Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Petaurum

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. 

PETAU'RUM (πέταυρον). A Greek word, signifying in that language a perch for fowls to roost on; whence it was adopted, amongst the Romans more particularly, as the name for a contrivance or machine employed in the exhibition of certain feats of strengh and agility, or as in a game of mere amusement, like that of swinging. Its precise character, however, still remains involved in uncertainty, every attempt at a definite explanation failing to reconcile itself with the different passages in which the word occurs, though each appears to be supported by some one or more of them. Amongst these the following are the most plausible conjectures hazarded. 1. A general term for all the apparatus used by rope-dancers, tumblers, and similar characters; including the poles, ropes, hoops, &c., required for the different displays exhibited by them. 2. A long plank poised upon an upright at its centre of gravity, and working like our "see-saw," with one man at each extremity, and the third who stood upon the centre, and bounded over the heads of the others on to the ground and back again, something like the exhibition displayed upon the gem introduced s. MONOBOLON. 3. A wheel suspended in the air, and worked round and round by the weight of two men standing upon it, one above and the other below, who also exhibited other feats of dexterity whilst they thus kept it in motion. 4. A wheel, placed horizontally, like a potter's wheel, upon which the tumbler performed his evolutions, whilst the wheel itself was in a state of rapid rotation. The passages relied on for each of these interpretations are the following:  — Lucil. ap. Fest. s. v., or p. 87. 40. ed. Gerlach. Manil. Astron. v. 434. Juv. xiv. 265. Pet. Fragm. 13. Mart. ii. 86. xi. 21.