Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pes

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. 

PES (πούς). A foot of men and animals, upon which the body is supported; thence transferred to inanimate things, as the foot of a table, chair, stool, couch, &c., which were sometimes made to imitate the feet of animals, or other ornamental terminations similar to what are still in use, as shown by numerous examples introduced in the course of these pages. Sen. Ben. ii. 34. Ov. Met. viii. 661. Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 4.

2. A foot measure, which was divided into twelve inches (unciae), and subdivided into sixteen digits (digiti, Vitruv. iii. 1. Columell. v. 1. 4. Front. Aq. 24.). The precise length of the old Roman foot has not been distinctly ascertained, for though several foot rules of bronze have been found in excavations, they all vary slightly in their respective dimensions. One of these, from an original found at Pompeii, is represented s. REGULA 1., for the limited width of these pages will not admit of its being inserted on a scale sufficient to show the real length. Several examples, however, of the actual size are engraved in the Museo Borbonico vi. 15. and Ficoroni, Labico Antico, p. 93.

3. Pes veli. A rope attached to the clew or lower corner of a square sail, for the purpose of setting it to the wind, called the sheet in the nautical language of our country. (Isidor. Orig. xix. 3. 4.) Each sail was furnished with two sheets, as shown by the annexed example (Pes/3.1), from a coin of Lepidus, one on the larboard, the other on the starboard clew (Catull. iv. 19.); whence the following expressions will be readily understood: aequo pede, or pedibus aequis (Ov. Fast. iii. 565. Cic. Att. xvi. 6.), to sail before the wind, because then the sail was set straight across the vessel, and consequently both sheets were braced to the same length; obliquare laevo pede cornua (Lucan. v. 428.), to sail on a wind, or by the wind, because in such case the yard and sail were braced up, or slanted across the vessel, to catch the slant of the wind; proferre pedem (Plin. H. N. ii. 48.) has the same meaning, because one of the sheets was brought and braced forward, as in the illustration, to give the necessary obliquity to the sail already mentioned; facere pedem (Virg. Aen. v. 828.), to slack out the sheets in order that the sail may expand to the wind, also implying that the wind comes from a favourable quarter.

4. Pes vinaceorum. The mass of grape skins and stalks remaining after the first juice, which made the finest wine, had been squeezed out by the press-beam (prelum), and from which the wine termed circumcidaneum, and other inferior qualities, were subsequently extracted by the repeated action of the beam. Columell. xii. 43. 10. Ib. 19. 3. Compare the woodcut s. TORCULAR.

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  Pes/3.1