Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Thorax

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. 

THO'RAX (θώραξ). Properly, a Greek word, which corresponds with the Latin one LORICA; but the two are opposed to each other in a passage of Livy (xlii. 61.), loricae thoracesque, where the lorica is a corselet of leather, the thorax a cuirass of metal.

2. (προτομή). A portrait in marble, bronze, or other material, representing the person as far as the breast only, which we call a bust. (Trebell. Claud. Goth. 2. Vitruv. Compend. 2.) The example (Thorax/2.1), from a bas-relief, represents an artist in the act of modelling a thorax, either in wax or clay, as testified by the modelling stick which he holds in his left hand, and probably one of those small busts which the Romans used to preserve in their houses as family portraits, under the title of ancestral images (imagines majorum). It is to the above custom, that the first design of making busts, as a particular style in art, is to be referred, the encouragement subsequently given to it proceeding from the advantage it afforded to persons of small means, who could not afford the expense of a full-length statue. This will account for the circumstance, otherwise singular, that the ancient name for a bust is only met with in late writings; for it should be borne in mind that the early works of Greek art, so commonly classed under the name of busts in our museums, were termed Hermae by the ancients; and that they were not busts in reality, but only heads without shoulders, intended to be fixed on the top of a square post, the pedestals on which they are now seen being entirely modern.

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  Thorax/2.1