Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pegma

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. 

PEGMA (πῆγμα). Literally, anything made of boards joined together; whence, in a special sense, a machine introduced upon the stage, in the amphitheatre, or upon other occasions where pageants were exhibited, for the purpose of representing any sudden or miraculous change of scenic effect. The apparatus was made of wood, and so constructed, by means of springs and weights in the internal machinery, that it would open and shut, expand or contract, increase or diminish in height, or change of itself into a form altogether different from the original one; like the contrivances employed at our theatres for producing the tricks and changes in a pantomime, of which the pegma was the prototype. Senec. Ep. 88. Claud. Mall. Theod. 325. Phaedr. v. 7. 7. Suet. Claud. 34.

2. In a private house, the term pegma was given generally to several pieces of furniture, as, the case in an atrium in which the ancestral portraits (imagines majorum) were deposited, a bookcase, cupboard, &c., whether fixtures or not. Auson. Epigr. 26. Cic. Att. iv. 8. Ulp. Dig. 33. 7. 12.