Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Scapus

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'PUS (σκᾶπος). In its primary sense means an object upon or by which any other thing supports itself, as the stalk of a plant, for instance, which supports the head and blossom; the notion obtaining from the primitive sense of the Greek word σκήπτω, "to prop or support oneself by a staff." This root, from which the Latin form is derived, also furnishes an appropriate meaning for the following special and technical applications of the term.

1. The shaft of a column; which supports the capital (capitulum) and rests upon the base (spira). The top of the shaft directly under the capital is distinguished by the expression summus scapus; the bottom of it, just above the base, by that of imus scapus. (Vitruv. iii. 5.) All these parts are sufficiently displayed by the left-hand figure in the annexed wood-cut (Scapus/1.1), representing the column of Trajan at Rome.

2. The shaft or pillar, which supports one end of each stair in a stair-case (Vitruv. ix. Praef. 8.), as shown by the right-hand figure of the above woodcut, representing the internal construction of the same column.

3. The stile of a door; that is, the vertical piece on each side of the valve, into which the transverse pieces or rails (impages) are mortised (Vitruv. iv. 6. 5.); exhibited by the four uprights decorated with bosses in the following illustration, representing an ancient door of bronze now belonging to the church of S. Theodore at Rome.

4. Scapus cardinalis (στρόφιγξ). The main stile of a door which carried the pivots (cardines), by which each leaf is kept in an upright position, when not fixed with hinges (ginglymus), and made to revolve as the pivots turned in a socket excavated in the sill and lintel respectively. (Vitruv. iv. 6. 4.) It is seen on the right side of the annexed wood-cut (Scapus/4.1), which exhibits an ancient marble door-case, with the original valves of bronze, now standing at Rome; but represented in the drawing for the purpose of illustration, as it would appear if that portion of the ornamental facing (antepagmentum), which conceals it on the opposite side, were removed.

5. (καυλός). The shaft or stem of a lamp-stand (candelabrum); that is, the portion between the base or foot upon which it stood, and the capital or flat tray (superficies) at the top, on which the lamp was placed. (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 6.) The use of the term also implies that a tall stand, with a slender stem like the stalk of a plant, is alluded to. It was intended to stand upon the ground, and consequently made of considerable height, in order that the light might be raised to a convenient elevation for illuminating the chamber; and for this purpose, the stem of the example (Scapus/5.1) here introduced, from an original found at Pompeii, is made to draw out from the mouldings observable on it, in the same manner as our telescopes.

6. The beam of a steelyard (statera, Vitruv. x. 3. 4.), as contradistinguished from jugum, the yoke of a balance (libra). The example (Scapus/6.1) is from a bronze original found at Pompeii.

7. A wooden cylinder round which books and paper were rolled, as maps now are. Plin. H. N. xiii. 23.

8. The yarn-beam of a weaver's loom, to which the threads of the warp (stamen) are fastened, and situated at the opposite extremity to the cloth-beam (insubulum). It is seen in the illustration (Scapus/8.1), from an Egyptian painting, at the bottom of the warp, attached by a sliding brace at each end to the two uprights of the loom, and is termed "noisy" (Lucret. v. 1352. sonans), either because weights were sometimes fastened under it to keep the warp on the stretch, and which would rattle against each other when shaken by the strokes of the batten (spatha), in driving home the weft, or from the noise of the braces as they played against the uprights under the same process.

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  Scapus/1.1
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  Scapus/4.1
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  Scapus/5.1
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  Scapus/6.1
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  Scapus/8.1