Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Scalae

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. 

SCA'LAE (κλίμαξ). A ladder; or machine for ascending (from scando), but used in the plural because it was composed by a number of separate steps, arranged one over another and between two uprights, in the same manner as practised at the present day. (Sall. Plin. Caes. Tac. Ov. Virg.) The illustration (Scalae/1.1) represents one of the Roman soldiers in Trajan's army carrying a scaling ladder for the assault of a Dacian fortress.

2. A ship's ladder, of the same construction, but carried on board, and let down from the sides of the vessel when required for the convenience of embarkation or disembarkation, as in the annexed example (Scalae/2.1) from an ancient fresco painting discovered at Rome (Virg. Aen. x. 653. Liv xxvi. 45.); whereas the pons, or ship's bridge, was a mere plank, thrown out from the deck or side of a small vessel in a horizontal position to the top of a quay, or any prominence on the shore of corresponding height with the vessel itself, as shown by the illustration s. PONS, 5.

3. A staircase, conducting from the bottom to the upper stories of a private house or other edifice. The ancient builders formed their staircases much in the same way as the modern ones, either by fixing them against a wall in the interior, so as to leave one side open, like the ordinary stairs of private houses in England, or on the exterior of the building (Liv. xxxix. 14.), as is still a common practice in Italy; or they enclosed it altogether by side walls, like a staircase formed in the thickness of a wall, so that the person ascending or descending was concealed from the view of all others above and below, excepting only such as happened to be upon the same flight with himself. These were specially termed Greek staircases (scalae Graecae, Vitruv. ix. Praef. 7. Aul. Gell x. 15. Serv. ad Virg. Aen. iv. 646.), and from the nature of their construction would of necessity be dark and generally narrow, which explains the reason why the staircase is so often mentioned as a hiding-place (Cic. Mil. 15. Id. Phil. ii. 9. Hor. Ep. ii. 2. 15.); a notion so much at variance with modern usages, by which the stairs are the most open and public parts of the house, that the commentators upon all the passages cited, from not being acquainted with the constructive peculiarity just described, are reduced to the expedient of misconstruing their authors by substituting one preposition for another, as if the person took refuge under the staircase instead of upon it.

4. At a much later period the same word appears to have been the first Latin one employed to designate a pair of stirrups; being first met with in a treatise on the art of war written by the emperor Mauritius at the end of the sixth century. It is sufficiently ascertained that the pure Greeks and Romans did not ride upon regular saddles, made like our own upon a tree (see sella equestris), but only upon pads (ephippia). Consequently, as stirrups were not used until the regular saddle was invented, the word is not to be regarded as pure Latinity in this sense, nor as characteristic of really ancient manners, but as one adopted during the period of transition from ancient to modern times. Mauricii, Ars Mil. ed. Joh. Scheffer, Upsal, 1664. p. 22. and lib. ii. cap. 8. p. 64. Beckman, History of Inventions, Article "Stirrups."

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  Scalae/1.1
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  Scalae/2.1