scalpturatum in its simplest and least ornamental style; though we can readily conceive that the Romans carried this style of decorative art to much greater perfection, and conducted it upon a principle similar to that followed in the Duomo of Siena, where the effect of a finished cartoon is produced on the pavement, by inserting pieces of grey marble for the half tints into white, then hatching across both with the chisel, and filling in the incisions with black mastic for the shade, so that the design approaches to the perfection of a finished chalk drawing. This effect will be readily conceived from the annexed specimen (Pavimentum/5.1), which presents a facsimile, though on a very reduced scale, of one of the groups designed by the artist Beccafiume.

6. Pavimentum testaceum. A flooring made of broken pottery (testa). (Pallad. i. 19. 1. Ib. 40. 2.) Same as No. 1.

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  Pavimentum/2.1
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  Pavimentum/3.1
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  Pavimentum/4.1
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  Pavimentum/5.1