Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Scrinium

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. 

SCRI'NIUM. A circular box or case (Plin. H. N. xvi. 84.) in which books, papers, letters (Sall. Cat. 47. Hor. Ep. ii. 1. 112.), or other small portable objects, such as scents and unguents (Plin. H. N. vii. 30.), were kept. The exact difference between a scrinium and capsa is not easily ascertained; since they were both formed with the same external shape and materials, and used for similar purposes. A passage of Pliny, however (H. N. xvi. 84.), clearly distinguishes them from each other; whence it has been conjectured that the scrinium was a capsa, but divided internally into a number of separate compartments (quasi secernium); and this supposition gains some sort of authority from the annexed illustration (Scrinium/1.1), representing the scrinium unguentarium of Venus, in a Pompeian painting, amongst a number of other articles appertaining to the toilette of that goddess. Though the inside of the case is not exposed, yet the form of the lid, rising in the centre to give room for the largest bottle, sufficiently indicates the purpose for which it was intended to be used; and a case containing many bottles would answer its object very imperfectly, unless divisions were made in it for the reception of each one, distinct from the rest. Quaranta. Mus. Borb. xi. 16. Compare CAPSA.

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  Scrinium/1.1