Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Pessulus

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'SULUS (κλεῖθρον, μάνδαλος, κατοχεύς). A bolt for fastening a door (Ter. Eun. iii. 5. 55. Id. Heaut. ii. 3. 37.), of which the annexed illustration (Pessulus/1.1) affords a specimen, from a bronze original found at Pompeii. The doors of the ancients being generally bivalve had two, and sometimes four bolts affixed to them, one at the top, and the other at the bottom of each leaf, which shot into sockets incavated in the lintel and sill of the doorway, still to be seen in many houses of Pompeii, whence the bolts are mostly mentioned in the plural when the closing and bolting of doors is spoken of (Plaut. Aul. i. 3. 26. occlude fores ambobus pessulis, Apul. Met. iii. p. 56. pessulis injectis, Id. iv. p. 76. Id. i. p. 8); and sometimes they could not be drawn back without a key, for which purpose the three-toothed key (clavis Laconica, p. 174) was probably used (Apul. Met. i. p. 11. subdita clavi pessulos reduco; though in this and other similar passages the pessuli may only mean the bolts of a lock, as we also apply our term with the same general acceptation.)

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  Pessulus/1.1