Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Stemma

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. 

STEMMA (στέμμα). Properly speaking a Greek word, in which language it signified a garland or wreath bound round with fillets of wool and worn as a chaplet on the head, or employed as a decoration for other objects, as well as the person (CORONA. INFULA). But the Romans adopted the term in a more special sense to designate a long scroll decorated with garlands, and having a list of the family names emblazoned on it, which it was customary to hang upon the ancestral busts, as they stood in their cases (aediculae) round the atrium (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 2. Senec. Ben. iii. 28.); whence the word came also to signify a genealogical tree, pedigree, or lineal stem. Suet. Galb. 2. Nero, 37. Mart. v. 35.