Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Ricinium

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. 

RICI'NIUM, RECI'NIUM, RICI'NUS, or RECI'NUS. Diminutive form of RICA. A small square sheet of woollen cloth (palliolum breve, Non. s. v. p. 542.), doubled in two (Varro, L. L. v. 132.), and worn over the head (Isidor. Orig. xix. 25.) as a veil; more especially assumed as a mourning costume by females (Varro, de Vit. Pop. Rom. ap. Non. l. c. Fragm. xii. tab. ap. Cic. Leg. ii. 23.). The example (Ricinium/1.1) is copied from one of four figures in a fresco painting which decorated one side of a chamber in the Thermae of Titus, in which the celebrated group of Laocoon was found, and is supposed to represent Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, when she went out as a suppliant and in mourning, to dissuade her son, who forms a prominent object in the picture, from advancing against his native city. But even if this explanation of the subject be not the true one, it is still apparent from the attitudes and demeanour of the two females in the design, that they are represented in the character of suppliants, and consequently attired in the habiliments of grief; which alone is sufficient to identify the very peculiar piece of drapery on the head and shoulders with the name and object above described.

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  Ricinium/1.1