Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Porta

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. 

PORTA (πύλη). The gate of any large enclosure or set of buildings, as opposed to janua and ostium, the door of a house; and especially the gate of a fortified place, of a citadel, or of a city. The annexed engraving (Porta/1.1), representing the ground-plan of the principal entrance to Pompeii from Herculaneum, will explain the usual system adopted by the ancients for structures of this nature. It consists of a central archway over the main road (A) for carriages, and two lateral ones (B B) for foot passengers, each of which was closed by a smaller gate. Under the arch which faced the open country (at the bottom of our engraving), there was no gate, but instead of it a portcullis (cataracta), the grooves for which are visibile in the walls at the points marked C C on the plan. The gates were situated at the opposite extremity of the pile, nearest the town, as testified by the sockets in the pavement (D D), in which the pivots (cardines) of each valve turned. Both the lateral entrances were vaulted over head, throughout their whole length; but the central roadway was only covered at its two extremities, thus leaving an open space or barbican (A) between the portcullis and gate open to the sky, through which the defenders of the position could pour their missiles from the upper stories of the interior upon their assailants, if they should succeed in forcing an entrance beyond the portcullis and into the barbican. The entire front was further covered with an attic, adapted for purposes of defence, or containing chambers for the administration of justice and the business of civil government, as in the magnificent entrance gate to the city of Verona, represented by the following woodcut (Porta/1.2), which is constructed with two carriage-ways, one for entering the city, the other for going out, but is not provided with separate gangways for foot-passengers. Other examples, still in existence, have only a single thoroughfare serving both for horses, carriages, and pedestrians, flanked with lateral towers (Caes. B. C. viii. 9. Virg. Aen. vi. 552 — 554), as is the case with all the old gateways now remaining in the walls of Rome, of which an example is given in the illustration s. FENESTRA 3., though the entrance itself is now blocked up by a modern lean-to.

2. Porta pompae. The gate through which the Circensian procession entered the Circus. (Auson. Ep. xviii. 12.) It was situated in the centre of the straight end of the building, with the stalls for the horses arranged on each side of it. See the ground-plan at p. 165., on which it is marked H, and the illustration s. OPPIDUM, where it is shown in elevation.

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  Porta/1.1
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  Porta/1.2