Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Postomis

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. 

POST'OMIS. An instrument employed for the same purpose as the twitch is by our grooms and farriers, to hold a horse by the nose, in order to keep him perfectly still and tractable, whilst being handled, or dressed, or submitted to any nice operation (Non. s. v. p. 22). It was made with two branches ending in semicircular prongs, like a pair of pincers, the ends of which, being inserted in the nostrils, were pressed together by a cord fastened round the opposite extremity of the instrument. A contrivance of the same kind is used at the present day in some parts of England for leading bulls about, the pincers being found to tame their courage most completely; and in Tuscany, for draught oxen, in the manner exhibited by the annexed illustration (Postomis/1.1). The figure on the left hand represents an ancient postomis, from a bas-relief discovered in the south of France, on which two veterinaries are exhibited in the acts of bleeding and clipping horses; the one on the right the modern instrument now used in Italy; and the centre part shows the manner in which it is fastened on the beast, one of the round ends being fixed in each nostril, and the handle turned up against the forehead, where it is kept in place by means of a rope fastened round the horns, and running through a ring at the top, which makes the pincers nip whenever it is pulled. The illustration will also explain an allusion of Lucilius (ap. Non. l. c.), who characterises a tippler by saying that the wine cup was always at his nose, which he therefore likens to a postomis.

• 
  Postomis/1.1