Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Supparum

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. 

SUP'PARUM and -US. A sail which only had one sheet (pes. Isidor. Orig. xix. 3. 4.), so that it must have resembled in form the latine sail now so common in the Mediterranean, or the figure of an inverted triangle, with its base attached to the yard, as in the annexed example (Supparum/1.1), from a Pompeian painting. It was particularly employed when great expedition was required, or the wind slack (Isidor. l. c. Lucan. v. 428.): and as the upper part of the sail in such cases is the one which catches what air there is astir, as Seneca remarks with regard to the supparum (Ep. 77.), it seems highly probable that the figure here introduced, which has the broadest part upwards, really exhibits the model in question. It was, moreover hoisted as a topsail, over the velum or mainsail (Stat. Sylv. iii. 2. 27. summis adnectite suppara velis. Compare Lucan. l. c. Senec. Herc. Oet. 698.); though not so represented in the painting from which the present illustration is copied. But this circumstance, which at the first blush appears to involve a contradistinction, and to negative the conjecture hazarded representing the name and character of the very peculiar sail under observation, will not present any difficulty to those who are conversant with the principles of composition uniformly followed by the artists of the Greek and Roman schools, both sculptors and painters. Their sole object being to give a prominent interest to the human figure, and not, like the modern artists, to produce a faithful copy of the localities and accessories belonging to the scenes or actions they represented, it was usual with them to neglect the truthfulness of representation in their back-grounds, accessories, and subordinate parts of the composition, merely indicating the time, place, or circumstances of the action by a few conventional signs, expressing the ideas they wished to convey, and which would be readily recognised by the majority of spectators. Thus the picture from which our illustration is selected represents the desertion of Ariadne, whose person forms the principal object in the foreground, stretched upon the earth in an agony of grief at the moment of discovering the flight of her lover. The ship is just in the offing; and the artist has ingeniously contrived to express the haste with which the faithless hero escaped, by merely placing on his vessel two sails of the kind which seamen hoisted when they wished to press their craft with the utmost expedition through the water.

2. A banner stretched upon a cross-tree (Festus, s. v.), affixed to an upright shaft, like the vexillum and labarum (Tertull. Apol. 16.); for each of which it is only a more recent name.

3. An article of the indutus in female apparel (Afran. ap. Non. p. 540.), made of linen and worn over the subucula (Varro, L. L. v. 131.), and made with a short and tightish sleeve, which covered the fleshy part of the arm from the shoulder to the elbow-joint. (Lucan, ii. 363. Suppara nudatos cingunt angusta lacertos.) There are no passages which prescribe its length; but the other objects expressed by the same term naturally lead the imagination to a short vest, which sets upon the upper part of the person, as a topsail above the mainsail, or a banner on the top of its shaft, like the annexed figure (Supparum/3.1), from a bas-relief found at Herculaneum, and the one introduced s. SUBUCULA.

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  Supparum/1.1
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  Supparum/3.1