Loculamenta: December 2008

Having worked with the CDL, Berkeley, and the OAC producing catalogues for over 14000 images over the past 4 years, ...

Loculamenta

A library generally had an eastern aspect (Vitruv. VI.4). In Herculaneum a library fully furnished was discovered. Round the walls it had cases containing the books in rolls [Liber]; these cases were numbered. It was a very small room; so small that a person by stretching out his arms could touch both sides of it. The cases were called either armaria (Plin. Ep. II.17; Vopisc. Tacit. 8), or loculamenta (Seneca, De Tranq. An. 9), or foruli (Juv. Sat. III.219), or nidi (Mart. I.118.15, VII.17.5).

First, pigeons. The first-century Roman writer Junius Moderatus Columell, whoe De re rustica is a guide to agricultural practices, calls the coop in which pigeons were kept a cella or cellula. He also uses the word loculamenta, and describes how such “tiers of pigeon-holes” are constructed of boards and pegs to make a structure divided into separate cells or compartments for each pigeon to nest in. This structure he calls “columbis loculamenta vel cellulae. The word Loculamenta was also used at this time for bookcases. Carruthers, M. (1992). The book of memory A study of memory in medieval culture. Cambridge studies in medieval literature, 10. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. P 42

Loculamenta

Friday, December 12, 2008

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